Seagate made several announcements today in conjunction with the 2023 NAB Show, which starts this weekend. The new hardware introduction is the updated flagship capacity option for the IronWolf Pro HDD lineup targeting the SMB/SME NAS market. The new 22TB option in the lineup matches the maximum capacity offered in the WD Red Pro line, which launched in July 2022. Interestingly, the announcement comes ahead of the retail launch of the corresponding Exos X22 line (already rolling out to data centers, according to Seagate’s investor filing).
In addition to announcing the availability of the new ST22000NT001 model, Seagate also provides technical details. This is a 10 disk/20 head configuration with conventional magnetic recording (CMR). The drive has a 3.5 inch form factor and has a SATA 6 Gbps interface. The drive is equipped with 512 MB cache and has a spindle speed of 7200 RPM. Noise ratings show 20 dBA at idle and 26 dBA with active seek under normal conditions. However, it can go up to 30-34 dbA under heavy load. The SKU has a suggested retail price of $600, matching the launch price of WD’s 22 TB lineup.
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 22TB – indicators of interest | |
| Rated workload (TB/year) | 550 |
| maximum. Sustained Transfer Rate (MBps) | 285 |
| Rated load/unload cycles | 600K |
| unrecoverable read error | 1 in 10E15 |
| MTBF (hours) | 2.5M |
| Power (idle/active) (W) | 6.0 / 7.9 |
| Warranty (years) | 5 Years + 3 Years Rescue Data Recovery Service |
| data sheet | |
Seagate is several quarters behind WD in the retail launch of its 22TB HDD. However, consumer demand in this market segment is a little lukewarm. Slightly smaller HDD deals, such as 18TB and 16TB capacity points, seem to be plentiful as demand by hyperscalers has disappeared, but they appear to be in oversupply. Seagate probably didn’t lose a lot in the consumer market for this late introduction. More interestingly, Seagate does not limit the use of the new drives to his NAS units with 24 bays or less, instead opting to indicate “unlimited” in the datasheet.
The new SKU has a suggested retail price of $600, but the drive is currently being sold at Newegg for $400 (although that could be a pricing mistake).
In other news, Seagate also announced a collaboration with QNAP to support Exos E-series JBOD systems and Seagate Lyve storage solutions with ZFS NAS solutions for QuTS Hero, seamlessly delivering enterprise-scale solutions from the edge. to be realized.
