It's crazy that this 18TB enterprise drive is going cheaper than some 12TB hdds, so it is a great buy.The hard drive comes delivered in a good, cushioned package (none of the "free-flying HDDs in Amazon boxes" horror stories you see posted online ).Read is a consistent 270MB/s, and write speeds via USB (from a SSD) are a consistent 265MB/s, so pretty impressive!Only just started using the drive, so can't comment on reliability, but it does have the enterprise 5yr warranty and advertised 2.5M hours MTBF, so should do well (just remember to always have your 3-2-1 backup rule and nothing to worry about).The hardest thing was to stop myself buying more HDDs.Edit: Found out that this drive is a OEM drive, so Seagate themselves do not provide any warranty. The ... MoreIt's crazy that this 18TB enterprise drive is going cheaper than some 12TB hdds, so it is a great buy.The hard drive comes delivered in a good, cushioned package (none of the "free-flying HDDs in Amazon boxes" horror stories you see posted online ).Read is a consistent 270MB/s, and write speeds via USB (from a SSD) are a consistent 265MB/s, so pretty impressive!Only just started using the drive, so can't comment on reliability, but it does have the enterprise 5yr warranty and advertised 2.5M hours MTBF, so should do well (just remember to always have your 3-2-1 backup rule and nothing to worry about).The hardest thing was to stop myself buying more HDDs.Edit: Found out that this drive is a OEM drive, so Seagate themselves do not provide any warranty. The warranty is only provided by Digitech Galaxus.

Exos X18 18TB, selected as a large reliable mass storage disk. Unfortunately it was DOA. Got in touch with Scan and the suport was very helpfull and arranged for the retun of the disk for replacement.Obviously there was dissapointment on DOA and having to wait a week to receive a replacement.The drive: A week later I received the tested replacement, and all has been well withthe disk. I have read reviews that say that enterprise drives can be noisy in comparison to normal desktop drives, and this was a potential concern however totally unfounded.So far excellent drive reads/writes are ~230-270MBs, and the drive really is very quiet and will be very likely to considerr these for the next NAS. So hopefully it will prove reliable for years to come.

I Think the pros says it all, but I could add that since I tested these outside of a case, on mounts that have foam rubber edges to protect the drives from vibration, that while I was reading from one of these and writing to another, I felt very little vibration, so I have to say these are finely crafted drives. It has 7 platters after all with each platter holding approx 1.75TB, and spinning 7 platters @ 7200RPMs with almost no vibration is quite an accomplishment. Using Win7 and a fresh boot to make sure nothing was happening in the background that I didn't know about, I copied about 200GB of data from one to the other and the end write speed was 220MB/s. Edit: I wrote lots of data to these drives, I found they write around 200-210MB/s mid disk, and around 190MB/s ... MoreI Think the pros says it all, but I could add that since I tested these outside of a case, on mounts that have foam rubber edges to protect the drives from vibration, that while I was reading from one of these and writing to another, I felt very little vibration, so I have to say these are finely crafted drives. It has 7 platters after all with each platter holding approx 1.75TB, and spinning 7 platters @ 7200RPMs with almost no vibration is quite an accomplishment. Using Win7 and a fresh boot to make sure nothing was happening in the background that I didn't know about, I copied about 200GB of data from one to the other and the end write speed was 220MB/s. Edit: I wrote lots of data to these drives, I found they write around 200-210MB/s mid disk, and around 190MB/s towards the end (drive being almost full) with files from 1GB - 4GB. I LOVE these drives. 5 yr. warranty puts the icing on the cake. This is a no-brainer purchase @ < $350 USD for those who need the drive space. As far as people making any comments about there not being 12TB on the drive. I can't say what I think of people who don't do any research before making a review on a product, which has consequences, but I can say they don't know how to look at detailed information. They also don't understand that Microsoft should have NEVER programmed a dialog box that shows a rough approximation for the amount of space on a disk, or the size of a data file. So, EVERY manufacturer of storage, of ANY kind lists capacity based on numbers that humans work with, which is the decimal number system, also referred to as base10. You have the characters 0 - 9, and it's the number system you learned as a child and have used all your life. This value is a REAL representation of the amount of storage on whatever media it is you purchase. Now, if you're smart and know how to use Windows, you can go to the properties of this hard drive, and you see TWO, count them, TWO different numbers. One is a rough value and the other is a REAL value. The rough value shows 10.9TB, the REAL value shows 12,000,002,306,048 bytes, and that's what both my drives show. I read that number at 12 trillion, 2 million, 306 thousand and 48. Or to use computer and other tech language for numbers, I read that as 12 terabytes, 2 megabytes, 306 kilobytes and 48 bytes. Rounding off that number, I get 12 terabytes, which is EXACTLY what this drive is advertised to be. I could go into why Microsoft should have NEVER included a rough approximation of media based on binary bits, where computer scientists decided at some point that since the binary (base2, where the only characters are 0 and1) bit positions represent starting at bit0: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048, etc...., with each next significant digit doubling in value, that they would call 1024 - 1K. 1K (1024) is the number you have when binary bit 10 = 1 and all the other bits = 0. It is also the number of combinations you have with 10 binary digits to make numbers, 0 – 1023 in decimal, or in hexadecimal, 000 – 3FF, or in binary, 00,0000,0000 – 11,1111,1111 (grouped in 4 to read easily in HEX). This is an interpretation that should have stayed in the field of computer science, computer engineering and digital logic and never left that field to the common user of computers, which is what happened because MICROSOFT didn't think about the consequences of showing that value, which is only useful if you work on computers, which requires an understanding of binary and hexadecimal math, or work as a computer engineer. Actually to work on computers today you don't have to know anything about hex or binary math, because it's simply a matter of swapping out components, but in the old days, when a CPU wasn't on a single die, packaged as one component, but instead a CPU was made up of many ICs or going back even further, discrete components, so to fix a computer you have to partially be a computer engineer. I know this because I worked on 1950s and 1960s computers, along with other electronics. To say this another way, in the field of computer science they can use terminology that best suits them, and if they want to call the value 1024 1K, it's their right. Outside of that world, 1 Kilo = 1000. What is never true in real values is that 1000 = 1024. As you can see those numbers are different. We should all know that 1000 = 1000, and 1000 cannot equal any other number, not even 1024. Leave the computer terms to those who work in the field, you should continue using numbers that the rest of the world understands. I hope this explanation is helpful, and explains why us human beings should use numbers that the typical human understands, and why Microsoft is mostly to blame for this misunderstanding. BTW factory math = decimal math. 1000 = 1000. I can't imagine working in a factory where I have to use math, and 1000=1024. Puzzled