Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Seagate IronWolf Pro 125 SSD 3.84TB NAS Internal Solid State Drive - 2.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s speeds up to 545MB/s, 1 DWPD endurance and 24x7 performance for Creative Pro, and SMB (ZA3840NX1A001).

QM2 - Upgrade your QNAP NAS Experience with M.2 SSD Caching and 10G in One Card

QM2 is designed specifically to upgrade your entry and mid-end QNAP NAS system! QNAP puts 2 M.2 SSD slots (SATA or PCIe NVMe) and one 10GBase-T network port into a single PCIe expansion card. Installed M.2 SSD sticks are covered by a giant heatsink as well as a smart fan for heat dissipation which ensure operational stability and longevity. With this PCIe expansion card, you can enable SSD Caching or auto tiering while populate all your NAS bays with high capacity HDD!

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Application for QM2 SSD slots:

  1. Create a volume on these SSD and use them as extra storage
  2. Enable Read Cache
  3. Enable Read/Write Cache
  4. Enable Qtier feature
  5. Boost performance in case of memory swapping

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

What is Qbit?

Configured system orders start here!
The selected drives are batch controlled and tested using our HDD and SSD servers. Passed drives are then installed in the NAS with Volume and RAID set. Our pre-burn testing prepares the NAS with an initial system and drive testing cycle to ensure that the integrity of the entire system is tested and passed with no issues at all.

Our stress testing (burn-test) cycle commences for a minimum of 24 hours and extends to 48 hours if requested or required. This is undertaken in order to ensure stability when used in a normal environment. These tests can include extremes of workload (constant I/O's), CPU and memory use, thermal load (heat), clock speed, or voltages, bus and connectivity components, with the primary stress testing software aiming to test stability by trying to force a system to fail. Our tests put a greater emphasis on robustness, availability and error handling heavy loads.

Once the tests are complete we QA and pack the system back into it's retail box. Then it's double boxed to protect the unit during shipping. You receive your QNAP NAS Ready To Plug 'N' Store. It doesn't get any easier. Buy your NAS from the QNAP EXPERTS at QNAP DIRECT.

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

4.0 out of 5 stars Need to verify disk internal configuration - box and disk external label may be incorrect
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2022

Something to be aware of: Although the drives are advertised AND LABELED as being "ST4000VN008", I received two different drives:1: ST4000VN008-2DR1662: ST4000VN008As illustrated by the screenshot, these are significantly different drives. A number of critical configuration settings are significantly different (e.g., the "ST4000VN008-2DR166" is 5980 RPM [what's advertised], while the "ST4000VN008" is 7200 RPM). These differences can affect compatibility and suitability. Also note the speed is different from what is advertised.Again, both the boxes and the labels on the drives themselves show the model as being "ST4000VN008", and all other data on the label is identical, with the exception of the serial number. Therefore, you'll need to check the actual (internal) configuration data for each disk, to ensure it will satisfy your requirements. The "ST4000VN008-2DR166" turned out to be best for my requirements.Amazon quickly replaced the "ST4000VN008" drive, and fortunately the replacement was the "ST4000VN008-2DR166" I needed, even though both the box and drive itself were labeled "ST4000VN008".This is a labeling issue with the manufacturer, which I hope Amazon will address with the manufacturer.Otherwise, both drives appear to be working fine. Two stars removed because of identification and labeling issues.

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Top reviews from the United States

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Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2022

I bought four of these drives for my Buffalo TeraStation 1400D. The NAS originally came with four 2 TB drives, but I underestimated the amount of space I would need so I swapped those out a few years later with four of these Seagate drives. Reprogramming the NAS and rebuilding the array was a pain - but that's a function of the NAS, not these drives.

My NAS is running in RAID5, so four of these drives gave me about 12 TB to work with. The array is formatted as XFS (which takes up space) so my total usable space is about 11.5 TB. I've had these drives running for about four months without any trouble or issues at all. I restored all my data in a reasonable amount of time, and I've added another 2 TB of data since installing them. Speeds are good for a home NAS - I run a separate Plex server that connects to the NAS via NFS for music and movies, and the speed of the drives has performed nicely. I like that these drives are CMR (as opposed to SMR) so any time I feel the need to move data around in my library it does not take longer than it should.
These are solid drives.

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2022

I bought three of these in September 2018 for a new home server build. Just picked up two more in October 2022 to expand the server's RAID. The server in question is on 24x7x365 and used regularly (mostly for Plex), and I've had no issues with reliability. These drives are all connected to 3GB/s SATA controllers and run plenty fast for running a file server and domain controller.

