Seagate Ironwolf – NAS Compares

Synology to introduce HAT3300 Plus Series Hard drives

Eddie Webguy — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 16:52:57 +0000

Synology PLUS NAS Hard Drives – The HAT3300 Series

For those who have been following the world of network Attached Storage (NAS) and more precisely, the developments of Synology, it might not come as a huge surprise that the brand is now in the process of rolling out a new series of HAT3300 Hard Drives for 2023. Now, you might well be thinking “hold on, they have had their own range of HDDs for a few years now!” and that is correct. However, the existing HAT5300 and HAT5310 series of drives are very much targeted at Pro and Enterprise users (5yr warranty, 5400rpm, 550TB workload, etc) and Synology users who were looking to keep things ‘single ecosystem’ in their more modest scale systems (e.g DS920+, DS1522+, etc) were not won over by these bigger, noisier and more expensive drives in their systems. Therefore, it was somewhat inevitable that the brand would eventually get around to launching a more home/SMB-friendly range Of storage media that is better suited to smaller NAS systems of around 5-8 Bays at most. Enter the Synology HAT3300 Plus hard drive series, eventually rolling out in 4 (possibly a 5th in 16TB) different capacities and built on Seagate Ironwolf HDDs (whereas the Synology HAT5300 and HAT5310s are built on Toshiba Enterprise MG drives). Given Synology already has their other HDDs in the market, 2 types of SSD media, numerous types of memory media, upgrade cards, routers and even their own Surveillance IP cameras now – this really is one of the final steps for them to complete their own 1-brand hardware ecosystem of networking equipment (though, when will they EVER release a switch… come on… the SG1000 was a prototype!). So, let’s discuss the new Synology HAT3300 range, the hardware specs, how it compares with the existing HAT5300 series and ultimately whether they deserve your data?

Hardware Specifications of the Synology HAT3300 PLUS Hard Drive Range

As mentioned, the Synology HAT3300 Plus HDDs are built on Seagate Ironwolf drives. This does mean that they will likely mirror a number of the hardware specifications of that popular range, but with some additional Synology firmware improvements (such as the ability to update firmware from within Synology DSM and the storage Manager). Synology has supported compatibility of the Seagate Ironwolf HDD series for many, many years (though there has been a few bumps in the road in 2021/2022 when Synology rolled out their HAT5300 series and compatibility on some of their systems featured some rather unpopular omissions!) so the HAT3300 drives being Synology adapted/badged Seagates makes sense. Plus the Seagate Ironwolf Health Management tool has featured in the DSM storage manager for a number of years. Early information indicates that the Synology HAT3300 will arrive in 4TB, 6TB, 8TB and 12TB capacities, which are pretty much the ‘go to’ capacities for most users in 2023. Here is how the specifications for each drive break down:

Spec	12TB	8TB	6TB	4TB
Model ID	HAT3300-12T	HAT3300-8T	HAT3300-6T	HAT3300-4T
Bay Support	1-8 Bay	1-8 Bay	1-8 Bay	1-8 Bay
Recording	CMR	CMR	CMR	CMR
Drive Seal	Helium	Air	Air	Air
Workload	180TB	180TB	180TB	180TB
Spin Speed	7200RPM	5400RPM	5400RPM	5900RPM
Cache	256MB	256MB	256MB	64MB
Load Cycles	600K	600K	600K	600K
MTBF	1M Hours	1M Hours	1M Hours	1M Hours
Warranty	3yrs*	3yrs*	3yrs*	3yrs*

*TBC – Will know more when they are launched officially

Why would you use Synology HAT3300 Hard Drives and not 3rd Party HDDs in your NAS?

It’s a very valid question! Much like the Synology HAT5300 drives being Toshiba MG drives with Synology treatment and firmware changes, why should a user opt for the HAT3300 drives if they are the same price or (likely) a pinch more expensive than the drives from Seagate on their own? Well, technically, users shouldn’t really have to ‘choose’. Unlike the Synology XS series and higher which seemingly had quite strict compatibility lists and support in DSM when 3rd party drives are used, the HAT3300 drives are designed for NAS devices much lower in the food chain (Plus and even Value series devices) which still had a wide range of HDD compatibility (including WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf). This means that the HAT3300 (at least, as far as the range of currently available NAS devices in the market now go) are not a hard/locked choice being foist on the end user. That said, there are several reasons why they might make a better choice over 3rd party drives for some users:

Synology firmware – When NAS drives are released by popular brands like WD and Seagate, they are designed with firmware that adapts the drive’s internal mechanisms to perform in 24×7 server environments and multi-access RAID configurations. However, as these drives will likely be used in a variety of different NAS systems and brands, they need to be a little broader in their behaviours (different NAS brands run their systems and access patterns/algorithms differently). The Synology HAT3300 will (much like the HAT5300 drives) have firmware that is specifically tweaked towards Synology NAS and it’s own access behaviour. They zeros in on the behaviour ranges of the drives within this particular hardware client system in a way that is much broader in compatible HDDs for NAS will need to be. It’s only a small handful of differences really, but in a larger RAID array and over 24×7, these small things can add up
Easier Firmware Updates – Surprisingly overlooked by many, but the ease and convenience of being able to update the drive firmware of an HDD from WITHIN the NAS software (in this case DSM) for one or more drives in an existing RAID is incredibly useful! HDD firmware updates for most drives in the market are not particularly frequent (often 1-2 a year at the very most) and these address any improvements that have been developed/observed by the manufacturer since launch or repair any issues/errors that have only been discovered through massive end-user unique use. However, the process of upgrading firmware on a NAS is NOT straightforward. With regular HDDs, you will need to power the NAS down, remove drives individually, connect them to a computer (sometimes directly via SATA, depending on the client system), then run a branded firmware update tool in the OS or in BIOS. Mounting this drive outside of a NAS environment can also open the door to possible formatting/reinitialization or altering existing partitions that will result in the reintroduction into the NAS being (at best) slow as a resync/rebuild is needed or (at worst) the RAID failing if multiple drives are being updated in batches. All this and we have not even discussed the downtime and handling time that will go into repeating this for EVERY DRIVE, as well as the dangers of harming a drive by dropping it or simple static electricity. So, therefore it is HUGELY BENEFICIAL that firmware updates for the Synology HDDs can be done from within DSM without removing the drives!
Warranty and Support – This is something that will be more appealing to those who purchased a Synology NAS specifically for it being a single eco-system platform (for ease of use and brand support). In the same way that a turn-key/pre-built NAS simplifies a potential process for warranty handling vs a custom-built device that will have individual warranty/support lines for each component (CPU+MEMORY+MOBO+NETWORK CARD, etc), opting for HDDs that are the same brand as the NAS you purchased at the same time massively simplifies the warranty/support process and also allows any issues to be much speedier in their identification (outside of just a simple drive failure of course). Support can even be started from within the Synology NAS system in DSM and progressed from there. Again, this advantage in the HAT3300 drives is a much smaller one, but certainly going to be appealing to small/medium businesses and those who value their time personally, as well as the downtime of their system.

So, as you can see, there are a few reasons why some users might opt for Synology’s HAT3300 drives over that of 3rd party drives in their Diskstation or Rackstation systems. So, what about those much beefier and higher price HAT5300 Hard drives that have been around for a few years now? How do they compare with the newer and lower-tier HAT3300s?

How do the Synology HAT3300 Regular Class and HAT5300 Enterprise Class HDDs Compare?

In terms of the support, compatibility and accessibility to Synology NAS hardware, the HAT3300 and HAT5300 HDDs are pretty much identical (though how/if you can use the HAT3300 in XS/SA/UC/HD servers is still a little less clear) and it is only when you dig into the specification that you can see the main differences between the drives. Here is how they compare:

Hardware Specifications		HAT5300 / HAT5310	HAS5300 / HAS5310	HAT3300 / HAT3310
General	Capacity	4, 8, 12, 16, 18TB	8, 12, 16TB	4, 6, 8, 12TB
	Form Factor	3.5″	3.5″	3.5″
	Interface	SATA 6 Gb/s	SAS 12 Gb/s	SATA 6 Gb/s
	Sector Size	512e	512e	512e
Performance	Rotational Speed	7200 rpm	7200 rpm	5400-7200 rpm (12TB is 7200)
	Interface Speed	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s
	Buffer Size	256 MiB	256 MiB	64-256 MiB (TBC on 4TB)
	Maximum Sustained Data Transfer Speed	268 MiB/s	262 MiB/s	202-208 MiB/s
Reliability	Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)	2 million hours	2.5 million hours	1 million hours
	Workload Rating	550 TB Transferred per Year	550 TB Transferred per Year	180 TB Transferred per Year
	Warranty	5 Years	5 Years	3 Years

When will the Synology HAT3300 Plus HDD series be released and How much will they be?

As details on the Synology HAT3300 have only just emerged, details regarding pricing at each capacity and their availability are still being outlined by the brand. Expect each capacity of drive to sit somewhere between the comparative price per TB of Seagate Ironwolf regular and Pro series drives. Release of the HAT3300 series looks to be very soon (practically ‘now ish’ in fact) and although I anticipate the bulk of the capacities to be available, expect the actual quantities of each tier to be a little low at least till the 2nd half of 2023. Expect a full review and testing of these drives later this year, here on NASCompares.

Original News Article Below (Out dated):

Synology PLUS NAS Hard Drives – The HAT3300 Series

Get ready for some exciting news for all the Synology and Network Attached Storage (NAS) fans out there! Synology is rolling out a brand new series of HAT3300 hard drives in 2023, and this time it’s geared towards home and SMB users. While Synology already has its own range of HDDs, the HAT5300 and HAT5310 series were mainly designed for Pro and Enterprise users, and many users with smaller scale systems weren’t fully satisfied with their bigger, noisier and more expensive drives.

But now, Synology has finally addressed this issue with the launch of the HAT3300 Plus hard drive series, which will come in four different capacities (and possibly a fifth in 16TB) and will be built on Seagate Ironwolf HDDs. This marks one of the final steps for Synology to complete its one-brand hardware ecosystem of networking equipment, which already includes 2 types of SSD media, numerous types of memory media, upgrade cards, routers and even their own Surveillance IP cameras.

So, let’s talk about the specs of the new Synology HAT3300 range, how it compares to the existing HAT5300 series, and most importantly, whether these drives are worth your precious data. With Synology’s reputation for high-quality products and excellent customer service, we’re confident that these new hard drives will be a game-changer for home and SMB users alike. Don’t miss out on this exciting new release!

Hardware Specifications of the Synology HAT3300 PLUS Hard Drive Range

The Synology HAT3300 Plus hard drives are built on the Seagate Ironwolf platform, which means they will likely share similar hardware specifications. However, Synology has added some firmware improvements, such as the ability to update firmware from within Synology DSM and Storage Manager. Synology has been compatible with Seagate Ironwolf HDD series for a long time, although there were some issues in 2021/2022 when compatibility with some systems was not ideal with the HAT5300 series. The HAT3300 drives being Synology adapted/badged Seagates is a logical move, and the Seagate Ironwolf Health Management tool has been featured in the DSM storage manager for many years.

The HAT3300 drives will come in 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 12TB capacities, which are the most commonly used sizes for users in 2023. Here is a breakdown of the specifications for each drive.

Here are their Enterprise series HDDs

HAT5300-4T	HAT5310-8T	HAT5300-12T	HAT5300-16T	HAT5310-18T
4 TB	8 TB	12 TB	16 TB	18 TB
3.5″	3.5″	3.5″	3.5″	3.5″
SATA 6 Gb/s	SATA 6 Gb/s	SATA 6 Gb/s	SATA 6 Gb/s	SATA 6 Gb/s
512e	512e	512e	512e	512e
7,200 rpm	7,200 rpm	7,200 rpm	7,200 rpm	7,200 rpm
6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s
256 MiB	256 MiB	256 MiB	512 MiB	512 MiB
243 MiB/s	248 MiB/s	242 MiB/s	262 MiB/s	268 MiB/s
2 million hours	2 million hours	2.5 million hours	2.5 million hours	2.5 million hours
550 TB Transferred per Year	550 TB Transferred per Year	550 TB Transferred per Year	550 TB Transferred per Year	550 TB Transferred per Year
5 Years	5 Years	5 Years	5 Years	5 Years

12 V (± 10%) / 5 V (+10/-7%)	12 V (± 10%) / 5 V (+10/-7%)	12 V (± 10%) / 5 V (+10/-7%)	12 V (± 10%) / 5 V (+10/-7%)	12 V (± 10%) / 5 V (+10/-7%)
4.07 W	5.61 W	4.25 W	4.00 W	4.16 W
7.76 W	9.29 W	7.83 W	7.63 W	8.35 W
Power consumption may differ according to configurations and platforms.

Here are their Plus series HDDs

Spec	12TB	8TB	6TB	4TB
Model ID	HAT3300-12T	HAT3300-8T	HAT3300-6T	HAT3300-4T
Bay Support	1-8 Bay	1-8 Bay	1-8 Bay	1-8 Bay
Recording	CMR	CMR	CMR	CMR
Drive Seal	Helium	Air	Air	Air
Workload	180TB	180TB	180TB	180TB
Spin Speed	7200RPM	5400RPM	5400RPM	5900RPM
Cache	256MB	256MB	256MB	64MB
Load Cycles	600K	600K	600K	600K
MTBF	1M Hours	1M Hours	1M Hours	1M Hours
Warranty	3yrs*	3yrs*	3yrs*	3yrs*

*TBC – Will know more when they are launched officially

What drives do Synology use?

It seems like those are Seagate drives. But we will be able to tell more when official pdf is released.
In meantime you can try an make a guess in the comments based on these similar performance drives.

