Enterprise HDD 2TB: Exos 7E8, Exos 7E10 and Toshiba MG10-D Compared, with UK Prices

Enterprise HDD 2TB prices on Amazon.co.uk

This table holds 8 listings right now. Lowest price per TB: £45.00/TB, pounds sterling inc VAT. New and used drives share the table. At a capacity this small the total price of the drive may matter more to you than the per-TB column, so read both.

Several 2 TB enterprise listings are older models, and for some we have not found a maker's sheet, such as Seagate Enterprise Capacity ST2000NM0033, the Seagate ST2000NM001A, Constellation numbers and WD Gold WD2005FBYZ. One number sold under the Enterprise Capacity name does have a sheet: ST2000NM0045 is the Exos 7E8 sheet's 512n SAS base model. For any row without a sheet, the figures below do not describe it.

2TB enterprise HDD part numbers: Exos 7E8 and 7E10

Seagate gives every combination of interface and sector format its own part number at 2 TB. These are the base or standard models on the two sheets:

The 7E8 numbers end in four digits and the 7E10 numbers in B. One cell needs a caution: the 7E8 sheet prints ST2000NM0115 in its 4Kn SAS table, but the capacity cell above it reads 0, and the cache row has only three values for four part numbers, so the sheet gives no clear capacity or figures for it. If you are replacing a failed drive in an array, match the interface and the sector format as well as the capacity: a 4Kn drive is not a like-for-like swap for a 512n one. For the full 7E10 range at every capacity, see Exos 7E10.

Toshiba MG10-D at 2TB: MG10ADA200E

Toshiba's MG10-D series, described in its May 2024 product overview as Enterprise Capacity HDDs, runs from 10 TB down to 1 TB, and its SATA table lists MG10ADA200 and MG10ADP200 at 2 TB. A suffix key under the table explains the last letter: E or EY means a 512-byte host sector on a 4096-byte disk sector (512e), and N or NY means 512 bytes on both (512n). So MG10ADA200E is the 2 TB 512e SATA model.

• 2 TB 512e (xE/EY): 2.88 W active idle and 6.57 W write/read.
• 2 TB 512n (xN/NY): 3.47 W active idle and 211 MiB/s maximum sustained transfer.
• 512e models from 10 TB to 2 TB: 268 MiB/s maximum sustained transfer, one value printed across those capacities, and a 512 MiB buffer.
• Series-wide: Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR), 7200 rpm, a 550 TB a year workload rating, and 2,000,000 hours MTTF/MTBF at 0.44% AFR, in SATA and SAS.

Do not confuse it with Toshiba's MG10 series, whose overview covers 20, 18 and 16 TB: that is a different line. Toshiba prints transfer rates in MiB/s and Seagate in MB/s, so read the units before you compare the two makers' speeds.

Idle power, cache and speed at 2TB

Among the Seagate drives, the older one is the more frugal at this size. The 7E8 idles at 4.25 W in SATA against 5.16 W for the 7E10, which by our division is about 2.1 W/TB against 2.6 W/TB. Toshiba's MG10-D 512e model is printed lower, at 2.88 W active idle; Toshiba calls its figure active idle and Seagate's sheets say average idle, so treat the comparison as indicative.

On speed the two Seagate generations are closer than their model years suggest. At 512e both state 226MB/s at 2 TB, and in 512n SATA both state 215MB/s. The 7E10 is faster only in 512n SAS, at 236MB/s against 215MB/s for the 7E8. It does carry a 256MB cache against 128MB on the 7E8 at 2 TB. For a small always-on server where the drive spends most of its time idle, the lower idle figure is the one that adds up over a year.

Is a 2TB enterprise hard drive CMR?

Two of the three sheets say so. Seagate describes the Exos 7E8 as built on field-proven 9th-generation conventional magnetic recording, and Toshiba lists Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) for the MG10-D series. We have not found a statement of recording technology on the 7E10 sheet, so this page does not call the 7E10 CMR. For the older 2 TB models without a sheet, we can say nothing about their recording technology either way.

That is narrower than the common claim that every 2 TB enterprise drive is CMR, because we print it only where a maker's document says so. The recording column in the table follows the same rule, so a row can show no entry even for a well-known enterprise model.

Warranty, MTBF and recertified 2TB drives

• Exos 7E8: 2,000,000 hours MTBF, 0.44% annualised failure rate at full 24x7 operation, and a 5-year limited warranty.
• Exos 7E10: 2,000,000 hours MTBF and a 5-year limited warranty; 620 g at 2 TB on its 512e/4KN SATA table.
• Toshiba MG10-D: 2,000,000 hours MTTF/MTBF at 0.44% AFR.

Those warranties are what Seagate states on its sheets, not what a given seller passes on. Seagate's factory recertified sheet starts at 4 TB, and we have found no 2 TB number on it, so a used or renewed 2 TB Exos on Amazon.co.uk does not match any number on that sheet; treat it as the seller's description of a used drive. For used and recertified drives at larger sizes, see refurbished enterprise hard drives.

WD's Gold sheet runs down to 4 TB, with WD4005FRYZ and WD4004FRYZ as its smallest models, and we have found no 2 TB Gold on it. A 2 TB Gold listing therefore has no figures from that sheet.

New 2TB enterprise hard drives only

This table holds 5 listings, all in new condition. If none of these fits, the next sizes up cover the same Exos lines with more makers alongside: see 4TB enterprise hard drives and 6TB enterprise hard drives. For SAS drives at every capacity, see SAS hard drives; for SATA, SATA enterprise hard drives.