Seagate Exos Enterprise 16TB SATA 6Gb/s, 3.5" Internal Hard Drive with 7200 RPM & 256MB Cache

Seagate 16TB HDD Exos X16 7200 RPM 512e/4Kn ~300 USD (2021)This has been a 100% working drive so far. It has been writing its new contents for 3 days straight now. Temperature remaining at 32 degrees C. This is Great considering I am running it at full demand for a long time. For comparison my external WDC WD100EMAZ-00WJTA0 10000.8 GB (WD My Book 10GB) has run at 48 to 53 degrees C, alarmingly hot. After this WD external is getting shucked, the enclosure dremeled open for air, or a fan physical screwed on from an old computer. Datacenter drives can be noisy and this is generally known, this drive has been whisper quiet. There are not any clicking or ticking or whizzing sounds.Mine came with SN03 firmware and SN04 was available. Updating the firmware was a pain in the ass. Nothing can be done while in windows because it blocks everything like it is a virus, thanks Microsoft. I had to boot into seagate tools and then type the one commandline. This was easy, except that it took 4 hours of searching and reading everything available online to figure out that one line!!!!!! Horrible documentaion on this, not even youtube could help. While in Seagate tools I changed my drive to 4K (4096) or 4KN logical sectors. If you do this, do it before putting data on it. The majority will not know or care about this and is not a reason to disregard buying this drive.I am traditionally a Western Digital fan. 20 some years ago I used Seagate in everything with fantastic results (I still have a couple still around shelfed as backup storage). This drive was on sale for 300 when it is normally 400. I needed a drive quickly and at a good price. NOTHING compared to it in terms of price to value ratio. This might be in part due to COVID. I have been surprised at the quality so far and may be returning to using more Seagate hard drives again.My drive is not a SED (self encrypting model) but I am running Veracrypt on it fine.

It seems a lot of these reviews get mashed together, so to be clear, this is for the SATA III (6gb/s) 16TB Seagate Exos.These run very cool (I've not seen them hit higher than 32c under heavy load, but usually stay below 30 in my system)They're not the quietest drives but they're also not obnoxiously loud and are typically only notably audible during spin-up and heavy access.I've bought a couple of these and plan to buy at least a few more once the price comes down again.If you're looking at these drives wondering what the differences are between the Exos series and the IronWolf Pro series, here's some quick food for thought:The IronWolf Pro series has typically has the same interface, cache sizes, and very comparable read/write speeds. (I've personally found the IronWolf Pro's to be a hair faster than comparable Exos drives, though the differences were very minimal.)Workload:The drives in the Exos line are rated to handle up to 550TB of reading and writing per year, while the IronWolf Pro series is only rated for 300TB per year.Data Recovery:Seagate includes data recovery services for a certain period in the warranty for IronWolf Pro series drives. This is not included by default with Exos drives and is one of the reasons the IronWolf Pro series drives may sometimes be more expensive than comparable Exos drives.Longevity:Exos Drives are rated at approximately double the MTBF(Mean Time Before Failure) as IronWolf Pro drives(~1.2 million hours vs ~2.5 million hours)Multi-Bay support:IronWolf Pro drives are rated to handle up to 24 drives in a single enclosure/raid array) while Exos Drives do not have this limitation.Write Cache technology:Some of the lower capacity IronWolf Pro series use (or at least have used in the past) have used Write-Back caching. While the Exos line pretty much always uses write-through caching.SMR vs CMR:Some of the lower capacity IronWolf Pro series use/have used SMR (shingled magnetic recording), a technology that has previously come under scrutiny for not being advertised. SMR drives are optimized for write-once read-many applications, meaning while read speeds are just fine- write speeds are typically slower on SMR drives due to the way data is written to the platters.Exos drives are always CMR and have both good write AND read speeds.If you're looking at an IronWolf drive and not sure if it's CMR or SMR be sure to check Seagate's website.

After reading some of the reviews, I was a bit skeptical about ordering one of these. Some said that theirs came DOA, it makes weird noises, or as a OEM drive. Well, decided to take a chance since I could easily return it if I don't open the sealed anti-static package.Once you get it, it does come in just a cardboard package, but nothing got damaged. So before opening the anti-static packaging, you can go on Seagate's website and enter the S/N to see if there is a warranty on it. I did so and it has its 5 year warranty. Sweet!Everything works just fine without any issues. Now since this isn't the Barracuda line, the drive will operate a little louder. You will hear it spin up and operate. (TO BE CLEAR: There's zero clicking or grinding noises. I'm talking about purely operating noises). It doesn't bother me at all. Think of it like hearing a little bit of your engine if you have to get up to speed quickly.NOTE: Once you hook it up, you have to assign, partition and format the drive. It won't show up immediately for that reason. For those of you that don't know how, it's very easy. Simply search "how to initialize a new hard drive". Then just follow the steps given.Anyway, if I have any issues, I will post an update.