Note multiples of this drive don't necessarily have identical geometry. If you're building a RAID, keep this in mind, or you may find yourself unable to add more drives later. A software RAID can use partitions - make a RAID partition on each drive that's slightly smaller (by 1GB or so) than the total disk space, instead of using the whole disk.

As an aside: if you're building a Windows server, DON'T use the modern Microsoft storage services with disk pooling. Parity pools don't behave like a standard software RAID 5, making it harder to expand your RAID later. Just stick with the standard software RAID 5 capability built into Windows.

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2022

Arrived super fast & all 5 drives are working flawlessly! Seller is responsive with timely communications. I will purchase again in the near future when I swap out 6TBx6 with 10TB drives. Unfortunately, I've had my share of issues with WD Reds failing on me. I've never had an issue with a Seagate Iron Wolf in my NAS, not even the 2TB desktop drives I used for roughly 10 years. That's my 2 cents.

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2022

Capacity: 10TBStyle: HDD Pro(Enterprise)Pattern Name: Hard DriveVerified Purchase

I have used Seagate Ironwolfs in a home NAS for the past 7 years, recently had two 4 TB drives begin to fail after 6 years worth of powered on time.
I purchased 4 of these 10 TB for a NAS at work, 3 of them have been running without an issue for over a year now. I just purchased this again to expand the RAID.
I have never contacted their tech support, so I am omitting that rating. but..
In my experience, very reliable and the lowest price out there.

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2022

Something to be aware of: Although the drives are advertised AND LABELED as being "ST4000VN008", I received two different drives:
1: ST4000VN008-2DR166
2: ST4000VN008

As illustrated by the screenshot, these are significantly different drives. A number of critical configuration settings are significantly different (e.g., the "ST4000VN008-2DR166" is 5980 RPM [what's advertised], while the "ST4000VN008" is 7200 RPM). These differences can affect compatibility and suitability. Also note the speed is different from what is advertised.

Again, both the boxes and the labels on the drives themselves show the model as being "ST4000VN008", and all other data on the label is identical, with the exception of the serial number. Therefore, you'll need to check the actual (internal) configuration data for each disk, to ensure it will satisfy your requirements. The "ST4000VN008-2DR166" turned out to be best for my requirements.

Amazon quickly replaced the "ST4000VN008" drive, and fortunately the replacement was the "ST4000VN008-2DR166" I needed, even though both the box and drive itself were labeled "ST4000VN008".

This is a labeling issue with the manufacturer, which I hope Amazon will address with the manufacturer.

Otherwise, both drives appear to be working fine. Two stars removed because of identification and labeling issues.

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

4.0 out of 5 stars Need to verify disk internal configuration - box and disk external label may be incorrect
By DavidH on September 14, 2022

Something to be aware of: Although the drives are advertised AND LABELED as being "ST4000VN008", I received two different drives:
1: ST4000VN008-2DR166
2: ST4000VN008

As illustrated by the screenshot, these are significantly different drives. A number of critical configuration settings are significantly different (e.g., the "ST4000VN008-2DR166" is 5980 RPM [what's advertised], while the "ST4000VN008" is 7200 RPM). These differences can affect compatibility and suitability. Also note the speed is different from what is advertised.

Again, both the boxes and the labels on the drives themselves show the model as being "ST4000VN008", and all other data on the label is identical, with the exception of the serial number. Therefore, you'll need to check the actual (internal) configuration data for each disk, to ensure it will satisfy your requirements. The "ST4000VN008-2DR166" turned out to be best for my requirements.

Amazon quickly replaced the "ST4000VN008" drive, and fortunately the replacement was the "ST4000VN008-2DR166" I needed, even though both the box and drive itself were labeled "ST4000VN008".

This is a labeling issue with the manufacturer, which I hope Amazon will address with the manufacturer.

Otherwise, both drives appear to be working fine. Two stars removed because of identification and labeling issues.

Images in this review

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2022

I bought this drive several months ago to replace an aging 5TB Toshiba and 4TB Seagate drive in my Alienware machine. Each of those drives has about 1500 days of service and it's time to replace them. I'm using the 10TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS as a secondary drive (SSD is primary) and NAS drives work well for this purpose as they tend to be more reliable than desktop drives, or so I'm told.