MFR	model	serial	capacity	speed	load	noise	watts	warranty	RPM	Cycles	MTBF
Seagate	Ironwolf	ST4000VN008	4TB	180MB/s	180	25	4.8	3 Years	5900	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Red Plus	WD40EFPX	4TB	180 MB/s	180	27	4.7	3 Years	5400	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Red Plus	WD40EFZX	4TB	175 MB/s	180	27	4.8	3 Years	5400	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD42PURZ	4TB	175MB/s	180	27	4.6	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD40PURZ	4TB	150 MB/s	180	28	5.1	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000



MFR	model	serial	capacity	speed	load	noise	watts	warranty	RPM	Cycles	MTBF
Seagate	Ironwolf	ST6000VN006	6TB	202MB/s	180	26	5.3	3 Years	5,400	600,000	1,000,000
Seagate	Ironwolf	ST6000VN001	6TB	190MB/s	180	27	5.3	3 Years	5,400	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Red Plus	WD60EFPX	6TB	180 MB/s	180	27	4.7	3 Years	5400	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD63PURZ	6TB	175MB/s	180	27	4.6	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD62PURZ	6TB	185 MB/s	180	30	6.2	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD60PURZ	6TB	175 MB/s	180	28	5.3	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000


MFR	model	serial	capacity	speed	load	noise	watts	warranty	RPM	Cycles	MTBF
Seagate	Ironwolf	ST8000VN002	8TB	202MB/s	180	26	5.3	3 Years	5400	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD81PURZ	8TB	213 MB/s	180	29	9	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD80PURZ	8TB	178 MB/s	180	29	6.4	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000
WD	Purple	WD84PURZ	8TB	194 MB/s	180	30	6.2	3 Years	5400	300,000	1,000,000


MFR	model	serial	capacity	speed	load	noise	watts	warranty	RPM	Cycles	MTBF
Seagate	Ironwolf	ST12000VN0008	12TB	210MB/s	180	30	7.3	3 Years	7200	600,000	1,000,000
WD	Red Plus	WD120EFBX	12TB	196 MB/s	180	29	6.3	3 Years	7200	600,000	1,000,000
Toshiba	N300	HDWG21CUZSVA	12TB	242 MiB/s	180	20	4.28	3 Years	7200		1,000,000

MFR	model	serial	capacity	speed	load	noise	watts	warranty	RPM	Cycles	MTBF


Toshiba	N300	HDWG31GUZSVA	16TB	274 MiB/s	180	20	4.28	3 Years	7200		1,000,000

Toshiba 12 TB to 18 TB N300 NAS Hard Drives use a helium-sealed design,

Why would you use Synology HAT3300 Hard Drives and not 3rd Party HDDs in your NAS?

It’s a valid question to ask why users should choose the Synology HAT3300 drives over Seagate drives, which are similarly priced or slightly more expensive. However, users shouldn’t feel forced to choose since the HAT3300 drives are designed to be compatible with a wide range of HDDs for NAS, including WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf, unlike the XS series and higher models which have stricter compatibility lists. There are several reasons why the HAT3300 drives might be a better choice for some users, such as the Synology firmware, which is specifically optimized for Synology NAS and its access behavior, making it more suitable for 24×7 server environments and multi-access RAID configurations. Additionally, firmware updates for the HAT3300 drives can be done within DSM, the NAS software, without removing the drives, which is much more convenient than updating firmware for regular HDDs. Finally, choosing Synology HDDs simplifies the warranty and support process, especially for those who value their time and the downtime of their system. While the HAT5300 drives are higher-priced and more powerful, it’s worth comparing them to the newer HAT3300 drives.

How do the Synology HAT3300 Regular Class and HAT5300 Enterprise Class HDDs Compare?

HARDWARE SPECIFICATIONS		HAT5300 / HAT5310	HAS5300 / HAS5310	HAT3300 / HAT3310
General	Capacity	4, 8, 12, 16, 18TB	8, 12, 16TB	4, 6, 8, 12TB
	Form Factor	3.5″	3.5″	3.5″
	Interface	SATA 6 Gb/s	SAS 12 Gb/s	SATA 6 Gb/s
	Sector Size	512e	512e	512e
Performance	Rotational Speed	7200 rpm	7200 rpm	5400-7200 rpm
	Interface Speed	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s	6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s
	Buffer Size	256 MiB	256 MiB	64-256 MiB
	Maximum Sustained Data Transfer Speed	268 MiB/s	262 MiB/s	240 MiB/s
Reliability	Mean Time to Failure (MTTF)	2 million hours	2.5 million hours	1 million hours
	Workload Rating	550 TB Transferred per Year	550 TB Transferred per Year	180 TB Transferred per Year
	Warranty	5 Years	5 Years	5 Years

Which NAS devices are compatible with the HAT3300 drives?

23 Series: DS923+, DS723+, DS423+, DS423, DS223, DS223j, DS123
22 Series: RS822+, RS822RP+, RS422+, DS2422+, DS1522+, DVA1622
21 Series: RS1221+, RS1221RP+, DS1821+, DS1621+, DVA3221
20 Series: RS820+, RS820RP+, DS720+, DS420+, DS220+, DS420j, DS120j, DS220j
19 Series: DS119j, DVA3219 18 Series: DS1618+, DS418, DS418j, DS218, DS218play, DS118
Expansion Unit: RX418, DX1222 , DX517

Conclusion

The Synology HAT3300 is designed to work seamlessly with a variety of NAS devices, including the Plus and Value series devices. This means that users will have more options to choose from when it comes to upgrading their existing NAS devices. With Synology’s firmware specifically tweaked towards Synology NAS and its own access behavior, the HAT3300 will be able to provide improved performance, stability, and compatibility over third-party drives.

One of the key advantages of the Synology HAT3300 is its ability to receive firmware updates directly from within DSM (DiskStation Manager). This is a major advantage for users as firmware updates for most drives in the market are not particularly frequent, and the process of upgrading firmware on a NAS is not straightforward. With the HAT3300, users can update the firmware of one or more drives in an existing RAID without having to power down the NAS or remove the drives individually. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of data loss or drive failure during the update process.

Furthermore, for those who purchased a Synology NAS specifically for its single ecosystem platform, the HAT3300 drives will simplify the warranty and support process. By opting for HDDs that are the same brand as the NAS, users can benefit from a streamlined warranty and support process, as well as faster identification of any issues that may arise.

In conclusion, the Synology HAT3300 is a highly anticipated release that promises to deliver improved performance, stability, and compatibility for NAS users. With its availability in the UAE market slated for May 2023, users can look forward to upgrading their existing NAS devices and enjoying the benefits of Synology’s latest offering.

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Seagate 24TB Ironwolf Pro NAS Hard Drive Review

Rob Andrews — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:00:03 +0000

The Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD Review

Seagate and their Ironwolf series of hard drives have fast become a mainstay of the NAS landscape in a relatively short time, considering their NAS HDD and eventual rebranding to Ironwolf in 2015/2016. In that time they have closed considerable ground on their biggest rival in this field, the WD Red series, and now although the brand first released Ironwolf Pro 20, 22 and now 24TB NAS Hard Drives in the last 18 months, they are now in the process of revising a number of these drives and introducing a new higher durability STX0000NT001 / STX0000NT001 series to join that existing the STX000NE001. These newer class of Prosumer/large-scale storage array NAS hard drives arrive with almost twice the workload rating, more than double the MTBF rating and still maintain the same high reported performance levels. All this said, why the sudden change? Perhaps facilitated by hardware shortages or due to the growing concerns of some users over larger capacities having the same workload rating of smaller capacities, leading to diminishing durability returns? Whatever the reason (more on that later), there is no denying that 24TB of storage in a single 3.5″ HDD casing is something to behold and today we are going to review this new massive drive from Seagate, benchmark it, test it with leading NAS brand Synology, discuss the differences with the existing Ironwolf Pro range and (hopefully) help you decide if it deserves your data? Let’s begin.

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Quick Conclusion

There is no denying that Seagate certainly delivers on the prompted storage and performance that they have stated for the Ironwolf Pro 24TB NAS hard drive. This alongside fully tested and confirmed compatibility with Synology (though not by Synology themselves) devices means that you have a drive here that can turn any 4-Bay NAS into a staggering 96TB server in RAID 0 and 72TB RAID5 Storage data monster – let alone once you start thinking about rackmounts and hyperscale. The pricing of this 24TB is understandably high, but as always, when you start crunching down the ‘Price Per TB’, it ends up landing comfortably in the same region as other Pro class drives of a smaller capacity. As mentioned previously, I particularly appreciate that the workload discussion surrounding ‘Pro’ Class drives at 300TB/yr vs rapid HDD capacity growth is being addressed here with a 550TB/yr version to rival that of ‘Ent’ class drives – whatever the reason/motivation. With capacities getting higher and more ‘eggs being placed in baskets’, the durability of each individual drive in an array grows in importance, so the shift of these PRO class drives towards an ENTERPRISE class workload should be positively noted. The value of the Ironwolf Health Management tool is going to be something of debate and the inclusion of 3yrs data recovery services is a nice extra that (with any luck) few will need to use – but better to have them and not need them, than visa versa. As HDDs continue to increase in scale and Seagate (among other brands) continues to outline their plans to hit 50TB (so, halfway there with this one!) by the end of the decade, the Seagate Ironwolf Pro ST2400NT002 is another good example of an HDD that finds a sweet spot between price, durability and value. Just be aware that this is a drive designed for large-scale use and that means high operational noise and higher than typical power use than non-Pro and smaller cap drives!

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Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Design

The design of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD remains largely unchanged in appearance compared with the most recent high-capacity releases at 24TB and 22TB. The 3.5″ casing is helium sealed and the new NT class of drives arrive with a change in the labelling to differentiate them from the NE Ironwolf Pro series. Perhaps this differentiation is the separate them for use in 24+ Bay servers (given the oddly open-ended ‘unlimited bay’ support on the spec sheets vs the ‘upto 24-Bays of the Ironwolf Pro till now). Typically NAS/SAN system that feature 24x and higher storage bays would have been urged to opt for the EXOS series (available in both SAS and SATA). Perhaps this is a means to open up and bracket the Hyper-Scale and Data Center tier up, as more and more medium-large business setup single/paired Rackmounts outside of the large-sclae cabinet settings of the past? It’s hard to say, as otherwise, what problem is a newer and more durable Ironwolf Pro drive solving?

One argument might be the growing question of workload ratings on HDDs vs Growing Capacities and how they are starting to result in reduced margins of durability. The general rule of thumb when it has come to Hard drives for 24×7 server deployment is:

Standard Class Server Drives (so, upto 8 Bays of storage, small-medium Business deployment) is 180TB workload a year over the 3yr warranty
Large Scale Server Drives (above 8 Bays and upto 24 Bays for Higher-end business and large-scale deployment) at 300TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty
Enterprise/Hyperscale Server Drives (i.e Data Center, with theoretically limitless Bay numbers, factoring expansions and growth) at 550TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty

Now the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB is branded as a ‘Pro’ class drive (the middle one, above), however it arrives with a 550TB Workload rating, putting it well into the Enterprise bracket and treading on the toes of Seagates EXOS series – though lacking the SAS and Encryption options of EXOS options. However, the general rules of 180/300/550TB respective workloads on each tier begin to fall down a little when you factor that a 1TB drive that has a 300TB workload at 210MB/s performance and a 24TB that is also at 300TB workload annually, but 285MB/s max transfer will not only hit that workload limit quicker – but there is also the question of how this translates over time vs the available storage space and writes over time! Therefore the newer gen Seagate Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 Hard Drive arriving with 550TB/yr (alongside NT versions of many of the other lower capacities) does elevate this point somewhat for those users in between the Large Scale and Hyperscale/data center.

The 24TB in the ST2400NT001=2 is spread over 10 platters of 2.4TB each, made possible via the drive being helium sealed. This reduces potential internal drag and friction between platters, maintains the balance and allows much thinner platters to be used. Spinning at 7200RPM, the platters feature dual-plane balancing (known as AgileArray) also time-limited error recovery (TLER), which ensures the drive reading head isn’t delayed in intermittent read errors and can restart quickly to increase access when needed.

The 10 platters spinning at 7200RPM are also accompanied by 256MB of caching on board, which really surprised me, giving most of Seagate’s competitors have hit the 512MB cache level at this capacity tier. Having half the chance of its rivals does not seem to diminish both the performance or the sustained performance either.

As mentioned, the Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDD series only arrives in SATA. Although I can understand that Segaate does not want to overlap TOO much with their EXOS range that they already have done, there are an increasing number of SAS NAS solutions arriving on the market (with both Synology and QNAP both increasing their range of solutions in this direction noticeably for their 2022/2023 generations). Yes, users could just go for a suitable SAS EXOS option, but then they lose out on the Rescue Data Recovery services and Ironwolf Health management on the drive.

Overall, any improvements or changes in the build/construction of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB ST2400NT002 HDD over the rest of the range and/or the previous NE version are all internal. We have to take Seagate at their word on the effective doubling of the durability rating, but given their pedigree in the EXOS enterprise series, I have little doubt in this. Although the Ironwolf Pro 24TB is not the only NAS drive in the market right now that is breaking the 24 Terabyte level, it does arrive with a couple of things that many others don’t that we should cover – the included Data Recovery services and the Ironwolf Health Management tool for NAS for a start. But MOST IMPORTANTLY, the Seagate IW Pro 24TB is CMR (conventional Magnetic recording) and not SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording – that latter of which is what the bulk of other NAS brands offer drives at this scale in. However, larger scale storage users will always opt for CMR drives and Seagate (unlike WD) have done a fantastic job of ensuring all their NAS drive series are CMR.

Is Seagate Ironwolf Health Management and Rescue Recovery Services Worth Caring About?

For those that are not aware, the Seagate Rescue+ package is a data recovery service that is included with your Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro drives that, alongside your 3/5-year warranty, includes an additional 3 years of data recovery services. What that means is that if your drive fails through no fault of your own within reason (so, no, not smashing it with a hammer), you can send the drive off to the Seagate recovery labs and they will try to get that data back. From accidental deletion, all the way through to mechanical and forensic level recovery, this is an impressive inclusion! You should still factor other safety nets in your architecture (backups, UPS, RAID, etc) but given the cost of data recovery services (costing anything from hundreds to thousands of pounds), this is a very, VERY useful inclusion when you need it. This plus an already normally lower price point than Pro series drives in the WD Red series means that the Seagate Ironwolf hard drives still manage to be the better value choice for alot of users, especially when including the Rescue recovery included. They are also the only 3rd party NAS hard drive brand that has a tool to monitor drive health available on practically ALL the NAS software GUIs in the market, in Seagate Ironwolf Health Management. Here is part one of a two-part video series on the NASComapres YouTube channel were we showed the Seagate Rescue Recovery service (arguably, in a very extreme fashion!):

You can find out more on the Rescue service and its Pros/Cons in the video below. Otherwise there is another video detailing a guide on what to expect from data recovery costs/fees etc in a video from 2021:

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Testing

Testing the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB is going to be performed across multiple methods, but still rather unconventional. This drive is designed for deployment in large # Bay servers, but although I have several NAS in the studio that could accommodate this frequency of drives, I do not have sufficient Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB units. Therefore the testing I have conducted are all examples of single-drive performance. These will include several PC testing sessions using popular and recommended storage testing applications and two NAS tests involving Synology and QNAP.

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test Hard Drive connected to a Sabrent USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s external dock
Synology test was conducted on a DS923+ NAS using the system’s own benchmarking tool

These last tests are important as not only is the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD designed for NAS use, but also at the time of writing neither brand lists this hard drive as compatible. There is more to this though that I will touch on later.

The first test involved using CrystalDisk. I performed tests on 1GB, 4GB and 16GB test files, as well as mixed 70/30% R/W. The results were consistent and largely lived up to Seagate’s claims here.

The next test used ATTO disk benchmark and this one used a 256MB, 1GB and 4GB test file in the same windows PC test environment. However, I also included the IOPS. The random 4K operations of a hard drive will typically be hugely dwarfed by those of SSDs, but enterprise HDDs and pro series drives still tend to rate noticeably higher than domestic HDD and standard-class NAS HDDs on this score.

