Seagate has demonstrated the latest version of its Mach.2 Multi-Actuator technology and set a new speed record for hard drives in the process. It makes them so fast that they begin to rival SATA III SSDs in terms of raw transfer speed.
The new Seagate Exos drives are technically designed with enterprises in mind, but there's no reason the technology couldn't be brought over to the consumer space too. It enables the drives to reach sustained read speeds up to 480MBps, which is more than double that of even the fastest hard drives on the market and worlds beyond what was possible just a few years ago.
"MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology is an IOPS-per-Terabyte win for Seagate and for our cloud provider partners. Our purpose is to accelerate technology innovation for performance in the cost-sensitive storage tier – and MACH.2 does that by solving response time for the end user and enabling our cloud partners to attain SLA requirements," Segate said in a statement, via WCCFTech. Continued advances in capacity with HAMR and increased IOPS with MACH.2 work together to improved cost efficiencies while sustaining performance."
The drives sporting this technology include Seagate's Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology and don't just boost speeds, but reliability too. Industry standards demand that drives be capable of transferring 550TB per year, or around 30TB per write head. Seagate's new drives are capable of writing 152TB per head, giving them unprecedented speed and reliability.