This drive has been in service now for 31 days 16 hours (according to the WindowsSMART monitoring tool -- this really should be built into Windows), and it's been flawless so far. Since the Alienware case does a good job of keeping things cool, and that's something that causes hard drive failures, I'm hoping this drive lasts 5 years, like the other two drives did.

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2022

Capacity: 16TBStyle: HDD ProPattern Name: Hard DriveVerified Purchase

What a nice surprise getting the items in only a few days instead of two weeks. Red and safely packed just the way I like it. I got this great deal at $18/TB which is far better than renting storage in cloud. Remember when you rent storage, there is no warranty for your data, only "best possible effort". The intention is to build a Synology NAS exposed securely over apps for family memories. Lots of articles on how to do that. The expected lifetime for these drives is around 10 years, which combined to a second, cheap NAS for backup (unexposed) makes a very good solution. I know these drives being very trusted. At my business we run one of these solution on older, smaller disks intensively since 2014, 24x7, for virtual machines and SMB backup. So far the best service I got for IT parts from an Amazon seller.

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

5.0 out of 5 stars A trusted storage to trust safekeeping your memories
By Adrian on September 18, 2022

What a nice surprise getting the items in only a few days instead of two weeks. Red and safely packed just the way I like it. I got this great deal at $18/TB which is far better than renting storage in cloud. Remember when you rent storage, there is no warranty for your data, only "best possible effort". The intention is to build a Synology NAS exposed securely over apps for family memories. Lots of articles on how to do that. The expected lifetime for these drives is around 10 years, which combined to a second, cheap NAS for backup (unexposed) makes a very good solution. I know these drives being very trusted. At my business we run one of these solution on older, smaller disks intensively since 2014, 24x7, for virtual machines and SMB backup. So far the best service I got for IT parts from an Amazon seller.

Images in this review

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Top reviews from other countries

1.0 out of 5 stars Produit frauduleux

Reviewed in France on August 20, 2020

Cette référence n'existe plus depuis longtemps chez Seagate.
Amazon vend sous cette appellation un autre disque, à la vitesse réduite et à la mémoire cache famélique.
C'est une escroquerie !
Ne surtout pas commander ce disque.
Il ne s'agit pas d'un disque à 7200tr/min et 256Mo de cache, mais d'un disque à 5900tr/min avec 64Mo de cache.
Par contre le prix de vente est bien celui du haut de gamme !

5.0 out of 5 stars Past experience made me wary but these are great drives.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2020

I'll start by saying that I've not had much luck with Seagate drives in the past. I tend to stick to Western Digital as I'm yet to see one fail, and I've had bad experiences with Seagate, Toshiba et al. However I needed 4 drives for a NAS and I didn't have much choice. WD red drives now use SMR technology, which is a modern means of magnetically writing the data to the disc. It makes manufacturing cheaper at the expense of performance. Significantly so in fact, to the point where avoiding SMR drives is actively encouraged unless you're archiving data.

The Seagate IronWolf drives use the more conventional 'CMR' technology. So with some trepidation I bought 4 of them over the WD Red which ordinarily would have been my first choice.

I installed them in a Synology DS418 4-bay NAS enclosure, configured using Synology hybrid raid with a single drive fault tolerance giving me just under 12 terabytes of available storage. The drives have been installed for a few days and so far have performed flawlessly, allowing the Synology to reach gigabit transfer speeds. I will edit the review if they fail within an unexpected timeframe, but so far they are running quietly with very little heat and vibration, and all passed the Synology drive tests. Very pleased.

4.0 out of 5 stars The Good, The Bad and the NAS

Reviewed in Canada on December 13, 2019

So, you decided to buy the Seagate IronWolf, sure the name sounds cool. But you're not here for the name, you are here for the Product and let me tell you this. If you plan to use this as an Internal HDD then please move on, if you plan to use this product as intended (NAS) then carry on.

Seagate IronWolf is dare I say a Consumer Grade HDD designed for NAS/Surveillance. I say Surveillance because I feel there is little difference between the Seagate IronWolf and Seagate SkyHawk, not to mention IronWolf is listed as “Surveillance HDD” under Seagate Warranty lookup tool.

Now that isn’t a bad thing, as both serve few vital functions. These functions being:

Store large chunks of Data;

Function around the clock 24/7/365;

I’m sure at this point someone is wondering why I said it’s not good for a “Internal HDD” in a Home/Small Office computer. And the reasons for this is quite simple:

Most home/office PC’s only really need 500 ~ 1000GB as rest is usually stored on offsite backup (applies to: office use only or savvy home user);

NAS aren’t designed to work as a single unit;

Now the primary point is #2, that NAS work in a Cluster (RAID) to replicate data across the Cluster of HDD’s in that RAID. In home settings you do not have a RAID and as such using 1 NAS drive as an Internal is rather silly, as it’s not the intended purpose of a NAS.