In order to conduct a windows performance test, I copied 20GB of mixed files over to the drive as a separate disk. The result was consistent performance and the transfer, averaging at 205MB/s on the windows transfer overall and peaking at 260MB/s. Although this is lower than the transfer rates stated by Seagate and in the synthetic tests above, this is perfectly understandable when dealing with this high volume of small/differing date, compared with the largely Sequential Data tests stated elsewhere.

20GB Windows Transfer

Synology NAS Testing with the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive

Now, before I move on to the NAS testing. It is worth highlighting a couple of important factors with regard to the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB and the support available from each NAS brand I am focusing on for the testing. Now, Synology is the ONLY NAS brand in the market that also has its own first-party HDDs available to users too. These are Originally Toshiba Enterprise-grade produced hard disks that have had a Synology-specific firmware applied to them. Now, why is this relevant? Well, because some larger-scale Synology products in 2021 onwards do not list other 3rd Party HDDs as compatible. Even then, if you look up some of the older 2020 released NAS drives currently in the market (such as the DS920+ for example), they DO list HDDs from the likes of Seagate Ironwolf (and their EXOS and Skyhawk series) BUT they do not list drives larger than 18TB at the time of writing. This is an odd stance by the brand, when larger-scale 24TB and 22TB hard drives are available in the market and designed for NAS.

If you install an HDD or SSD inside a Synology system with the latest version of their software platform DSM, but the HDD in question is not on the compatibility list, you are greeted by a message that will detail that the drive is not recommended in the storage manager.

You can still use the HDD for Storage Pools, Volumes, Hot-spares, etc, but it is an oddly jarring message for some. Of course, this is the current compatibility of this HDD at the time of writing and may well change in the future as further HDD capacities arrive and additional compatibility testing takes place.

Nevertheless, you can still push through this warning and proceed to test the performance of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD from within the Synology Storage Manager. Here are the results.

Noise Testing the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB NAS Hard Drive

This is something that is often overlooked when users are getting excited about bigger and bigger HDDs entering the market and the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB is no exception to this – NOISE! Because of the sheer scale of hardware that is getting packed into these larger capacity 3.5″ HDD casing and the more industrious hardware inside that needs to perform 24×7 durably, operational noise is unavoidable. Once you exceed around 8-10TB (HDD brand dependant), the increased platters and heavier duty actuator/arm mechanism needs to be a grat deal more reactive (due to the larger space that is needed to be covered ad-hoc. The Seagate ST2400NT002 24TB is a pretty spot-on example of this and although you are getting some great performance, it is achieved with a large amount of mechanical work under the bonnet. Now, if you are running a larger-scale data center/rackmount style setup, this is not going to be much of a barrier. As those kinds of server will have multiple fans and use horizontal pressure fan cooling – so they will be much louder than the drives! However, in more modest 4-8 Bay desktop NAS systems, its a different story, as these use smaller/quieter fans and alongside being more conductive of vibration, the noise of these drives in operation will be a great deal more obvious.

Here is an example of four Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDDs in a Synology DS923 4-Bay NAS, running an intense 4K IOPS benchmark on the drives (likely the LOUDEST THING you will ever hear, so this is not truly representative of idle/standby/low use):

https://nascompares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Seagate-Ironwolf-Pro-20TB-ST20000NT001-Hard-Drive-Noise-Synology.wav

If you want a better idea of typical operational noise and noise when booting the drive with the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TBs, watch the middle portion of the YouTube review HERE. Regardless, if you are sensitive to noise, will be in close proximity to the NAS device (direct 10GbE editing?) and will be running a smaller scale NAS system – then these new 24TB HDDs might not be quite your cup of tea!

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Conclusion

PROs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB	CONs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB
Very Good Price Point vs WD Red/Red Pro Industry Leading NAS HDD Capacity Data Recovery Services Included (3yrs) 550TB/yr Workload & 2.5M MTBF 285MB/s Transfer Speeds Impressively CMR, when most other drives at this Cap are SMR right now Ironwolf Health Management Inc. Seagate Secure Onboard Consistent Performance	Noisy!!! Definitely Cannot have Just One Higher Standby/Idle Power Use Tipping point vs SDDs

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Seagate 24TB Ironwolf Pro NAS Hard Drive Review

Rob Andrews — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 06:07:31 +0000

The Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD Review

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Quick Conclusion

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Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Design

Standard Class Server Drives (so, upto 8 Bays of storage, small-medium Business deployment) is 180TB workload a year over the 3yr warranty
Large Scale Server Drives (above 8 Bays and upto 24 Bays for Higher-end business and large-scale deployment) at 300TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty
Enterprise/Hyperscale Server Drives (i.e Data Center, with theoretically limitless Bay numbers, factoring expansions and growth) at 550TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty

Is Seagate Ironwolf Health Management and Rescue Recovery Services Worth Caring About?

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Testing

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test Hard Drive connected to a Sabrent USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s external dock
Synology test was conducted on a DS923+ NAS using the system’s own benchmarking tool

The first test involved using CrystalDisk. I performed tests on 1GB, 4GB and 16GB test files, as well as mixed 70/30% R/W. The results were consistent and largely lived up to Seagate’s claims here.

20GB Windows Transfer

Synology NAS Testing with the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive

Nevertheless, you can still push through this warning and proceed to test the performance of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB HDD from within the Synology Storage Manager. Here are the results.

Noise Testing the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB NAS Hard Drive

https://nascompares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Seagate-Ironwolf-Pro-20TB-ST20000NT001-Hard-Drive-Noise-Synology.wav

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB Hard Drive Review – Conclusion

PROs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB	CONs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB
Very Good Price Point vs WD Red/Red Pro Industry Leading NAS HDD Capacity Data Recovery Services Included (3yrs) 550TB/yr Workload & 2.5M MTBF 285MB/s Transfer Speeds Impressively CMR, when most other drives at this Cap are SMR right now Ironwolf Health Management Inc. Seagate Secure Onboard Consistent Performance	Noisy!!! Definitely Cannot have Just One Higher Standby/Idle Power Use Tipping point vs SDDs

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Best Surveillance NAS of 2022/2023

Rob Andrews — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 16:05:21 +0000

A Guide to the Best Surveillance NAS Drives to Buy Right Now

When you consider investing in a NAS drive in your home or business environment, you always want to maximize your investment in this new kind of technology. Systems are designed to do many different things at once and each top-tier NAS brand includes a complete software and application environment with their hardware, allowing you to support multiple different services at any given time. The most popular services that new buyers tend to choose are that of multi-tiered backups, multimedia playback, shared drives for collaboration and, of course, surveillance. Utilising a NAS system as a bespoke and highly proficient NVR (network video recorder) system is growing in popularity all the time and allows home to small business users to ensure the safety and security of family and employees alike. It is for this reason that the majority of brands have their own surveillance software included with the purchase of your NAS, allowing you to add multiple IP cameras in your network environment that can be accessed and recorded from 24/7, with customised alerts and an enterprise-level dashboard with which to control them. Because all of the NAS brands tend to include surveillance software with their hardware, it can be hard to choose the right NAS for your own particular surveillance setup. Factors such as the maximum number of cameras you can use, compatibility with IP Camera brands and available camera licenses will always play a part. So today I am showing you the top 3 NAS for surveillance to buy in 2022/2023. Each one has been selected based on their own individual highlights, with one being the best value surveillance solution, one being the most robust surveillance NAS and finally one is the best business class enterprise NAS surveillance solution where power and performance are key. Let’s take a look.

Best Surveillance NAS – What Qualifies?

As mentioned, almost all NAS drives have an element of surveillance included to a greater or lesser extent, so how can I break down thousands of NAS solutions down to just three? Well, first off all NAS that are considered need to confirm against the following qualifications for a NVR use NAS system:

Only Desktop/Tower systems are being considered, Rackmount servers are generally harder to compare and are more tailored to data center and/or general server file storage
Each solution must be a combined Hardware+Software solution – Include a Surveillance Management utility
Must have at least 2 years of manufacturers warranty
MUST include at least 4 Camera Licenses (a large part of the cost ultimately)
Must be at least a 4-Bay NAS, as you need to provision for storage AND redundancy in the event of a failed drive
Must have the ability to export footage without interrupting live feeds
Must support accepted camera brands (AXIS, Hikvision, Edimax, Reolink, Annke, etc) as well as ONVIF protocol and client applications

The above rules certainly narrow down the available NAS drives in the market down a little, but it still means that a lot of NAS drives are suitable, but not PERFECT. So, below is my top three recommended NAS to buy for surveillance in 2022/2023.

What Have All the Best Surveillance NAS Drives Have in Common?

It is worth remembering that although there are ALOT of different Surveillance NAS drives available to buy, they are by no means created equal! With numerous super-budget brands popping up online, it can be tempting to consider these alongside the premium NAS brands. However, all too often they offer solutions righty seem ‘too good to be true’ and then are gone from the web before your warranty even gets cold! So, whether you are looking at the three best Surveillance solutions that I am recommending below OR are looking at another Surveillance NAS you saw on offer/recommended elsewhere – the best NAS system ALWAYS includes the following software and services:

Combined Hardware & Software Solution – That means that you are buying the hardware, but it ALSO includes a web browser GUI, mobile apps and desktop client apps (including backup, media, streaming, surveillance and file management software)
All NAS systems in this guide are compatible with (and can be accessed by) Windows, Mac, Android and Linux operating systems
All NAS Solutions arrive with between 2-3 years Warranty (with the option to extend to 5 years)
All NAS drives can be accessed locally over the network, as well as secure remote access is possible with brand-supported services (at no additional cost)
The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwolf 22TB and WD Red 22TB)
All the recommended solutions support multiple drive configurations (RAID) for drive failure protection and performance enhancements
All solutions receive regular updates to their security, features and services
All recommended NAS drives can connect and synchronize with cloud services (Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, etc), as well as Business/Enterprise services such as AWS, Azure, Backblaze and more
All NAS solutions (regardless of brand) feature the ability to host a shared drive on your PC/Mobile/Laptop systems that are synchronized with the NAS via the network/internet, but is shown in your native operating system file manager (i.e Mac Finder or Windows Explorer)
All the NAS solutions listed can be accessed DIRECTLY via an ethernet/network cable being connected from your PC/Mac system, to the NAS RJ45 port for 100MB/s and higher connectivity
All the best NAS solutions (regardless of brand) feature backup and sync tools that can be installed on your local client computer and allow regular backups of your files and system data

So, make sure that if you are looking at a NAS solution that is NOT recommended below, that it includes all of the above as these are some of the clearest areas that brands all too often cut orders to produce cheaper by ultimately inferior NAS servers for home and business. So, let’s discuss the very best Surveillance NAS to buy now in 2022/2023.

Best All Round Surveillance NAS Drive – QNAP TS-453E NAS

0-88TB, 8 Surveillance Camera Licenses, 40x Camera Max, M.2 Google TPU Support for AI Services, USB Camera Support,KVM Support, 2x M.2 Gen 3 NVMe 2280, Intel J6412 Celeron CPU, 8GB Memory, 2x 2.5Gbe Port, 3yr Warranty

Current Price/Availability on Amazon – $599

Hardware Review – LINK

YouTube Video Review – Watch

What I said in my review Aug ’22:

The QNAP TS-453E NAS is a device that really grew on me! With these home/business server companies releasing refreshes of their ranges every 2-2.5yrs or so, it is easy to see them fall into repetitive patterns when it comes to how the hardware is picked at each tier/price-point. The TS-453E NAS on the other hand manages to carve a new tier into the brand’s portfolio right now in 2022, managing to give you some really solid internal/external hardware that most would have assumed would be half of what it is at this level of QNAP’s 4-bay portfolio (i.e Quad-Core, 8GB, NVMe M.2s, 2.5GbE, 10G USB, 3yr warranty, etc) and it will certainly make some buyers wonder about whether the current Prosumer/flagship TS-464 is as necessary to their home or office as they once thought.

The fixed memory, even at 8GB default, is rather annoying and a lack of PCIe slot means that 10GbE will remain out of reach – but look at this NAS sandwiched between the TS-451D2 & TS-464 and it makes alot of sense. This is for those not really looking at expandability years from now and although that plastic case still looks a little dated/cheap, this is not a device designed to be noticed day-to-day. For those looking to make their first tentative entry into the world of NAS a decent one or looking to upgrade cautiously from an ARM system, the QNAP TS-453E is an excellent shout!

Most Powerful Surveillance NAS System – Synology DVA3221 NAS

0-88TB, 4-Bays, Intel C3538 4-Core CPU, 4-32GB ECC Memory, 4x 1Gb Ports, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, 3yr Warranty, 8 Camera License included,

Current Price/Availability on Amazon – $2000+

Hardware Review – LINK

YouTube Video Review – Watch

What I said in my review Nov ’20:

The Synology DVA3221 is a NAS that when I heard it could be used as a surveillance station NAS and a Diskstation NAS made me very happy indeed. However, now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that this compromise in dedicated surveillance use has led to some choices (the CPU and lack of HDMI/DVI + KVM output) that in many ways limit its complete potential. I have no hesitation in saying this is the very best and most capable surveillance NAS that Synology has ever produced, and once you take into account the inclusion of that graphics card and 8 camera licences for surveillance station, the price can even be justified for the most part. What it comes down to is whether you desperately need these features and don’t mind paying more now to save lots later. A year from now Synology might allow users to install their own graphics cards or will find a way to introduce some deep video analysis features onto non-GPU NAS – of this there is no guarantee, but if you need these features in 2020/2021, this is the best NAS you can get right now. The DVA3221 NVR NAS features familiar internal hardware in terms of CPU and available memory. Arriving with the Intel C3538 Atom CPU, this quad-core processor with a 2.1 GHz clock speed has already proven on several occasions to be a highly capable processor for everything from surveillance to virtual machines and multimedia use in the likes of the DS1819+ and DS1618+. I know it is not the most popular processor in the market right now since Synology has moved their SMB devices towards the Ryzen-embedded V1500B, but Synology has spent quite a few years working with this CPU family and has optimised the hell out of it for the DSM platform. Though it’s the support of 4K is less than other Celeron and Pentium processors right now, it is still a CPU with a tremendous amount of potential still left in it.

Once again, they could have opened the door to a more capable processor such as the Intel Xeon found in the DS1621xs+, but this would have only served to increase the base price point of the DVA3221 again. This CPU is further supported with 8GB of DDR4 memory, that can be upgraded all the way to an impressive 32GB of memory. Additionally, this memory is Error Code Correction (ECC) memory, which is especially attractive to business users and (in the case of an NVR solution) is another layer of protection from data failure to have. If you intend to use the DVA3221 to its full potential, it is recommended that you increase the base memory of this device to at least 16GB, as although the memory on the graphics card provides great real-time analytics and analysis of captured footage, the standard memory of the NAS is still going to be tremendously important for the typical running of this device.

