Alright, let’s talk about my recent journey into the world of hard drives. I needed a bunch of storage and I was staring down the barrel of two options: the Seagate Exos X20 and the Seagate Exos X22. The big question was, is the X22 worth the extra cash, or should I stick with the tried and true X20?
So, I rolled up my sleeves and started digging. First off, I grabbed a few of each model. Got the X20s in both 18TB and 20TB flavors, and snagged a couple of 22TB X22s to see what they were all about. Now, on paper, these drives look pretty similar, right? 7200 RPM, SATA III, the whole nine yards. But I wanted to see if those extra terabytes on the X22 made a real-world difference.
I set up a testing rig. Nothing fancy, just a regular PC with a decent motherboard and plenty of RAM. I plugged in the drives, one by one, and started running some basic tests. Copied a ton of files, big and small, to see how fast they moved. I used a few different benchmarking tools, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, also try to see if anything is wrong.
- First up, the X20 18TB. It performed as expected. It’s a solid drive, no doubt about it. Speeds were good, everything ran smoothly. No surprises here, it did what it said on the tin.
- Next, the X20 20TB. Again, pretty much the same story. Maybe a tiny bit faster than the 18TB, but nothing that blew my socks off. They’re basically twins, these two.
- Then came the star of the show, the X22 22TB. Now, I was expecting a bigger jump here. And you know what? There was a difference. It was noticeably faster in some tests, especially when dealing with large files. Not a night-and-day difference, but definitely there.
I ran these tests a few times, just to be sure. I even swapped the drives around, tested them on different SATA ports, tried different cables. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, you know? In the end, the results were pretty consistent. It is what it is.
So, what’s the verdict? Well, if you’re on a tight budget, the X20 is still a great choice. It’s a reliable workhorse that gets the job done. But, if you can spare the extra dough and you need those extra terabytes, the X22 does offer a bit of a performance boost. It’s not a game-changer, but it’s there. For me, I decided to go with a mix of both. I got a couple of X22s for my main storage, where I need the speed and capacity, and a few X20s for backup and less demanding tasks. It’s all about finding the right balance, isn’t it? Overall, both are decent, but I did what I needed to do.
In the end, I’ve got a setup that works for me, and that’s all that really matters. It was a fun little experiment, and I learned a thing or two about hard drives along the way. Hope this helps someone out there who’s also trying to make sense of all these storage options!