The other problem is that the IronWolf (Non-Pro, anything from 1 to 4 TB) will be running at 5900 RPM, this isn’t fast by any means as most consumer grade HDD’s like Compute or Baracudda run at 7200 RPM’s and come with a similar price tag as IronWolf minus the cool name. If you want the 7200 RPM speeds, you would need the IronWolf Pro and this is the point where the price starts to climb pretty fast vs consumer alternatives.

The other problem I personally ran is that the IronWolf isn’t very MacOS friendly, and no this isn’t a problem with Driver support since my MacOS system runs fine with NTFS 2.5, 3.5 and SSD/M2 external drives. However, when it comes to IronWolf its locked in Read-Only mode, this only applies when connecting the IronWolf via SATA to USB adaptor with power and hooking it up to a USB port on the computer.

Now then I hope this review was informative, and “NO” this isn’t a good choice to use as a PS4 hard drive either, for Gaming an SSD is a much better option, alternatively a Consumer grade HDD with a Flash portion would be more beneficial (assuming it’s 7200 RPM).

Cheers.

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

4.0 out of 5 stars The Good, The Bad and the NAS
Reviewed in Canada on December 13, 2019

So, you decided to buy the Seagate IronWolf, sure the name sounds cool. But you're not here for the name, you are here for the Product and let me tell you this. If you plan to use this as an Internal HDD then please move on, if you plan to use this product as intended (NAS) then carry on.

Seagate IronWolf is dare I say a Consumer Grade HDD designed for NAS/Surveillance. I say Surveillance because I feel there is little difference between the Seagate IronWolf and Seagate SkyHawk, not to mention IronWolf is listed as “Surveillance HDD” under Seagate Warranty lookup tool.

Now that isn’t a bad thing, as both serve few vital functions. These functions being:

Store large chunks of Data;

Function around the clock 24/7/365;

I’m sure at this point someone is wondering why I said it’s not good for a “Internal HDD” in a Home/Small Office computer. And the reasons for this is quite simple:

Most home/office PC’s only really need 500 ~ 1000GB as rest is usually stored on offsite backup (applies to: office use only or savvy home user);

NAS aren’t designed to work as a single unit;

Now the primary point is #2, that NAS work in a Cluster (RAID) to replicate data across the Cluster of HDD’s in that RAID. In home settings you do not have a RAID and as such using 1 NAS drive as an Internal is rather silly, as it’s not the intended purpose of a NAS.

The other problem is that the IronWolf (Non-Pro, anything from 1 to 4 TB) will be running at 5900 RPM, this isn’t fast by any means as most consumer grade HDD’s like Compute or Baracudda run at 7200 RPM’s and come with a similar price tag as IronWolf minus the cool name. If you want the 7200 RPM speeds, you would need the IronWolf Pro and this is the point where the price starts to climb pretty fast vs consumer alternatives.

The other problem I personally ran is that the IronWolf isn’t very MacOS friendly, and no this isn’t a problem with Driver support since my MacOS system runs fine with NTFS 2.5, 3.5 and SSD/M2 external drives. However, when it comes to IronWolf its locked in Read-Only mode, this only applies when connecting the IronWolf via SATA to USB adaptor with power and hooking it up to a USB port on the computer.

Now then I hope this review was informative, and “NO” this isn’t a good choice to use as a PS4 hard drive either, for Gaming an SSD is a much better option, alternatively a Consumer grade HDD with a Flash portion would be more beneficial (assuming it’s 7200 RPM).

Cheers.

Images in this review

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb
Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb
Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

1.0 out of 5 stars Mehr als 30% langsamer als beworben

Reviewed in Germany on May 17, 2019

Wie auf den Bilder zu sehen ist schafft die Platte nicht mal ansatzweise die angegebenen 180 sondern gerade mal 125.. Mal eben 30% langsamer als angegeben..
Und falls jetzt jemand meint es liegt am Rechner / sata Port für die habe ich das 2. Bild beigefügt von einer ssd am gleichen Port.
Habe noch ein 3. Bild zugefügt dies zeigt die 6TB Variante der Seagate an dem gleichen Port.