Surveillance Station		DVA1622	DVA3221
Video Analysis	Deep Video Analytics Features	People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition) People counting Vehicle counting Intrusion detection Face recognition	People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition) People counting Vehicle counting Intrusion detection Face recognition
	Deep Video Analytics Tasks	People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition): up to 2 tasks People counting: up to 2 tasks Vehicle counting: up to 2 tasks Intrusion detection (detecting specific objects): up to 2 tasks Face recognition: up to 1 task	People and vehicle detection (without license plate recognition): up to 12 tasks People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition): up to 6 tasks People counting: up to 12 tasks Vehicle counting: up to 12 tasks Intrusion detection (detecting specific objects): up to 12 tasks Intrusion detection (detecting all objects): up to 6 tasks Face recognition: up to 6 tasks

Best Affordable AI Surveillance System NAS – Synology DVA1622 NAS

0-44TB, 2-Bays, Intel Celeron J4125 4-Core CPU, 4-32GB ECC Memory, 1x 1Gb Ports, Uses Integrated Graphics for AI Processes, 3yr Warranty, 8 Camera License included, 16 CAMS Max

Current Price/Availability on Amazon – $599

Hardware Review – (Coming Soon)

YouTube Video Review – (Coming Soon, Hardware Overview HERE)

Synology NVR DVA1622 is a 2-bay desktop recording server that gives home and small business users access to fast, smart, and accurate video surveillance powered by deep learning-based algorithms. Built-in automated event detection helps safeguard properties by detecting people, vehicles, or objects and alerting staff when self-configured rules or thresholds are breached

Complete Surveillance Solution With Built-in AI Capabilities
The DVA1622 makes powerful AI-enabled surveillance available for everyone in a compact solution that includes everything you need to create an efficient surveillance system.

Cover all angles: Record and manage up to 16 IP camera feeds
Leverage deep learning: Run 2 simultaneous real-time video analysis processes or 1 facial recognition task
Licenses included: Add up to 8 IP cameras without purchasing additional licenses
Direct video output: Simply plug a monitor into the built-in HDMI port to watch surveillance feeds without a separate PC or mobile device
Local management: Set up, manage, and control your deployment locally by attaching a keyboard and mouse

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Need More Help Choosing the right NAS?

Choosing the right data storage solution for your needs can be very intimidating and it’s never too late to ask for help. With options ranging from NAS to DAS, Thunderbolt to SAS and connecting everything up so you can access all your lovely data at the touch of a button can be a lot simpler than you think. If you want some tips, guidance or help with everything from compatibility to suitability of a solution for you, why not drop me a message below and I will get back to you as soon as possible with what you should go for, its suitability and the best place to get it. This service is designed without profit in mind and in order to help you with your data storage needs, so I will try to answer your questions as soon as possible. Just enter in a few details of your setup, storage requirements and (in the case of buying a new solution) your budget – then me and Eddie the Web guy can help you with your question. This is a completely free service, is NOT provided with profit in mind and is manned by two humans (no bots, no automated replies, etc). Assistance might take an extra day or two (the service gets a lot of visitors) but we do try to answer every message. If you want to support this service, you can find out how to donate HERE. Otherwise, you can still just message us for free advice anyway!

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Choose the Best drives for my Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR, and TerraMaster – how to make sense from spec sheet

Eddie Webguy — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 10:56:39 +0000

If you’re in the market for a new hard disk drive (HDD) to use in your network-attached storage (NAS) setup, then you’re probably facing a barrage of technical jargon and specifications that can be overwhelming. But fear not, as we’re here to help you make sense of HDD spec sheets and find the right drive for your needs. In this article, we’ll discuss what the various specifications mean, which ones are important to consider, and how to decide which drive is best for your NAS. We’ll also delve into the life expectancy of HDDs, how to calculate it, and other factors to consider, such as noise levels. Additionally, we’ll take a closer look at some of the best drives currently available for 1-bay, 2-bay, 4-8-bay, and 8-bay NAS solutions, as well as for video editing. So let’s dive in and find the perfect HDD for your needs.

How to read HDD reliability specs

If you are planning to buy a hard drive for use in a NAS (network-attached storage), you want to know how long it will last before it fails. Here is what you need to know from the information you provided:

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF): This is the average amount of time the hard drive is expected to run before it fails. The MTBF of the drive you are considering is 1,000,000 hours, which means that, on average, the drive will last for a very long time before failing. However, note that this does not guarantee that the drive will last exactly 1,000,000 hours, but rather it is an estimate of how long the drive will last based on statistical analysis.
Warranty: The warranty period is the amount of time that the manufacturer guarantees the drive will work without failing. The warranty period for the drive you are considering is 3 years. If the drive fails within this time frame, the manufacturer will replace or repair it free of charge.
Power-on Hours: This is the amount of time the hard drive is expected to be powered on and running. The power-on hours of the drive you are considering is 8,760 hours, which is equivalent to one year of continuous operation.
non-recoverable read error rate means that sometimes a hard drive may encounter an error while reading data. This can happen due to various reasons, such as physical damage or a manufacturing defect. The non-recoverable read errors rate of a hard drive indicates how often these errors occur, and how many bits of data may be lost when they do occur.In the case of the drive you are considering, the maximum non-recoverable read error rate is 1 per 10^14 bits read. This means that for every 100 trillion bits read by the hard drive, it may encounter one error that it cannot recover from. This is a very low rate and implies that the hard drive is designed to read data very accurately, and the chance of losing any data due to a non-recoverable read error is very low.
Load/Unload Cycles: This is the number of times that the read/write head of the hard drive can move back and forth during normal operation. The load/unload cycles of the drive you are considering is 600,000, which is a fairly high number and should provide long-term durability.

Overall, the MTBF, warranty, power-on hours, non-recoverable read errors rate, and load/unload cycles of the hard drive you are considering all suggest that it should be reliable and long-lasting for use in a NAS. However, it’s important to keep in mind that any hard drive can fail at any time, so it’s always a good idea to keep backups of your data to avoid data loss in case of a failure.

What is MTBF?

MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failures and represents the average time that a device, such as a hard drive, is expected to operate before experiencing a failure.

In the case of a hard drive with an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours, it means that on average, the hard drive is expected to operate for 1,000,000 hours before a failure occurs. This failure could be in the form of a single bit of data not being written or read properly, or it could be a complete disk failure, where the hard drive is no longer able to function.

It’s important to note that MTBF is a statistical measure and does not guarantee that a hard drive will last exactly 1,000,000 hours before failing. Some drives may fail before reaching the MTBF, while others may continue to function long after the MTBF has been exceeded.

What mechanical parts are considered in MTBF value?

The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is a statistical measurement of the average time that a hard drive is expected to operate before it experiences a failure. The MTBF is typically calculated by the hard drive manufacturer based on testing and analysis of the hard drive’s components and design.

The MTBF measurement includes all components of the hard drive, including the disk platters, read/write heads, electronics, and other parts. The MTBF is an estimate of the expected overall reliability of the hard drive as a system, rather than any individual component.

It’s important to note that the MTBF is a statistical measure and does not guarantee that a hard drive will last for the full duration of the MTBF before it experiences a failure. Additionally, the MTBF measurement does not provide any information about the specific failure modes or causes that a hard drive may experience, and different failure modes can have different impacts on the overall reliability of the drive.

In summary, the MTBF measurement includes all components of the hard drive, and is a measure of the expected overall reliability of the drive as a system.

How MTBF can be affected based on load/unload cycles and workload.

The failure probability of an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours is like the probability of getting struck by lightning while indoors. It’s possible but highly unlikely.

1,000,000 hours is approximately 4,166 years, since there are 365.25 days in a year (1,000,000 / 24 / 365.25 = 4,166).

Compared to the other components in an IT system, a drive with an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours has a relatively low chance of failure. Other components, such as fans, power supplies, and memory, may have shorter MTBFs and therefore a higher chance of failure. However, all components in an IT system should be regularly monitored and maintained to ensure optimal performance and minimize the risk of failure.

According to the manufacturer’s specifications, the WD Red Plus 4TB hard drive has an MTBF of 1,000,000 hours and is rated for a workload of up to 180 TB per year. Based on this information, we can calculate the expected MTBF values for different levels of workload:

Workload (TB/year)	Expected MTBF (hours)
90	2,000,000
120	1,500,000
150	1,200,000
180	1,000,000
210	857,143
240	750,000
270	666,667

Please note that these values are estimates based on the manufacturer’s specifications and assumptions about usage patterns. Actual MTBF values may vary depending on specific usage conditions, environmental factors, and other variables.

Based on the load/unload cycle averages estimate, we can estimate the impact on the expected MTBF values for the WD Red Plus 4TB hard drive:

Use Case	Load/Unload Cycle Average	Expected MTBF (hours)
Home Use	300,000 – 600,000	500,000 – 833,333
Small Office	600,000 – 900,000	416,667 – 625,000
Big Office	900,000 – 1,200,000	333,333 – 500,000
Enterprise	1,200,000 – 1,500,000	266,667 – 333,333

Please note that these values are estimates based on the load/unload cycle averages and assumptions about usage patterns. Actual MTBF values may vary depending on specific usage conditions, environmental factors, and other variables.

As data center engineers, we would interpret the MTBF figure of 1,000,000 hours as a key metric in determining the reliability of the hard drives that we use in our data center infrastructure. We would use this figure as a benchmark when selecting and evaluating different hard drive models, and would look for drives with high MTBF values to ensure maximum uptime and minimize the risk of data loss or downtime due to hardware failure.

We would also use the MTBF figure as a guide when designing our data center’s redundancy and backup strategies. For example, we may choose to implement RAID configurations or regular backups to minimize the impact of a drive failure, knowing that a drive failure is relatively unlikely but still possible.

MTBF vs Load/Unload Cycles

MTBF and Load/Unload Cycles are two different reliability metrics used to assess the durability of different devices or components.

MTBF stands for Mean Time Between Failures, and it is a statistical measure of the expected time between failures of a device or system. MTBF is typically calculated by dividing the total operating time of a device or system by the number of failures that occur within that time period. MTBF is often used to assess the reliability of electronic devices, computer systems, and other complex machinery.

Load/Unload Cycles, on the other hand, refers to the number of times a device’s mechanical components are loaded and unloaded during normal operation. This metric is typically used to assess the durability of storage devices such as hard disk drives, which rely on mechanical read/write heads to access data stored on spinning disks. Each time the read/write head moves, it constitutes a single load/unload cycle.

In general, MTBF is used to measure the reliability of electronic and mechanical systems, while Load/Unload Cycles are used specifically to assess the durability of storage devices such as hard disk drives. While these metrics are different, they are both important considerations when assessing the reliability of a device or component, and can provide valuable information for designers and engineers looking to improve the performance and durability of their products.

Expected Load/Unload Cycles in different environments

Use Case	Lifetime Load/Unload Cycle Average
Home Use	300,000 – 600,000 (328 cycles per day)
Small Office	600,000 – 900,000 (500 cycles per day)
Big Office	900,000 – 1,200,000 (750 cycles per day)
Enterprise	1,200,000 – 1,500,000 (1000 cycles per day)

If a hard drive performs one load/unload cycle every 5 seconds, it would perform approximately:

12 cycles per minute
720 cycles per hour
17,280 cycles per day
6,307,200 cycles per year

Assuming the hard drive has a load/unload cycle rating of 600,000, this means it could handle around 34 years of load/unload cycles at this rate (600,000 cycles ÷ 17,280 cycles per day ≈ 34.7 years).

If a hard drive performs one load/unload cycle every second, it would perform approximately:

60 cycles per minute
3,600 cycles per hour
86,400 cycles per day
31,536,000 cycles per year

Assuming the hard drive has a load/unload cycle rating of 600,000, this means it could handle around 6 years of load/unload cycles at this rate (600,000 cycles ÷ 86,400 cycles per day ≈ 6.94 years).

How to read WRL” or “Workload Rate Limit” of a hard drive?

The “WRL” or “Workload Rate Limit” of a hard drive is the maximum amount of data that the drive is designed to handle per day, on average, over the course of a year. A WRL of 180 TB/year means that the drive can handle up to 180 terabytes of data written to it per year, on average.

To break this down to a daily basis, you can divide the annual WRL by the number of days in a year. Using 365 days, the daily WRL for a drive with a WRL of 180 TB/year would be:

180 TB/year / 365 days = 0.49315 TB/day

So on average, the drive can handle approximately 0.49315 terabytes (or 493.15 gigabytes) of data written to it per day, without exceeding its workload rate limit. It’s important to note that this is an average, and the drive may be able to handle higher workloads in short bursts or lower workloads over extended periods of time.

What is the real-life chance of failure?

Here’s a table showing the probability percentage for a WD Red Plus 4TB drive to fail on a day 1, end of year 1, end of year 2, end of year 3, end of year 5, and end of year 10, assuming that the drive is used 24 hours a day, with an expected daily load/unload cycle of 300,000 and workload of 100GB per day:

Time	Probability of Failure
Day 1	0.003%
End of Year 1	1.05%
End of Year 2	2.10%
End of Year 3	3.14%
End of Year 5	5.23%
End of Year 10	10.49%

Note: These probabilities are estimates based on assumptions and models, and the actual probability of failure may vary depending on various factors such as usage pattern, environmental conditions, and manufacturing variability.

What if I used 500GB per day?

Time	Probability of Failure
Day 1	0.03%
End of Year 1	10.99%
End of Year 2	21.26%
End of Year 3	30.63%
End of Year 5	46.69%
End of Year 10	78.70%

How to calculate drive life expectancy?

First, you would need to gather the following information about the drive:

MTBF value (in hours)
Load/Unload cycle specification
Workload Rate (WRL)
Power On Hours (POH)

With this information, you can use the following formula to estimate the drive life expectancy:

Drive Life Expectancy = (MTBF / (24 * 365)) * (1 + (Load/Unload Cycles / 2)) * (Workload Rate / 8760) * (POH / MTBF)

HDD life expectancy calculator

Where:

MTBF is the Mean Time Between Failures in hours
Load/Unload Cycles is the average number of load/unload cycles per day
WRL is the workload rate in TB per year
POH is the power-on hours of the drive

How do I know how much life is left inside that drive?

here is a sample SMART test report for a Western Digital Red Plus hard drive from a 2-bay home NAS:

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor-Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAGS VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate PO-R– 100 100 016 – 0
3 Spin_Up_Time POS–K 100 100 001 – 0
4 Start_Stop_Count -O–CK 099 099 020 – 1961
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO–CK 100 100 036 – 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate -O-R– 100 100 045 – 0
9 Power_On_Hours -O–CK 097 097 000 – 932
10 Spin_Retry_Count -O–CK 100 100 097 – 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count -O–CK 100 100 000 – 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O–CK 099 099 020 – 1972
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count -O–CK 200 200 000 – 60
193 Load_Cycle_Count -O–CK 200 200 000 – 27
194 Temperature_Celsius -O—K 121 121 000 – 29
196 Reallocated_Event_Count -O–CK 100 100 000 – 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O–CK 100 100 000 – 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable —-CK 100 100 000 – 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -O–CK 200 200 000 – 0

From this report, we can see that the Load_Cycle_Count is 27, indicating that the hard drive has gone through 27 load/unload cycles during its lifetime. The Power_On_Hours value is 932, indicating that the hard drive has been powered on and running for a total of 932 hours. Other values in the report, such as the Reallocated_Sector_Ct and the Spin_Retry_Count, provide additional information about the health and performance of the hard drive.

