Seagate disclosed today it’s been shipping its first 16TB helium-based enterprise drive as part of the Exos X16 family, a product designed for hyperscale, cloud, edge and core data centers.

The company is also rolling out new 16TB IronWolf and IronWolf Pro drives for Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems.

These products are the first 16TB CMR (conventional magnetic recording) drives to ship in volume. The drives use TDMR (two-dimensional magnetic recording) technology for the heads.

IronWolf Pro drives are Seagate's fastest and most robust drives for NAS systems in creative pro and small-medium business environments. IronWolf is a drive for small office and home NAS systems that deliver performance, low noise and low power consumption.

The Exos X16 is a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive with SED (self-encrypting drive) options. It is currently the leading capacity point available across all HDD vendors, but, not the first 16 TB drive publicly announce. Toshiba launchedd its MG08 series in January 2019. Similar to Toshiba's MG08 series, the Seagate 16TB drives also use nine platters to achieve the capacity point.

Seagate’s Exos X16 hard drive deliver the highest storage density available. The drive delivers 33% more petabytes per rack compared to 12TB drives while maintaining the same small footprint for a reduced overall total cost of ownership. And it offers built-in data protection, including Seagate Secure Instant Secure Erase for fast drive retirement. The new line also implements Seagate's next-generation helium side-sealing technology for leak protection.

The IronWolf Pro is rated for 250MBps transfers, and the plain IronWolf, 210MBps. All three drives spin at 7,200rpm with 256MB of DRAM cache, and feature rotational vibrations sensors and firmware that will compensate for outside vibrational interference. The X16 also offers RSA 2048 firmware verification and advanced parity functionality as well as other enterprise features.

The helium-filled Exos X16 will be available for $629 in both SATA and SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) flavors, while the SATA-only IronWolf 16TB and IronWolf Pro will retail for $609 and $664, respectively. The plain IronWolf carries a three-year warranty, while the X16 and the IronWolf Pro are covered for five years. The IronWolf Pro also offers two years of free data recovery.