Seagate ironwolf 125 pro ssd 3.84tb

1.0 out of 5 stars Mehr als 30% langsamer als beworben
Reviewed in Germany on May 17, 2019

Wie auf den Bilder zu sehen ist schafft die Platte nicht mal ansatzweise die angegebenen 180 sondern gerade mal 125.. Mal eben 30% langsamer als angegeben..
Und falls jetzt jemand meint es liegt am Rechner / sata Port für die habe ich das 2. Bild beigefügt von einer ssd am gleichen Port.
Habe noch ein 3. Bild zugefügt dies zeigt die 6TB Variante der Seagate an dem gleichen Port.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast, but not for everyone

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 21, 2022

I was running low on my 2Tb drive and began to look around to replace it with something like a 4Tb option. I searched Amazon for my current go-to brand, Western Digital, and found their Blue range of drives in both 4 and 6Tb variants. Prior to choosing though, I decided to find out whether these drives were CMR (Conventional magnetic Recording) or SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording) models. Most drives today for the desktop market tend to be of the SMR type, especially at higher capacities. The 2Tb WD Blue drive I have is a CMR drive and has good write performance. BTW, for those that may not be aware, SMR drives suffer from far lower write performance. This means that saving files on such drives is going to be somewhat slower than for a CMR type drive. This, of course, for most desktop users is fine, the trade off is high capacity at good prices. After all, most consumers write data once when placing a file onto their drives and thereafter it's only ever read back, so not a big deal at all. As an archive drive, SMR in particular makes economic sense.

Bear in mind that the difference between an SMR and CMR drive, certainly in the case of some WD drives, is a single letter in the model number. So, for example, the 2Tb WD Blue drive I have, model number 20EZRZ is a CMR drive. The 2Tb WD Blue 20EZAZ is a SMR version. It's safe to assume that most desktop class hard drives will be SMR, certainly many of those above 1Tb capacity.

Does this matter? For most users as stated above, no.

However, I've seen some reviewers using SMR type drives within their network attached storage (NAS) systems. This is not a good idea as using drives in RAID arrays often involves heavy write operations as data has to be written across multiple drives. Rebuilding an array using SMR drives is a big no-no, as build times will be dramatically increased and therefore placing more stress on the drives. This is why I use Western Digital Red drives for my five bay NAS. The WD Red range are designed for NAS environments where 24/7 365 day a year continual running is supported. However, on a slight tangent, be advised that I use the 4Tb WD Red drives and was considering an upgrade to perhaps the 6Tb Red models to expand the capacity of my NAS. Oddly though, according to the NAS compares table listing which drives are SMR and CMR, one model of the aforementioned drive is an SMR type. This is a baffling choice for a drive marketed for NAS operation.

Apologies for the preamble on this review of the Seagate IronWolf 8Tb drive, I just wanted to help those perhaps unaware of the potential pitfalls of choosing a drive.

So, this is the first Seagate internal drive I've ever purchased. As alluded to earlier, I have always been a WD man in that regard, having over 30 years experience with hard drives and, from my personal experience, finding Seagate to suffer more drive failures than WD, certainly back in the 90's when I saw plenty fail. However, Amazon's deal on the Seagate IronWolf 8Tb, £163 at time of purchase and some £80 cheaper than WD's closest equivalent I could find, was just too good to pass up. The IronWolf brand is Seagate's equivalent to WD's Red, so a more robust drive designed for NAS environments. besides, it had a three year data recovery plan included. Now, this could be a positive or negative depending on your point of view. My prior cynicism of Seagate's reliability made me wonder why Seagate were offering such a data recovery plan. It could be interpreted that Seagate have less confidence in the longevity of their drives compared to WD, I don't know. Anyway, what further appealed to me was that this drive was indeed a CMR model, witch it should be if designed for NAS use. However, the real thing that surprised me was that it also boasted a higher 7,200 rpm spin speed as opposed to the far more common 5,400 rpm alternatives. Those as old as me will recall a time where all standard desktop hard drives were 7,200 rpm. However, over the years as platter data densities increased dramatically and thus transfer rates rose as a result, the lower rotational speed became common place, its added benefits of quieter, cooler and more power efficient operation now able to be realized without significant speed penalties.

I replaced my 2Tb WD drive in my case with the new Seagate IronWolf and powered up. After completing the drive initialization prompted by Windows and creating a partition, ending up with around 7,400 Gb available space, I began to notice something I was sure wasn't there before, a low, resonant humming coming from my large tower case. Strangely, moving my head father away from the case to determine if the hum was coming from there, resulted in it being more noticeable. The ever present hum was mildly irritating to someone like me with sensitive hearing. Not a deal breaker for most, I'm certain, and it would depend on what kind of PC case you're mounting this drive in. But given my large case is designed for silence, even having the hard drive sleds using rubber grommets between the mounting screws and the sleds, the hum was annoying.

