% % %

The Workhorse of the Exos Lineup: 20TB of Capacity-Dense SAS Storage With Proven Reliability

The Seagate Exos X20 20TB sits at the sweet spot of the enterprise HDD market: large enough for capacity-dense deployments, proven enough to trust with production data, and priced well below the 24TB flagships. Avec 7,200 RPM, 12Gb/s SAS dual-port connectivity, 2.5 million hours MTBF, and a 550 TB/year workload rating, the X20 is the drive that powers backup repositories, object storage (MinIO, Ceph), and nearline archive tiers across thousands of data centers. It is the drive you order when you need 300 TB of reliable, redundant storage without paying the density premium for 24TB drives.

Spécifications techniques

Paramètre	spécification
Capacité	20TB (also: 14TB, 16TB, 18TB in X20 series)
Facteur de forme	3.5-pouce LFF
Interface	SAS 12 Go/s (dual-port, full-duplex)
Vitesse rotationnelle	7,200 RPM
Recording Technology	CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) with TDMR (Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording) heads
Cache Buffer	256 MB
Sustained Transfer Rate	Jusqu'à 285 Mo/s
Average Latency	4.16 MS
MTBF	2,500,000 heures
FR	0.35% (design target)
Workload Rate Limit	550 TB/year
URE Rate	1 sector per 10^15 bits
Pouvoir (Idle / en fonctionnement)	4.8O / 7.0O
Sealing	Helium-sealed (HelioSeal)
RV Sensors	Oui (Rotational Vibration sensor array)
Sector Size	512e or 4Kn (selectable)
Choc (en fonctionnement / Non-Op)	40g / 200g
Physical	147.0 X 101.85 X 26.1 millimètre, 680g
Température	5C to 60C
garantie	5-year limited (fabricant)

X20 vs X24 vs 2X18 — Choosing the Right Exos

Fonctionnalité	X20 20TB	X24 24TB	2X18 18TB (HAMR)
Capacité	20TB	24TB	18TB (dual-actuator, 2x 9TB)
Recording Tech	CMR + TDMR	CMR + TDMR	HAMR
Actuators	Single	Single	Dual (MACH.2)
Transfer Rate	285 Mo/s	270 Mo/s	288 Mo/s (dual ~570 MB/s)
Price per TB (relative)	100 percent	~95 percent	~105 percent
Best for	Proven capacity tier, sauvegarde, object storage	Maximum density per bay	High-throughput sequential workloads

Deployments Where the X20 Is the Right Drive

Backup repository (Veeam/Commvault): 12x X20 in RAID 6 = 200 TB usable. Sequential write at 285 MB/s per drive. UN 100 TB backup completes in the overnight window.
Object storage (MinIO, Ceph): 24-drive node = 480 TB raw. Erasure coding (EC 8+4) delivers ~360 TB usable with strong fault tolerance. SAS dual-port adds path redundancy.
Nearline archive: Compliance archives, media libraries, and cold data tiers where cost per terabyte and 24/7 reliability matter more than IOPS.

Compatible Platforms

SAS 12 Go/s, compatible with all Dell PowerEdge servers with SAS backplanes (R660, R760, R770, R860, R960), xFusion FusionServer V7, Lenovo ThinkSystem. Works with PERC H730/H740/H750/H755/H965i, LSI/Broadcom 93xx/94xx/96xx SAS HBAs.