What should I pay attention to when looking at the smart test report?

When looking at a SMART test report, there are several parameters that you should pay attention to:

Power-on hours: This indicates how long the drive has been powered on and running. If this value is very high, it may indicate that the drive is close to the end of its lifespan.
Reallocated Sector Count: This indicates the number of bad sectors that have been found on the drive and marked for reallocation. If this number is increasing over time, it may indicate that the drive is starting to fail.
Read Error Rate: This indicates the rate at which read errors are occurring on the drive. A high value may indicate that the drive is starting to fail.
Load Cycle Count: This indicates the number of times the heads have been loaded and unloaded on the drive. A high value may indicate that the drive is being subjected to a lot of wear and tear, which could shorten its lifespan.
Temperature: This indicates the temperature of the drive. If the temperature is too high, it can cause damage to the drive over time.

Should I power down drives over the night?

Scheduling an automated shutdown of your NAS at night and booting it up in the morning could potentially help to extend the lifespan of your hard drives, but the effect on the hard drive’s read/write heads is not a major concern.

When a hard drive powers down, the read/write heads are parked or unloaded from the disk platters to protect them from physical damage. When the drive powers up again, the heads are loaded onto the platters to begin reading and writing data. The process of loading and unloading the heads can contribute to wear and tear on the drive over time, but modern hard drives are designed to handle a large number of load/unload cycles without experiencing any significant wear.

The primary benefit of scheduling an automated shutdown is to reduce the amount of time that the drive is powered on and running, which can help to reduce the amount of wear and tear on the drive over time. Additionally, reducing the amount of time that the drive is powered on can help to reduce energy consumption and extend the lifespan of the drive’s electronics and other components.

Overall, scheduling an automated shutdown of your NAS at night and booting it up in the morning is unlikely to cause any significant wear and tear on the drive’s read/write heads, and could potentially help to extend the lifespan of the drive. However, it’s important to ensure that the drive is not subjected to extreme temperatures or other environmental factors while it is powered down, as this can also contribute to wear and tear over time.

Elaborate on – Power-on Hours. will my drive break after a year?

No, the fact that the Power-on Hours of the hard drive you are considering is 8,760 hours does not mean that the drive will break after one year of continuous operation.

Instead, this specification simply means that the manufacturer expects the drive to be powered on and running for up to 8,760 hours (or approximately one year) before it is likely to experience a failure. In other words, this specification is an estimate of the expected lifespan of the drive based on the amount of time it is expected to be powered on and running.

However, it’s important to note that the Power-on Hours specification is just one of many factors that can influence the lifespan of a hard drive. Other factors that can affect the lifespan of a drive include the drive’s usage patterns, the operating environment (such as temperature and humidity), and the quality of the drive’s components.

In general, modern hard drives are designed to be highly reliable, and many can last for several years or even longer before experiencing a failure. However, it’s always a good idea to have a backup of your data in case of a failure, as hard drives can fail unexpectedly for a variety of reasons.

When should I worry about HDD warranty?

The warranty period for the drive you are considering is 3 years. This warranty period is not dependent on how many hours the drive runs per day, so it would still be covered by the manufacturer’s warranty if it runs 24/7.

However, even if the drive is still covered by the warranty, you should start worrying if you notice any signs of problems or if the drive begins to perform poorly. Signs of problems can include slow read/write speeds, strange noises coming from the drive, or data errors or corruption. If you start experiencing any of these issues, you should consider backing up your data immediately and contacting the manufacturer for assistance, as these can be early warning signs of a potential failure.

In general, it’s a good idea to regularly monitor the health of your hard drive by using diagnostic software, which can alert you to any issues before they become serious. Some popular hard drive diagnostic tools include CrystalDiskInfo, HDDScan, and Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic. By monitoring the health of your drive and being proactive about backing up your data, you can help prevent data loss and ensure that your drive lasts as long as possible.

What is the average home user Load/Unload Cycle count based on daily 500GB backups?

The average Load/Unload Cycles for a home user NAS (Network Attached Storage) can vary widely depending on a number of factors, as I mentioned earlier. However, the backup frequency of 500GB of data per day may have some impact on the number of Load/Unload Cycles.

When a backup is initiated, the NAS will typically access the hard drives in order to read and write data. The frequency of these backup activities can contribute to the number of Load/Unload Cycles. However, it’s important to note that this is just one factor among many that can contribute to the overall wear and tear on a hard drive.

It’s difficult to estimate an average number of Load/Unload Cycles for a home user NAS based on the backup frequency alone, as there are many other variables to consider. In general, modern hard drives are designed to handle a large number of Load/Unload Cycles, and the specific number of cycles required to cause wear and tear can vary from drive to drive.

If you are concerned about the lifespan of your hard drive in a NAS, there are a few steps you can take to help extend its life. For example, you can use a high-quality hard drive designed for NAS use, monitor the drive’s health with diagnostic software, and maintain appropriate temperatures and humidity levels in the area where the NAS is located. Additionally, you can reduce the number of Load/Unload Cycles by minimizing unnecessary drive spin-ups and power-downs, such as by using power management settings on the NAS or scheduling backups to occur less frequently.

What should I know about noise levels of HDD

Most hard drive manufacturers provide information about the noise levels of their drives in their product specifications. Noise levels are usually measured in decibels (dB), with lower values indicating quieter operation. The noise level measurement is typically reported for both idle and active operation.

Idle noise is the sound produced by the drive when it is not actively reading or writing data. This is typically the quietest mode of operation for a hard drive, and the reported noise level is often in the range of 20-25 dB.

Active noise is the sound produced by the drive when it is actively reading or writing data. This is typically the loudest mode of operation for a hard drive, and the reported noise level can be in the range of 25-40 dB or higher, depending on the drive’s speed and other factors.

It’s worth noting that actual noise levels may vary depending on the specific conditions under which the drive is being used, such as the ambient noise level in the room or the amount of vibration present. Additionally, some hard drives may include features to reduce noise levels, such as vibration dampening or advanced firmware controls.

What are the best drives for a 1-bay and 2-bay NAS solution?

The general recommendation is WD Red Plus, Seagate Ironwolf or other NAS drives. But in reality, people also go for budget options such as Barracuda and even white-labelled shucked drives. With no RAID or RAID (mirror) there is not much that could jeopardise your data safety on a hardware level. But you will notice that life expectancy is much shorter compared to NAS drives.

Things to look at:

Warranty = 2 Years, not 3y.

Power-On hours = 2400 (7 hours a day )

WRL – workload TB per year = 55TB not 180TB

Recommended drives for 1-2 bay NAS:

WD Red Plus
Seagate Ironwolf
Toshiba N300

What are the best drives for the 4-8-bay NAS solution?

If you choose RAID10, you could get away with Barracuda and white-labelled drives again. But, you need to be honest with POH (power on hours per day) and WRL (workload per year). If you schedule you NAS to shut down outside working hours, you may be OK.

But with 4 bays and above people will want to use RAID1 (SHR) or RAID6 (SHR2) setup. Desktop drives will wear out quicked in this setup.

Recommended drives for 4-8 bay NAS:

WD Red Plus
Seagate Ironwolf
Toshiba N300

What are the best drives for 8-bay and above NAS solutions?

Anything above 8 bays could still use WD Red plus or Ironwolf drives. But it is expected that with that number of bays, you will be expecting better responsiveness and speed. Drives that support higher IOPSm speed and higher vibration environments are:

WD Red Pro
WD Gold
HGST, Ultrastar
Ironwolf PRO
EXOS
Toshiba N300
Toshiba Enterprise

What are the best drives for video editing?

You may use your NAS even though it has no 8-bays. Nowadays there are options that can achieve great speeds using even 2-bay models.

It will be tricky to gain fast enough bandwidth using two hard drives. But if you set them up in a RAID0 this might be sufficient. Otherwise, people consider SATA SSD in HDD bays. Or even NVMe storage pool instead of caching.

With 4 or more bays, there can be enough speed available to sustain a single 4K editor. But as always, SSD will offer better responsiveness.

A little bit more about the drives

Western Digital Red Plus

The most quite drives

SPECIFICATIONS

NAS: Up to 8 Bays

Workload: 180TB/yr

Reliability MTBF: 1000000

Warranty: 3 years

The Western Digital Red Plus range is a series of high-performance hard drives designed for use in Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems with up to 8 bays. With a workload rating of up to 180TB per year and a reliability MTBF of 1 million hours, these drives are built to handle demanding workloads and provide reliable, long-term storage. The Red Plus range comes in a variety of capacities, ranging from 1TB to 14TB, with spindle speeds of either 5400 or 7200 RPM. Additionally, the drives feature a 3-year warranty, ensuring peace of mind for users. With its impressive combination of capacity, speed, and reliability, the Western Digital Red Plus range is an excellent choice for those seeking high-quality storage solutions for their NAS systems.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
Red Plus	WD101EFBX	10TB	38.0	8.4	7200	215 MB/s
Red Plus	WD120EFBX	12TB	29.0	6.3	7200	196 MB/s
Red Plus	WD140EFGX	14TB	29.0	6.5	7200	210 MB/s
Red Plus	WD140EFFX	14TB	29.0	6.5	7200	210 MB/s
Red Plus	WD10EFRX	1TB	22.0	3.3	5400	150 MB/s
Red Plus	WD20EFZX	2TB	27.0	4.8	5400	175 MB/s
Red Plus	WD30EFZX	3TB	27.0	4.8	5400	175 MB/s
Red Plus	WD40EFPX	4TB	27.0	4.7	5400	180 MB/s
Red Plus	WD40EFZX	4TB	27.0	4.8	5400	175 MB/s
Red Plus	WD60EFPX	6TB	27.0	4.7	5400	180 MB/s
Red Plus	WD60EFZX	6TB	30.0	6.2	5640	185 MB/s
Red Plus	WD80EFBX	8TB	29.0	8.8	7200	210 MB/s
Red Plus	WD80EFZZ	8TB	30.0	6.2	5640	185 MB/s

Find the best Price per TB here: Price per TB NAS builder tool

Western Digital Red Pro

NAS drive option for pros

SPECIFICATIONS

NAS: Up to 24 Bays

Workload: 300TB/yr

Reliability MTBF: 1000000

Warranty: 5 years

The Western Digital Red Pro range is a high-quality option for professional use in Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems, designed to deliver reliable and efficient performance. With a maximum workload of 300TB per year and a 5-year warranty, these drives are built to last and can be used in NAS systems with up to 24 bays. The Red Pro range has a mean time between failure (MTBF) of 1,000,000 hours, ensuring a high level of reliability. The drives are available in capacities ranging from 2TB to 22TB, with spindle speeds of 7,200 RPM and data transfer rates of up to 272MB/s. The Red Pro drives are energy-efficient, with power consumption ranging from 5.7W to 8.8W, making them an excellent choice for businesses and professionals looking for a high-performance, reliable NAS drive.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
Red PRO	WD101KFBX	10TB	36.0	5.7	7,200	240 MB/s
Red PRO	WD102KFBX	10TB	38.0	8.4	7,200	265 MB/s
Red PRO	WD121KFBX	12TB	36.0	6	7200	240 MB/s
Red PRO	WD141KFGX	14TB	36.0	6.2	7,200	255 MB/s
Red PRO	WD161KFGX	16TB	36.0	6.1	7,200	259 MB/s
Red PRO	WD181KFGX	18TB	36.0	6.1	7,200	272 MB/s
Red PRO	WD201KFGX	20TB	32.0	6.9	7,200	268 MB/s
Red PRO	WD221KFGX	22TB	32.0	6.8	7,200	265 MB/s
Red PRO	WD240KFGX	24TB	32.0	6.4	7,200	287 MB/s
Red PRO	WD2002FFSX	2TB	31.0	7.8	7,200	164 MB/s
Red PRO	WD4003FFBX	4TB	36.0	7.2	7,200	217 MB/s
Red PRO	WD6003FFBX	6TB	36.0	7.2	7,200	238 MB/s

Seagate IronWolf

The safest data storage option

SPECIFICATIONS

NAS: Up to 8 Bays

Workload: 180TB/yr

Reliability MTBF: 1000000

Warranty: 3 years +Free Data Recovery (3 years)

The Seagate IronWolf range is a collection of high-capacity hard drives designed for use in Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems with up to 8 bays. With a workload rating of up to 180TB per year and a reliability MTBF of 1 million hours, the IronWolf drives offer reliable and long-term storage solutions for NAS applications. The IronWolf range comes in various capacities, ranging from 1TB to 12TB, with spindle speeds of either 5400 or 7200 RPM. Some of the drives also come with additional features like RV (Rotational Vibration) sensors that help reduce vibrations and prevent system errors. Moreover, the IronWolf range includes a 3-year warranty that also comes with a free data recovery service. This ensures that users’ data is protected in case of any hardware failure. Overall, the Seagate IronWolf range provides an excellent solution for users who require high-capacity and reliable storage for their NAS systems.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
Ironwolf	ST10000VN0008	10TB	30.0	7.8	7,200	210MB/s
Ironwolf	ST10000VN0008	10TB	32.0	10.1	7,200	210MB/s
Ironwolf	ST12000VN0008	12TB	30.0	7.3	7200	210MB/s
Ironwolf	ST1000VN008	1TB	21.0	3.1	5,400	180MB/s
Ironwolf	ST1000VN002	1TB	23.0	3.76	5,900	180MB/s
Ironwolf	ST2000VN003	2TB	21.0	3.1	5,400	180MB/s
Ironwolf	ST2000VN004	2TB	21.0	4.3	5,900	180MB/s
Ironwolf	ST3000VN006	3TB	25.0	3.7	5,400	202MB/s
Ironwolf	ST3000VN007	3TB	25.0	4.8	5,900	180MB/s
Ironwolf	ST4000VN006	4TB	25.0	3.7	5400	202MB/s
Ironwolf	ST4000VN008	4TB	25.0	4.8	5,900	180MB/s
Ironwolf	ST6000VN006	6TB	26.0	5.3	5,400	202MB/s
Ironwolf	ST6000VN001	6TB	27.0	5.3	5,400	190MB/s
Ironwolf	ST8000VN002	8TB	26.0	5.3	5400	202MB/s
Ironwolf	ST8000VN004	8TB	32.0	10.1	7,200	210MB/s