However, for the sake of fairness, I needed to find out if this was the new drive or just something that had been there and I had suddenly become aware of for some reason. I altered the power management option in Windows to turn off the new drive after 10 minutes. I waited and then I knew it was the new drive when the hum faded into blissful silence.

I really wanted this high capacity, fast drive sat in my main PC, but not with this ever present low hum. If you play games or have a case that doesn't resonate with the 7,200 rpm drive, then this is a blisteringly fast option (See below for more details). However, I spend much of my time writing and so sadly, the hum proved too distracting for me.

I swapped out the new drive for my old 2Tb WD Blue, powered on the computer and blissful silence once more reigned. Prior to doing that though, I ran the Crystal Disk Mark benchmarking tool on it and ... Wow! ... this 7,200 rpm IronWolf drive is the fastest mechanical hard drive I've ever used, even besting my prior champion, the external WD 14Tb Elements drive I have, with a sequential read speed of 260 Mb/ sec with a sequential write of 253 Mb/sec. Truly stellar performance figures, but at a price. Not only the added noise, but I noted, too, the higher operating temperatures. The drive was running at a toasty 47C during my tests as compared with my 5,400 rpm drives at around 32C. So, for those wanting a very fast, high capacity mechanical hard drive, this is the one for you!

The problem I had now was what to do with this impressive drive. I decided to employ it in it's natural environment, my NAS. Drive 5 was a stand alone drive used for generalised backup purposes and not part of my RAID 5 array of 4 WD 4Tb Red's. Once the new drive was slotted into bay 5 and began to spin up, the subtle, but noticeable noise of the new drive could be heard. Even within my NAS, this drive could be heard over the other 4 WD Red's that were running. To be clear, this is a very subtle difference and those that run their NAS's in busy rooms or elsewhere will never notice. Even those like me with a small NAS box in one corner of a small room will likely not pick up on the change. Had I put five of these IronWolf 7,200 rpm drives into my NAS though, the overall increase in sound levels would be noticed if sat within a short distance of them. Seek noise is also much more noticeable on this drive compared to the 4Tb WD Red drives. One can hear a sharper, crisper sound as the IronWolf's head actuators move. My WD drives seek action is almost imperceptible. TO be fair though, I believe a heavier, more noticeable seek sound is par for the course for high capacity drives.

I set about copying some 1.5Tb of data from my old drive to the new one which took almost 5 hours. I noticed though, how the NAS's internal fan would regularly ramp up to keep the unit cool now it had a warmer running 7,200 rpm drive sat in the bottom bay. This turned my otherwise silent NAS, an unobtrusive box sat in one corner, into a presence that reminded me of a distant hair drier. I shudder to think had I had all five bays populated with these drives, my NAS may have trouble with the heat under sustained load. If it did, it's 120mm rear fan would be running at max continually to try and stay cool.

Do you need such a drive for your NAS? Probably not. Most NAS's are fine with 5,400 rpm drives as their transfer rates often exceed 120Mb/sec, possibly more when combined into a RAID array. bear in mind that the 260 Mb/sec read speed of this IronWolf model will totally saturate a 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection. In other words, if you run a NAS over a 1Gigabit Ethernet network, as most people do, you will never realize the speed potential of these drives in that environment. 1 Gigabit Ethernet translates to a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 125 Mb/sec. Many folks get Mega/giga bits and Mega/giga Bytes confused (ISP's are the worst for this). Thus, your 260 Mb/sec IronWolf drive will be crippled to 125 Mb/sec at best, less than half its rated speed, over a standard 1 gig Ethernet network. So, you'll have all that added noise and heat for nothing. I'm sure there is a market for such drives within NAS arrays ... somewhere in the semi-pro/professional space and on NAS devices far more expensive than mine, but for the vast majority here, nope, you don't need one of these in your NAS unless your entire network uses 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet or faster.

This Seagate IronWolf 8Tb 7,200 rpm drive is fast, very fast! But it's not for everyone. It's a technical marvel to be sure to squeeze this much performance from a mechanical hard drive and if you aren't sensitive to noise or concerned with heat, then this is a fantastic storage device. As for longevity, I'll update this review should this drive fail within its warranty period ... or even soon after.