Features:

  • IronWolf internal hard drives are the ideal solution for up to 8-bay, multi-user NAS environments craving powerhouse performance
  • Store more and work faster with a NAS-optimized hard drive providing 4TB and cache of up to 64MB
  • Purpose built for NAS enclosures, IronWolf delivers less wear and tear, little to no noise/vibration, no lags or down time, increased file-sharing performance, and much more
  • Easily monitor the health of drives using the integrated IronWolf Health Management system and enjoy long-term reliability with 1M hours MTBF
  • Three-year limited warranty protection plan included
So far so good

So far, so good. I'm dropping these into a client's RAID that has been giving me trouble for a bit, and if these are sill working well in three years, I'll have declared it a success. If I get a failure before that, I'm dropping this to one star, so as long as it's still at 5, I've had no problems. If they make it to three years, well, that's time for me to preemptively replace server drives anyway, and they lose no points. With any luck, three years from now their replacements will be 8TB SSDs at less than the cost of spinny platters now.

Perfect for TNAS personal cloud

Works very well for TNAS personal cloud. Just attach it to the tray and insert I to the TNAS, from there the TNAS software formats the hard drive and your off and running. Setup took minutes

After much research, I went with Seagate again

Pros: - No issues with test, installation, or data transfer - Work well with Enterprise level Adaptec RAID card - Good features on the 4TB and larger drives - Personally experienced long term reliability of Seagate drives (Used Seagate for years, 25+ drives from 40GB to 3TB prior to this purchase) Cons: - Had to spring for the 4TB drives or larger to get the rotational vibration sensors (unavailable on smaller capacity Ironwolf drives) Even though I have been using Seagate drives almost exclusively for all of my spinning disk drives, I was open to using any reliable manufacturer to replace my six 1TB Seagate drives with four 4TB ones. My drives run in a RAID 5, with a spare, in my personal server and longevity is important. I usually run drives 24/7 for about 5 years before they are replaced. I was very close to purchasing four W brand drives due to the positive reviews, but finally settled on Seagate because most of the failures of Seagate drives seemed to be "infant mortality" failures (happen very early in the product life), where the W brand drives seemed to fail more often around a year after purchase (based on reviews on Amazon). This was true when I ordered prevously ordered a Seagate 3TB backup drive and it had failed out of the box. It was much more convenient for me to run hours of testing on each drive before installing them and replace them early rather than having the drives work well for a year and then having to submit a warranty claim. When I received the drives, I ran approximately 13 hours of testing on each 4TB drive by performing a Long test using the Seagate tool. I checked the SMART data before and after and this test seemed to read all of the data from the entire drive because the SMART data after the test stated that 4TB of data had been read. Because of my RAID 5 and my backup strategy, this was enough for me to depend on the drives in my server and I installed them. I configured the RAID 5, restored the backed up data to the drives, and then performed a build/verify on the RAID. The data transfer from the backup of my 2.3TB of data was much quicker than I expected and my server was back up and running. The drives are not louder than some of the loud parts of my server (server fans and a 300GB 15k RPM SAS OS drive), so I would not be able to provide details to how loud the drives are. The performance is improved over my six 1TB Barracuda 7200 RPM drives and I am pleased with how the transition was.

These drives are not the Seagate IronWolf 7200rpm High performance NAS drives, they are 5900rpm.

I like the easy installation of the drives, and I also like the fact that these 5900rpm drives run cooler than the 7200rpm models. These should run longer. These have been in service for about a month, so far they are doing well.

Great quiet 4TB NAS drive

This is the sweet spot for storage capacity before you get into the louder 7200 RPM drives. This drive is packing all the features of the larger drives including vibration sensors in a quieter 5900 RPM package. The smaller 3TB is lacking the vibration sensors. If you are looking for a desktop NAS drive, this is the one to get from the IronWolf line.

So far so good

I just installed two of these (4TB) drives early 12/18 so they've only been in my NAS for about a month. I'll try to remember to revisit this review in 12/19 with an update. I will add right now that I'm happy that my QNAP incorporates the IronWolf Health Management app so I should receive warnings of impending doom....

Functioning drive for large media storage

Drive came as expected. I checked the serial number accordingly to make sure that it was a new drive. Make sure you check this so if the drive ever goes bad you can RMA successfully. I am using this drive as a Plex drive for my server. I copied over about 1 TB of movies from my old drive to this drive. Speed was fine as it’s a storage drive. I don’t need this for gaming as that’s what my SSDs are for. No frills and functioning drive we'll see how long it lasts. I always buy Seagate’s so I won’t harp on WD as I have work with their drives in corporate IT for some time. It’s more just preference. The drive works fine with plex. I am able to watch 3 streams using it on a i7 system with 16gb of ram and a 1 GB NIC. I don’t push 4K just 1080p. I am going to get a personal NAS and I will get two more of these drives to make a RAID 5 for 8TB which is plenty for me.

Installed easily

This came without any configuration and installed in a few minutes using the Microsoft Win 10 disc management tool. I have been using it for a week or two now and works fine. I was apprehensive as a previous 4GB Seagate Iron Wolf I purchased was already formatted for 2GB and so I wondered if that particular item was a return item that someone messed up by formatting it as MBR, only got 2GB and gave up -- I reformatted it and I'm using that unit in another computer and have been using it for a couple months now.

So far so good

I'll know more about how these perform in a couple of years. I bought 2 and installed them into a QNAP TS-251+ NAS. No problems at all and as long as they last a few years I'll be happy. I've always had good success with Seagate drives. I've got a couple that are still up and running after 10-12 years, though I've also had one replaced under warranty. That was a 2 TB Personal Cloud that was replaced about 3 weeks before the warranty expired. Seagate upgraded me to a 5 TB because they didn't have a comparable replacement. Can't argue with that.

So far so good, installed four of these into a fresh RaidZ2 ...

So far so good, installed four of these into a fresh RaidZ2 freenas server, no issues with installation or imaging. freenas shows all four running nice and steady. I'll update if there are any issues down the road, but for the price I'm pretty happy with them. One comment about the packaging- I'm not sure where these things shipped for, but the inside of the main box all of the drives were in smelled like a freaking laundromat. VERY strong detergent smells in that box, once I got the drives out I had to carry the boxes out to the dumpster because it was stinking up my office! The drive boxes themselves didn't have the odor, and the drives were sealed inside anti-static bags anyway.. so just a random comment!

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