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Seagate · Data-centre drive · ST16000NM002H

Seagate Exos X24 16TB

Seagate builds this one for data-centre racks; in a home NAS it's simply a big 7,200 rpm SATA drive with five years' cover.

Capacity
16 TB
Recording
CMR
Speed
7,200 rpm
Warranty
5 years
Workload
550 TB/yr
Failure rate
No failure data

Good for

  • Busy arrays (550 TB a year)
  • Big media libraries
  • RAID, SHR and ZFS rebuilds
  • 5 years' warranty

Not for

  • A desk or bedroom (7,200 rpm is the louder class)

Updated 27 Oct 2026 · Method 2.0

Who the Exos X24 16 TB is for

It's at home in a rack or a garage, where 7,200 rpm of spinning rust can whirr away all day without bothering anyone. You also get five years' warranty, two more than the cheapest NAS lines. It's CMR, which is what you want anywhere near a RAID or ZFS rebuild.

Watch out for

Being 7,200 rpm, it's in the noisier, warmer class of drive, and you'll want it somewhere you don't sit.

There's no Backblaze data worth quoting here. On paper it makes 28 dB at idle and 32 dB seeking. Seagate lists 6.3 W at idle, which comes to 55 kWh a year for a drive that idles around the clock. Four of them in SHR or RAID 5 give 48 TB usable, or 43.7 TB once Windows has done its binary maths on it.