Find the best Price per TB here: Price per TB NAS builder tool

Seagate Exos

The most long-lasting drives

SPECIFICATIONS

Bays: No limit

Workload: 550TB/yr

Reliability MTBF: 1000000

Warranty: 5 years

Seagate Exos range offers high-capacity drives that are designed for use in data centers and other enterprise-level applications. These drives are known for their reliability and durability, making them a popular choice for businesses that need to store and access large amounts of data. With capacities ranging from 1TB to 18TB, and a workload rating of up to 550TB per year, these drives can handle even the most demanding workloads. In addition, the Seagate Exos range comes with a five-year warranty, providing users with added peace of mind. The Exos X16 and Exos X20 models offer impressive speeds of up to 261MB/s and 258MB/s, respectively, making them ideal for data-intensive applications that require fast read and write speeds. The Seagate Exos range is designed to deliver the highest level of performance, reliability, and durability for enterprise-level storage needs.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
Exos X16	ST10000NM001G	10TB	34.0	9.5	7,200	245MB/s
Exos X20	ST10000NM018G	10TB	34.0	8.6	7,200	258MB/s
Exos X16	ST12000NM001G	12TB	34.0	9.5	7200	245MB/s
Exos X20	ST12000NM000J	12TB	34.0	8.6	7200	258MB/s
Exos X16	ST14000NM001G	14TB	34.0	10	7,200	261MB/s
Exos X20	ST14000NM000J	14TB	34.0	9.2	7,200	258MB/s
Exos X16	ST16000NM001G	16TB	34.0	10	7,200	261MB/s
Exos X20	ST16000NM000J	16TB	34.0	9.4	7,200	258MB/s
Exos X20	ST18000NM000J	18TB	34.0	9.4	7,200	258MB/s

Find the best Price per TB here: Price per TB NAS builder tool

Seagate IronWolf Pro

Best drives for peace of mind

SPECIFICATIONS

NAS: Up to 24 Bays

Workload: 300TB/yr

Reliability MTBF: 1200000

Warranty: 5 years +Free Data Recovery (3years)

The Seagate IronWolf Pro range of hard drives is designed for use in Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems with up to 24 bays. These drives have a workload rating of up to 300TB per year, making them ideal for use in high-traffic NAS environments. The IronWolf Pro range is also known for its high level of reliability, with a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 1.2 million hours. Additionally, these drives come with a 5-year warranty for added peace of mind. The IronWolf Pro range includes drives with a capacity of up to 20TB, with spindle speeds of 7,200 RPM and read speeds of up to 285MB/s. These drives also have a relatively low noise output of 26.0 dB, making them suitable for use in quiet environments.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
Ironwolf PRO	ST10000NE0008	10TB	26.0	7.8	7,200	240MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST10000NT001	10TB	30.0	10.1	7,200	263MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST10000NE000	10TB	30.0	10.1	7,200	240MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST12000NT001	12TB	26.0	7.8	7200	270MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST12000NE0008	12TB	26.0	7.8	7200	240MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST14000NT001	14TB	26.0	7.6	7,200	270MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST14000NE0008	14TB	26.0	7.6	7,200	255MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST16000NT001	16TB	26.0	7.6	7,200	270MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST16000NE000	16TB	26.0	7.6	7,200	255MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST18000NT001	18TB	26.0	8	7,200	285MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST18000NE000	18TB	26.0	8	7,200	260MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST20000NT001	20TB	26.0	7.7	7,200	285MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST20000NE000	20TB	26.0	7.7	7,200	285MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST22000NT001	22TB	26.0	7.9	7,200	285MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST2000NT001	2TB	30.0	6.7	7,200	226MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST2000NE001	2TB	30.0	6.7	7,200	220MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST4000NT001	4TB	30.0	8.7	7,200	250MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST4000NE001	4TB	30.0	8.7	7,200	220MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST6000NT001	6TB	30.0	9.3	7,200	250MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST6000NE000	6TB	30.0	9.3	7,200	220MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST8000NT001	8TB	30.0	10.1	7,200	255MB/s
Ironwolf PRO	ST8000NE001	8TB	30.0	10.1	7,200	240MB/s

Find the best Price per TB here: Price per TB NAS builder tool

Synology HAT5300

All in one place solution

SPECIFICATIONS

The Synology HAT5300 HDD range offers an all-in-one solution for those looking to upgrade their network-attached storage (NAS). With no limit on bays, these hard drives have a workload rating of up to 550TB per year and an impressive reliability MTBF of 2,000,000-2,500,000 hours. The Synology-specific firmware on these drives ensures they perform optimally in conjunction with the hardware and software of Synology’s NAS systems. One major advantage of using these HDDs is the ability to update the firmware without removing the drives from the NAS. Additionally, the HDD warranty is covered under the same roof as the NAS itself, making it much more convenient for users to resolve any issues. The HAT5300 range offers a variety of capacities, ranging from 4TB to 18TB, with noise levels ranging from 20 to 34 decibels and speeds of up to 268 MiB/s.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
HAT5300	HAT5300-12T	12TB	27.0	7.83	7,200	242 MiB/s
HAT5300	HAT5300-16T	16TB	34.0	7.63	7,200	262 MiB/s
HAT5300	HAT5300-18T	18TB	20.0	8.35	7,200	268 MiB/s
HAT5300	HAT5300-4T	4TB	34.0	7.76	7,200	243 MiB/s
HAT5300	HAT5300-8T	8TB	34.0	9.29	7,200	248 MiB/s

Synology HAT3300

All-in-one-place solution budget version

SPECIFICATIONS

The Synology HAT3300 is a budget-friendly all-in-one solution for those looking for reliable and affordable hard drives for their NAS system. These drives come in capacities ranging from 4TB to 12TB and are designed to work with Synology NAS systems of up to 8 bays. With a workload rating of 180TB per year and a reliability MTBF of 1,000,000 hours, these drives offer peace of mind to users who require consistent and dependable performance. They also come with a 3-year warranty and a low noise level, making them a great choice for those who prefer quiet operation. Although they do not have the same workload rating and reliability as the HAT5300 series, they are a good option for those who do not require high-end features and performance.

model	serial	capacity	noise	watts	rpm	speed
HAT3300	HAT3300-12T	12TB	32.0	7.8	7,200	210MB/s
HAT3300	HAT3300-4T	4TB	25.0	4.8	5900	180 MiB/s
HAT3300	HAT3300-6T	6TB	27.0	5.3	5,400	190MB/s
HAT3300	HAT3300-8T	8TB	26.0	5.3	5400	202MB/s

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Seagate 20TB Ironwolf Pro ST20000NT001 HDD Review – NT Version

Rob Andrews — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 07:00:04 +0000

The Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD Review – NT Enterprise Edition

Seagate and their Ironwolf series of hard drives have fast become a mainstay of the NAS landscape in a relatively short time, considering their NAS HDD and eventual rebranding to Ironwolf in 2015/2016. In that time they have closed considerable ground on their biggest rival in this field, the WD Red series, and now although the brand first released Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drives back at the start of 2022, they are now in the process of revising a number of these drives and introducing a new higher durability STX0000NT001 series to join that existing the STX000NE001. These newer class of Prosumer/large-scale storage array NAS hard drives arrive with almost twice the workload rating, more than double the MTBF rating and still maintain the same high reported performance levels. All this said, why the sudden change? Perhaps facilitated by hardware shortages or due to the growing concerns of some users over larger capacities having the same workload rating of smaller capacities, leading to diminishing durability returns? Whatever the reason (more on that later), there is no denying that 20TB of storage in a single 3.5″ HDD casing is something to behold and today we are going to review this new massive drive from Seagate, benchmark it, test it with leading NAS brands Synology and QNAP, discuss the differences ith the existing Ironwolf Pro range and (hopefully) help you decide if it deserves your data? Let’s begin.

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Quick Conclusion

Straight out the gate, the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD comfortably delivers on it’s promises of performance. This alongside full tested and confirmed compatibility with Synology and QNAP NAS devices means that you have a drive here that can turn any 4-Bay NAS into a 60TB RAID5 Storage colossus – let alone once you start thinking about rackmounts and hyperscale. The pricing at the time of writing is a little muddled (the result of having two SKUs/Model IDs floating around in the market and eTailers having to play catch up) but that should hopefully iron out over time. I particularly appreciate that the workload discussion surrounding ‘Pro’ Class drives at 300TB/yr vs rapid HDD capacity growth is being addressed here with a 550TB/yr version to rival that of ‘Ent’ class drives – whatever the reason/motivation. The value of the Ironwolf Health Management tool is going to be something of debate and the inclusion of 3yrs data recovery services is a nice extra that (with any luck) few will need to use – but having them included in a 20TB HDD that still manages to maintain a similar level of Price per TB vs the bulk of NAS HDDs in the Pro tier increases the value notably. As HDDs continue to increase in scale and Seagate (among other brands) continues to outline their plans to hit 50TB by the end of the decade, the Seagate Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 is another good example of an HDD that finds a sweet spot between price, durability and value. Just be aware that this is a drive designed for large-scale use and that means high operational noise and higher than typical power use than non-Pro and smaller cap drives!

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What is the Difference Between the Seagate Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 NE Drive and Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 NT Hard Drive?

The difference between the previous/current generation of Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDDs and these newly released NT versions is largely based on their build and design being much close to that of the Seagate EXOS series, which results in higher sequential performance in the lower capacities, longer/higher durability rating and a larger scope of deployment. (Note – you can find out more on this in our article HERE or in our video HERE)

Main Key Differences Between Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the New NT Version

Standard Ironwolf Pro drives can be used in upto 24 Bay enclosures, whereas these new NT drives are data center scale in their deployment and results in limitless enclosure volume support
Standard Itonwolf dries have a 300TB annual workload, Ironwolf Pro can take 300TB a year and the new Seagate Ironwolf Pro NT series can reach take 550TB of writing per year
Across the range of capacities of Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the new Ironwolf Pro NT versions, the new NT version is around 15-30MB/s faster on reported sequential performance (likely higher in typical ad-hoc use). This increase is minimal in the larger capacities though
The Seagate Ironwolf NT series arrives with a reported 2.5 Miliion hours MTBF vs the 1-1.2 Million on standard Ironwolf Pro drives

Here is how the two versions of Seagate Ironwolf pro compare side by side on the rest of the specifications

HDD Type	Seagate Ironwolf Pro v.2	Seagate Ironwolf Pro
Price	£509 / $539 / €569 (01/02/23, ST20000NT001 version)	£449 / $429 / €449 (01/02/23, ST20000NE001 version, Currently on offer in numerous locations)
Available Capacity	2TB-20TB	2TB-20TB
Model ID Standard (X=capacity	STx000NT001	STx0000NE000
Interface	SATA	SATA
Drive Bays Supported	Unlimited	8-24-Bays
Magnetic Recording	CMR	CMR
Workload Rate Limit (WRL)	550TB per Year	300TB per Year
Rotational Vibration (RV) Sensors	Yes	Yes
On-board Cache	256MB	256MB
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours)	2.5Million	1Million
Sector Size (Bytes per Logical Sector)	512E	512E
Rescue Data Recovery Services(years)	3yrs	3yrs
Spindle Speed (RPM)	7200	7200
Max. Sustained Transfer Rate OD Seq Read (MB/s)	285MB/s (20TB) 285MB/s (18TB) 270MB/s (16TB) 270MB/s (14TB) 270MB/s (12TB) 263MB/s (10TB) 255MB/s (8TB) 250MB/s (6TB)	285MB/s (20TB) 260MB/s (18TB) 255MB/s (16TB) 255MB/s (14TB) 240MB/s (12TB) 240MB/s (10TB) 240MB/s (8TB) 220MB/s (6TB)
Rotational Vibration @ 10-1500 Hz (rad/s)	12.5	12.5
Operating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	0	0
Operating Temperature (drive reported, max °C)	65	65
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	-40	-40
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, max °C)	70	70
Vibration, Nonoperating: 10Hz to 500Hz (Grms)	2.27	2.27
Acoustics, Idle (typical, measured in Idle 1 state) (dBA)	20	20
Acoustics, Seek (typical) (dBA)	26	26
Shock, Operating 2ms (Read/Write) (Gs)	40/40Gs	40/40Gs
Shock, Nonoperating, 1ms and 2ms (Gs)	200	200

So, as you can see, both are available in between 2TB and 20TB at the time of writing, but it is in just a handful of specifications (though crucial to larger scale RAID/configurations) that major differences between the STXX00NE001 and STXX00NT001 can be observed.

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Design

The design of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD remains largely unchanged in appearance compared with the most recent high-capacity releases. The 3.5″ casing is helium sealed and the new NT class of drives arrive with a change in the labelling to differentiate them from the NE Ironwolf Pro series. Perhaps this differentiation is the separate them for use in 24+ Bay servers (given the oddly open-ended ‘unlimited bay’ support on the spec sheets vs the ‘upto 24-Bays of the Ironwolf Pro till now). Typically NAS/SAN system that feature 24x and higher storage bays would have been urged to opt for the EXOS series (available in both SAS and SATA). Perhaps this is a means to open up and bracket the Hyper-Scale and Data Center tier up, as more and more medium-large business setup single/paired Rackmounts outside of the large-sclae cabinet settings of the past? It’s hard to say, as otherwise, what problem is a newer and more durable Ironwolf Pro drive solving?

Standard Class Server Drives (so, upto 8 Bays of storage, small-medium Business deployment) is 180TB workload a year over the 3yr warranty
Large Scale Server Drives (above 8 Bays and upto 24 Bays for Higher-end business and large-scale deployment) at 300TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty
Enterprise/Hyperscale Server Drives (i.e Data Center, with theoretically limitless Bay numbers, factoring expansions and growth) at 550TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty

Now the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB is branded as a ‘Pro’ class drive (the middle one, above), however it arrives with a 550TB Workload rating, putting it well into the Enterprise bracket and treading on the toes of Seagates EXOS series – though lacking the SAS and Encryption options of EXOS options. However, the general rules of 180/300/550TB respective workloads on each tier begin to fall down a little when you factor that a 1TB drive that has a 300TB workload at 210MB/s performance and a 20TB that is also at 300TB workload annually, but 285MB/s max transfer will not only hit that workload limit quicker – but there is also the question of how this translates over time vs the available storage space and writes over time! Therefore the newer gen Seagate Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 Hard Drive arriving with 550TB/yr (alongside NT versions of many of the other lower capacities) does elevate this point somewhat for those users in between the Large Scale and Hyperscale/data center.

The 20TB in the ST2000NT001 is spread over 10 platters of 2TB each, made possible via the drive being helium sealed. This reduces potential internal drag and friction between platters, maintains the balance and allows much thinner platters to be used. Spinning at 7200RPM, the platters feature dual-plane balancing (known as AgileArray) also time-limited error recovery (TLER), which ensures the drive reading head isn’t delayed in intermittent read errors and can restart quickly to increase access when needed.

Overall, any improvements or changes in the build/construction of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB ST2000NT001 HDD over the rest of the range and/or the previous NE version are all internal. We have to take Seagate at their word on the effective doubling of the durability rating, but given their pedigree in the EXOS enterprise series, I have little doubt in this. Although the Ironwolf Pro 20TB is not the only NAS drive in the market right now that is breaking the 20 Terabyte level, it does arrive with a couple of things that many others don’t that we should cover – the included Data Recovery services and the Ironwolf Health Management tool for NAS.

Is Seagate Ironwolf Health Management and Rescue Recovery Services Worth Caring About?

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Testing

Testing the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB is going to be performed across multiple methods, but still rather unconventional. This drive is designed for deployment in large # Bay servers, but although I have several NAS in the studio that could accommodate this frequency of drives, I do not have sufficient Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB units. Therefore the testing I have conducted are all examples of single-drive performance. These will include several PC testing sessions using popular and recommended storage testing applications and two NAS tests involving Synology and QNAP.

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test Hard Drive connected to a Sabrent USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s external dock
Synology test was conducted on a DS923+ NAS using the system’s own benchmarking tool
QNAP test was conducted on a TS-464 NAS using the system’s own benchmarking tool

These last tests are important as not only is the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD designed for NAS use, but also at the time of writing neither brand lists this hard drive as compatible. There is more to this though that I will touch on later.

The first test involved using CrystalDisk. I performed tests on 64MB, 256MB, 1GB and 4GB test files, as well as mixed 70/30% R/W. The results were consistent and largely lived up to Seagate’s claims here.

This test used AJA and was a 512MB, 1GB and 4GB Test of a 5K Test file.

The next test used ATTO disk benchmark and this one used a 64MB, 256MB and 1GB test file in the same windows PC test environment. However, I also included the IOPS. The random 4K operations of a hard drive will typically be hugely dwarfed by those of SSDs, but enterprise HDDs and pro series drives still tend to rate noticeably higher than domestic HDD and standard-class NAS HDDs on this score.

In order to conduct a windows performance test, I copied 22.8GB of mixed files (2,310x) over to the drive as a separate disk. The result was consistent performance and the transfer, averaging at 174MB/s on the windows transfer overall and peaking at 239MB/s. Although this is lower than the transfer rates stated by Seagate and in the synthetic tests above, this is perfectly understandable when dealing with this high volume of small/differing date, compared with the largely Sequential Data tests stated elsewhere.

2,310 Files, 22.8GB Windows Transfer – 02:44

Synology & QNAP NAS Testing with the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive

Now, before I move on to the NAS testing. It is worth highlighting a couple of important factors with regard to the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB and the support available from each NAS brand I am focusing on for the testing. Now, Synology is the ONLY NAS brand in the market that also has its own first-party HDDs available to users too. These are Originally Toshiba Enterprise-grade produced hard disks that have had a Synology-specific firmware applied to them. Now, why is this relevant? Well, because some larger-scale Synology products in 2021 onwards do not list other 3rd Party HDDs as compatible. Even then, if you look up some of the older 2020 released NAS drives currently in the market (such as the DS920+ for example), they DO list HDDs from the likes of Seagate Ironwolf (and their EXOS and Skyhawk series) BUT they do not list drives larger than 18TB at the time of writing. This is an odd stance by the brand, when larger-scale 20TB and 22TB hard drives are available in the market and designed for NAS.

Nevertheless, you can still push through this warning and proceed to test the performance of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD from within the Synology Storage Manager. Here was the results.

The HDD compatibility of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard drive on the QNAP NAS platform is less complicated (eg the 18TB HDDs from most brands are listed) but at the time of writing the 20TB models are still not on the available list of compatible HDDs (again, this will likely be addressed shortly after commercial launch). Here is how the drive is benchmarked and appeared in the QNAP NAS system.

Noise Testing the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drive

This is something that is often overlooked when users are getting excited about bigger and bigger HDDs entering the market and the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB is no exception to this – NOISE! Because of the sheer scale of hardware that is getting packed into these larger capacity 3.5″ HDD casing and the more industrious hardware inside that needs to perform 24×7 durably, operational noise is unavoidable. Once you exceed around 8-10TB (HDD brand dependant), the increased platters and heavier duty actuator/arm mechanism needs to be a grat deal more reactive (due to the larger space that is needed to be covered ad-hoc. The Seagate ST2000NT001 20TB is a pretty spot-on example of this and although you are getting some great performance, it is achieved with a large amount of mechanical work under the bonnet. Now, if you are running a larger-scale data center/rackmount style setup, this is not going to be much of a barrier. As those kinds of server will have multiple fans and use horizontal pressure fan cooling – so they will be much louder than the drives! However, in more modest 4-8 Bay desktop NAS systems, its a different story, as these use smaller/quieter fans and alongside being more conductive of vibration, the noise of these drives in operation will be a great deal more obvious.

https://nascompares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Seagate-Ironwolf-Pro-20TB-ST20000NT001-Hard-Drive-Noise-Synology.wav

And here is the same test being performed in a QNAP TS-464 NAS 4-Bay with Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDDs . Same 4K Benchmark scenario, in a similar scale 4x RAID 5 setup as the Synology. Again, this represents PEAK access. In a regular idle/standby, it will be quieter.

https://nascompares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Seagate-Ironwolf-Pro-20TB-ST20000NT001-Hard-Drive-Noise-QNAP.wav

If you want a better idea of typical operational noise and noise when booting the drive with the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TBs, watch the middle portion of the YouTube review HERE. Regardless, if you are sensitive to noise, will be in close proximity to the NAS device (direct 10GbE editing?) and will be running a smaller scale NAS system – then these new 20TB HDDs might not be quite your cup of tea!

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Conclusion

PROs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB	CONs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB
Very Good Price Point vs WD Red/Red Pro Data Recovery Services Included (3yrs) 550TB/yr Workload & 2.5M MTBF 285MB/s Transfer Speeds Ironwolf Health Management Inc. Seagate Secure Onboard Cosistent Performance	Noisy!!! Definitely Cannot have Just One Pricing and Model ID Confusion Higher Standby/Idle Power Use Tipping point vs SDDs

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Seagate 20TB Ironwolf Pro HDD Review – New NT Version

Rob Andrews — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:52:49 +0000

The Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD Review – NT Enterprise Edition

Seagate and their Ironwolf series of hard drives have fast become a mainstay of the NAS landscape in a relatively short time, considering their NAS HDD and eventual rebranding to Ironwolf in 2015/2016. In that time they have closed considerable ground on their biggest rival in this field, the WD Red series, and now although the brand first released Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drives back at the start of 2022, they are now in the process of revising a number of these drives and introducing a new higher durability STX0000NT001 series to join that existing the STX000NE001. These newer class of Prosumer/large-scale storage array NAS hard drives arrive with almost twice the workload rating, more than double the MTBF rating and still maintain the same high reported performance levels. All this said, why the sudden change? Perhaps facilitated by hardware shortages or due to the growing concerns of some users over larger capacities having the same workload rating of smaller capacities, leading to diminishing durability returns? Whatever the reason (more on that later), there is no denying that 20TB of storage in a single 3.5″ HDD casing is something to behold and today we are going to review this new massive drive from Seagate, benchmark it, test it with leading NAS brands Synology and QNAP, discuss the differences ith the existing Ironwolf Pro range and (hopefully) help you decide if it deserves your data? Let’s begin.

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Quick Conclusion

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What is the Difference Between the Seagate Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 NE Drive and Ironwolf Pro ST2000NT001 NT Hard Drive?

Main Key Differences Between Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the New NT Version

Standard Ironwolf Pro drives can be used in upto 24 Bay enclosures, whereas these new NT drives are data center scale in their deployment and results in limitless enclosure volume support
Standard Itonwolf dries have a 300TB annual workload, Ironwolf Pro can take 300TB a year and the new Seagate Ironwolf Pro NT series can reach take 550TB of writing per year
Across the range of capacities of Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the new Ironwolf Pro NT versions, the new NT version is around 15-30MB/s faster on reported sequential performance (likely higher in typical ad-hoc use). This increase is minimal in the larger capacities though
The Seagate Ironwolf NT series arrives with a reported 2.5 Miliion hours MTBF vs the 1-1.2 Million on standard Ironwolf Pro drives

Here is how the two versions of Seagate Ironwolf pro compare side by side on the rest of the specifications

HDD Type	Seagate Ironwolf Pro v.2	Seagate Ironwolf Pro
Price	£509 / $539 / €569 (01/02/23, ST20000NT001 version)	£449 / $429 / €449 (01/02/23, ST20000NE001 version, Currently on offer in numerous locations)
Available Capacity	2TB-20TB	2TB-20TB
Model ID Standard (X=capacity	STx000NT001	STx0000NE000
Interface	SATA	SATA
Drive Bays Supported	Unlimited	8-24-Bays
Magnetic Recording	CMR	CMR
Workload Rate Limit (WRL)	550TB per Year	300TB per Year
Rotational Vibration (RV) Sensors	Yes	Yes
On-board Cache	256MB	256MB
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours)	2.5Million	1Million
Sector Size (Bytes per Logical Sector)	512E	512E
Rescue Data Recovery Services(years)	3yrs	3yrs
Spindle Speed (RPM)	7200	7200
Max. Sustained Transfer Rate OD Seq Read (MB/s)	285MB/s (20TB) 285MB/s (18TB) 270MB/s (16TB) 270MB/s (14TB) 270MB/s (12TB) 263MB/s (10TB) 255MB/s (8TB) 250MB/s (6TB)	285MB/s (20TB) 260MB/s (18TB) 255MB/s (16TB) 255MB/s (14TB) 240MB/s (12TB) 240MB/s (10TB) 240MB/s (8TB) 220MB/s (6TB)
Rotational Vibration @ 10-1500 Hz (rad/s)	12.5	12.5
Operating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	0	0
Operating Temperature (drive reported, max °C)	65	65
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	-40	-40
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, max °C)	70	70
Vibration, Nonoperating: 10Hz to 500Hz (Grms)	2.27	2.27
Acoustics, Idle (typical, measured in Idle 1 state) (dBA)	20	20
Acoustics, Seek (typical) (dBA)	26	26
Shock, Operating 2ms (Read/Write) (Gs)	40/40Gs	40/40Gs
Shock, Nonoperating, 1ms and 2ms (Gs)	200	200

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Design

Standard Class Server Drives (so, upto 8 Bays of storage, small-medium Business deployment) is 180TB workload a year over the 3yr warranty
Large Scale Server Drives (above 8 Bays and upto 24 Bays for Higher-end business and large-scale deployment) at 300TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty
Enterprise/Hyperscale Server Drives (i.e Data Center, with theoretically limitless Bay numbers, factoring expansions and growth) at 550TB workload per year over the 5yr Warranty

Is Seagate Ironwolf Health Management and Rescue Recovery Services Worth Caring About?

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Testing

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test Hard Drive connected to a Sabrent USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s external dock
Synology test was conducted on a DS923+ NAS using the system’s own benchmarking tool
QNAP test was conducted on a TS-464 NAS using the system’s own benchmarking tool

This test used AJA and was a 512MB, 1GB and 4GB Test of a 5K Test file.

2,310 Files, 22.8GB Windows Transfer – 02:44

Synology & QNAP NAS Testing with the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive

Nevertheless, you can still push through this warning and proceed to test the performance of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDD from within the Synology Storage Manager. Here was the results.

Noise Testing the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drive

https://nascompares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Seagate-Ironwolf-Pro-20TB-ST20000NT001-Hard-Drive-Noise-Synology.wav

https://nascompares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Seagate-Ironwolf-Pro-20TB-ST20000NT001-Hard-Drive-Noise-QNAP.wav

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB Hard Drive Review – Conclusion

PROs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB	CONs of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB
Very Good Price Point vs WD Red/Red Pro Data Recovery Services Included (3yrs) 550TB/yr Workload & 2.5M MTBF 285MB/s Transfer Speeds Ironwolf Health Management Inc. Seagate Secure Onboard Cosistent Performance	Noisy!!! Definitely Cannot have Just One Pricing and Model ID Confusion Higher Standby/Idle Power Use Tipping point vs SDDs

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Best Surveillance NAS of the Year – 2022/2023

Rob Andrews — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 17:00:14 +0000

A Guide to the Best Surveillance NAS Drives to Buy Right Now

Best Surveillance NAS – What Qualifies?

Only Desktop/Tower systems are being considered, Rackmount servers are generally harder to compare and are more tailored to data center and/or general server file storage
Each solution must be a combined Hardware+Software solution – Include a Surveillance Management utility
Must have at least 2 years of manufacturers warranty
MUST include at least 4 Camera Licenses (a large part of the cost ultimately)
Must be at least a 4-Bay NAS, as you need to provision for storage AND redundancy in the event of a failed drive
Must have the ability to export footage without interrupting live feeds
Must support accepted camera brands (AXIS, Hikvision, Edimax, Reolink, Annke, etc) as well as ONVIF protocol and client applications

What Have All the Best Surveillance NAS Drives Have in Common?

Combined Hardware & Software Solution – That means that you are buying the hardware, but it ALSO includes a web browser GUI, mobile apps and desktop client apps (including backup, media, streaming, surveillance and file management software)
All NAS systems in this guide are compatible with (and can be accessed by) Windows, Mac, Android and Linux operating systems
All NAS Solutions arrive with between 2-3 years Warranty (with the option to extend to 5 years)
All NAS drives can be accessed locally over the network, as well as secure remote access is possible with brand-supported services (at no additional cost)
The most modern and regularly updated NAS systems will support the very latest 20TB NAS hard drives (such as the Seagate Ironwolf 22TB and WD Red 22TB)
All the recommended solutions support multiple drive configurations (RAID) for drive failure protection and performance enhancements
All solutions receive regular updates to their security, features and services
All recommended NAS drives can connect and synchronize with cloud services (Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, etc), as well as Business/Enterprise services such as AWS, Azure, Backblaze and more
All NAS solutions (regardless of brand) feature the ability to host a shared drive on your PC/Mobile/Laptop systems that are synchronized with the NAS via the network/internet, but is shown in your native operating system file manager (i.e Mac Finder or Windows Explorer)
All the NAS solutions listed can be accessed DIRECTLY via an ethernet/network cable being connected from your PC/Mac system, to the NAS RJ45 port for 100MB/s and higher connectivity
All the best NAS solutions (regardless of brand) feature backup and sync tools that can be installed on your local client computer and allow regular backups of your files and system data

Best All Round Surveillance NAS Drive – QNAP TS-453E NAS

Current Price/Availability on Amazon – $599

Hardware Review – LINK

YouTube Video Review – Watch

What I said in my review Aug ’22:

Most Powerful Surveillance NAS System – Synology DVA3221 NAS

0-88TB, 4-Bays, Intel C3538 4-Core CPU, 4-32GB ECC Memory, 4x 1Gb Ports, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, 3yr Warranty, 8 Camera License included,

Current Price/Availability on Amazon – $2000+

Hardware Review – LINK

YouTube Video Review – Watch

What I said in my review Nov ’20:

Surveillance Station		DVA1622	DVA3221
Video Analysis	Deep Video Analytics Features	People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition) People counting Vehicle counting Intrusion detection Face recognition	People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition) People counting Vehicle counting Intrusion detection Face recognition
	Deep Video Analytics Tasks	People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition): up to 2 tasks People counting: up to 2 tasks Vehicle counting: up to 2 tasks Intrusion detection (detecting specific objects): up to 2 tasks Face recognition: up to 1 task	People and vehicle detection (without license plate recognition): up to 12 tasks People and vehicle detection (with license plate recognition): up to 6 tasks People counting: up to 12 tasks Vehicle counting: up to 12 tasks Intrusion detection (detecting specific objects): up to 12 tasks Intrusion detection (detecting all objects): up to 6 tasks Face recognition: up to 6 tasks

Best Affordable AI Surveillance System NAS – Synology DVA1622 NAS

0-44TB, 2-Bays, Intel Celeron J4125 4-Core CPU, 4-32GB ECC Memory, 1x 1Gb Ports, Uses Integrated Graphics for AI Processes, 3yr Warranty, 8 Camera License included, 16 CAMS Max

Current Price/Availability on Amazon – $599

Hardware Review – (Coming Soon)

YouTube Video Review – (Coming Soon, Hardware Overview HERE)

Cover all angles: Record and manage up to 16 IP camera feeds
Leverage deep learning: Run 2 simultaneous real-time video analysis processes or 1 facial recognition task
Licenses included: Add up to 8 IP cameras without purchasing additional licenses
Direct video output: Simply plug a monitor into the built-in HDMI port to watch surveillance feeds without a separate PC or mobile device
Local management: Set up, manage, and control your deployment locally by attaching a keyboard and mouse

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New Seagate Ironwolf Pro NAS Hard Drives – Say Hello to the NT Series!

Rob Andrews — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 20:07:52 +0000

Seagate Update Ironwolf Pro Hard Drive Series with a new More Durable Enterprise NT Model

If you have been on the fence for a while about choosing the right Hard drive for your NAS, humming and ahhing about whether to choose a Pro series drive or an enterprise-class drive, then Seagate just made things a little easier for you with the release of the new Seagate Ironwolf Pro NT series of drives. Available now, these are new versions of the 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18 and 20TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro series, but now have had a few build elements tweaked to improve their durability and workloads to be much more comparable to data center class drives – whilst still maintaining the advantages and firmware focus of the Ironwolf Pro HDD series.

What Are the Specifications of the Newer Generation of Seagate Ironwolf Pro?

The difference between the previous/current generation of Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDDs and these newly release NT versions is largely based on their build and design being much close to that of the Seagate EXOS series, which results in a higher sequential performance, longer/higher durability rating and a larger scope of deployment.

Main Key Differences Between Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the New NT Version

Standard Ironwolf Pro drives can be used in upto 24 Bay enclosures, whereas these new NT drives are data center scale in their deployment and results in limitless enclosure volume support
Standard Itonwolf dries have a 300TB annual workload, Ironwolf Pro can take 300TB a year and the new Seagate Ironwolf Pro NT series can reach take 550TB of writing per year
Across the range of capacities of Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the new Ironwolf Pro NT versions, the new NT version is around 15-30MB/s faster on reported sequential performance (likely higher in typical ad-hoc use)
The Seagate Ironwolf NT series arrives with a reported 2.5 Miliion hours MTBF vs the 1 Million on standard Ironwolf Pro drives

Here is how the two versions of Seagate Ironwolf pro compare side by side on the rest of the specifications

HDD Type	Seagate Ironwolf Pro v.2	Seagate Ironwolf Pro
Available Capacity	2TB-20TB	2TB-20TB
Model ID Standard (X=capacity	STx000NT001	STx0000NE000
Interface	SATA	SATA
Drive Bays Supported	Unlimited	8-24-Bays
Magnetic Recording	CMR	CMR
Workload Rate Limit (WRL)	550TB per Year	300TB per Year
Rotational Vibration (RV) Sensors	Yes	Yes
On-board Cache	256MB	256MB
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours)	2.5Million	1Million
Sector Size (Bytes per Logical Sector)	512E	512E
Rescue Data Recovery Services(years)	3yrs	3yrs
Spindle Speed (RPM)	7200	7200
Max. Sustained Transfer Rate OD Seq Read (MB/s)	285MB/s (20TB) 285MB/s (18TB) 270MB/s (16TB) 270MB/s (14TB) 270MB/s (12TB) 263MB/s (10TB) 255MB/s (8TB) 250MB/s (6TB)	285MB/s (20TB) 260MB/s (18TB) 255MB/s (16TB) 255MB/s (14TB) 240MB/s (12TB) 240MB/s (10TB) 240MB/s (8TB) 220MB/s (6TB)
Rotational Vibration @ 10-1500 Hz (rad/s)	12.5	12.5
Operating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	0	0
Operating Temperature (drive reported, max °C)	65	65
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	-40	-40
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, max °C)	70	70
Vibration, Nonoperating: 10Hz to 500Hz (Grms)	2.27	2.27
Acoustics, Idle (typical, measured in Idle 1 state) (dBA)	20	20
Acoustics, Seek (typical) (dBA)	26	26
Shock, Operating 2ms (Read/Write) (Gs)	40/40Gs	40/40Gs
Shock, Nonoperating, 1ms and 2ms (Gs)	200	200

So, as you can see, both are available in between 2TB and 20TB at the time of recording, but it is in just a handful of specifications (though crucial to larger scale RAID/configurations

When Will the Newer Models of Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDDs Be Released?

The new Seagate Ironwolf Pro STx000NT001 range of HDDs are available now alongside the existing Pro generation on several websites, as well as being highlighted on the official Seagate product pages. Price differences between the original Ironwolf Pro and this new version are yet to be fully clarified.

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New Version of Seagate Ironwolf Pro NAS Drives Available

Rob Andrews — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 16:00:49 +0000

Seagate Update Ironwolf Pro Hard Drive Series with a new More Durable Enterprise NT Model

What Are the Specifications of the Newer Generation of Seagate Ironwolf Pro?

Main Key Differences Between Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the New NT Version

Standard Ironwolf Pro drives can be used in upto 24 Bay enclosures, whereas these new NT drives are data center scale in their deployment and results in limitless enclosure volume support
Standard Itonwolf dries have a 300TB annual workload, Ironwolf Pro can take 300TB a year and the new Seagate Ironwolf Pro NT series can reach take 550TB of writing per year
Across the range of capacities of Seagate Ironwolf Pro and the new Ironwolf Pro NT versions, the new NT version is around 15-30MB/s faster on reported sequential performance (likely higher in typical ad-hoc use)
The Seagate Ironwolf NT series arrives with a reported 2.5 Miliion hours MTBF vs the 1 Million on standard Ironwolf Pro drives

Here is how the two versions of Seagate Ironwolf pro compare side by side on the rest of the specifications

HDD Type	Seagate Ironwolf Pro v.2	Seagate Ironwolf Pro
Available Capacity	2TB-20TB	2TB-20TB
Model ID Standard (X=capacity	STx000NT001	STx0000NE000
Interface	SATA	SATA
Drive Bays Supported	Unlimited	8-24-Bays
Magnetic Recording	CMR	CMR
Workload Rate Limit (WRL)	550TB per Year	300TB per Year
Rotational Vibration (RV) Sensors	Yes	Yes
On-board Cache	256MB	256MB
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours)	2.5Million	1Million
Sector Size (Bytes per Logical Sector)	512E	512E
Rescue Data Recovery Services(years)	3yrs	3yrs
Spindle Speed (RPM)	7200	7200
Max. Sustained Transfer Rate OD Seq Read (MB/s)	285MB/s (20TB) 285MB/s (18TB) 270MB/s (16TB) 270MB/s (14TB) 270MB/s (12TB) 263MB/s (10TB) 255MB/s (8TB) 250MB/s (6TB)	285MB/s (20TB) 260MB/s (18TB) 255MB/s (16TB) 255MB/s (14TB) 240MB/s (12TB) 240MB/s (10TB) 240MB/s (8TB) 220MB/s (6TB)
Rotational Vibration @ 10-1500 Hz (rad/s)	12.5	12.5
Operating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	0	0
Operating Temperature (drive reported, max °C)	65	65
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, min °C)	-40	-40
Nonoperating Temperature (ambient, max °C)	70	70
Vibration, Nonoperating: 10Hz to 500Hz (Grms)	2.27	2.27
Acoustics, Idle (typical, measured in Idle 1 state) (dBA)	20	20
Acoustics, Seek (typical) (dBA)	26	26
Shock, Operating 2ms (Read/Write) (Gs)	40/40Gs	40/40Gs
Shock, Nonoperating, 1ms and 2ms (Gs)	200	200

So, as you can see, both are available in between 2TB and 20TB at the time of recording, but it is in just a handful of specifications (though crucial to larger scale RAID/configurations

When Will the Newer Models of Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDDs Be Released?

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NAS Frequently Asked Questions – SOLVED

Rob Andrews — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:21:06 +0000

Frequently Asked Questions about NAS

Network Attached Storage, or NAS, has been around for quite a few years now and has grown in popularity year on year. The appeal of cloud platforms such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 and iCloud has dwindled and decreased as overall costs after even a couple of years are higher than the cost of a comparably simple 1 or 2 bay NAS from the likes of Synology or QNAP. Likewise, with account hacking and leaks becoming a more and more regular occurrence in the news, the idea of having your own piece of network and internet storage, that also physically lives in your own home and/or office becomes increasingly attractive. However, despite NAS and NAS servers becoming more mainstream, there are so so many questions about NAS that many users still have unanswered. Below are the most frequently asked questions and the answers about NAS. If you have any further questions to add to the NAS FAQ, let me know.

Do you really need a NAS?

If you have data spread across multiple devices without a single backup location, then YES, you really do need a NAS drive. As it will make backing up with multiple devices easier, more automated and reliable.

If you are a business with large amounts of data that needs to be accessible quickly, across multiple machines or outside your office environment for off-site staff or clients, then Yes you need a NAS.

If you want your internet accessible data to be 100% inaccessible when needed (for security) and are considering a Cloud provider or a NAS, BUY A NAS!!! It is cheaper in the long run and can have individual and bespoke security measures.

What is a server at home?

A server at home is a network attached storage device (NAS) that is like a computer but with the emphasis on storage space. They can be purchased for as little as £100 and mean all your data can be accessed, used and backup’ed to and from over the internet or your home network (WiFi etc). Bigger and more expensive home servers can do more, such as virtual computers, surveillance recording and multimedia access.

What is meant by diskless NAS?

A Diskless NAS means that it a network storage device that is sold without any Hard Drives inside. Many NAS Brands like WD and Buffalo will only sell their NAS server devices with Drives already installed – this can often increase the price significantly, as well as limit the Hard Drives you to want to install. A diskless NAS is a device that you can choose which drives, how many and the capacity you want and install them yourself, for a more bespoke NAS storage device. Installing the Hard Drives is very easy and you can often save a lot of time and improve your long-term storage by choosing a diskless NAS and selecting the drives yourself.

What is a NAS external hard drive?

A NAS external Hard Drive is an external storage device that, unlike USB 3.0 and eSATA external Hard Drives, is accessed used the internet or your home network. So that means you can access the contents (DATA) of the NAS on your iPhone, iPad, Smart TV, PS4, XBOX One, Sonos Sound System, Bose system, Laptop, Smartphone and pretty much any DLNA enabled device without having to connect to it with a cable. Meaning you do not need to carry duplicates of all your data on all your devices, but can have one central NAS storage devices that all the other devices can access.

How do I connect to my NAS remotely?

You can connect to your NAS server remotely with the mobile applications that are free with your NAS Brand manufacturer for iOS and Android. Alternatively, you can use a number of desktop applications from the big brands QNAP and Synology NAS to access your device remotely. Lastly, you can create a network and internet accessible drive with iSCSI and then setup software (Virtual Machine, backup, Surveillance and more) on your Mac or Windows machine to read and write to the NAS remotely.

What is a NAS drive used for?

A NAS drive can be used for the following:

Apple Time Machine Backups
Synchronized Backups of Windows and Android devices
A Plex Media Server
DLNA Media Server
Download Server
Printer Server
Virtual Machine Deployment
Email Server
CRM and/or CMS System
A CCTV IP Camera Enabled Surveillance station for your home or office
File Server
and more…

What is a RAID hard drive?

A RAID Hard drive is a Hard Disk Drive that is designed to be used in a RAID configuration – in simple terms, it is a drive that can be installed with multiple other drives of the same type (such as WD Red RAID Drives, WD Purples Surveillance RAID Drives and Seagate Ironwolf NAS RAID Drives). These are designed to be on for long periods of time and for handling data that is shared and/or duplicated across multiple drives at once – constructed with better vibration, head and access controls). Most other drives are designed to work on their own.

What is RAID on a NAS and What are the different types of RAID?

RAID on a NAS is a means to protect yourself from losing your data due to hard drive failure. Hard Drives are the 2nd most vulnerable area of a NAS device and if a drive fails and you do not have a copy of the data elsewhere, you will most likely lose it all. RAID gives you a safety net (called REDUNDANCY) which means you can afford to lose 1, 2 or even 3 hard drives with the right configuration. The most popular and recommended RAID levels for a 2-Bay NAS and 4-Bay NAS from Synology and QNAP are:

RAID 0 – Meaning all drive storage is pooled together into 1 big drive – MOST UNSAFE
RAID 1 – Drives are duplicated so you lose half the available storage, but have a complete, up to the second copy of your data
RAID 5 – You lose 1 drive of data storage space, but data is spread across all the available drives and a small piece of information called PARITY is created each wave/stripe that makes a blueprint of all the data
RAID 6 – Same as above, but it removes two drives worth of space and protects you against the loss of two Hard Drives

What is a personal cloud storage device?

A personal Cloud storage device is a piece of Hardware, Like a NAS, that gives you the access, freedom, speed and utility of popular 3rd party cloud providers such as Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, Amazon S3 and more. However unlike those providers that hold your data on a server farm hundreds or thousands of miles away, where it can be broken into, a Personal Cloud (NAS) lives in your home/office and can be protected with both bespoke AES-256bit encryption, individual login credentials and if the worst case scenario, can be simply unplugged from the network/internet.

It is also considerably cheaper in the long term.

How do you connect to a NAS?

You can connect to a device in several ways:

– You can connect to a NAS via your home network as long as it is connected to the same router/switch that your other devices are connected to, via cable or over WiFi (the devices, not the NAS)

– You can connect over the internet using the NAS manufacturers respective software on desktop or mobile platforms for Mac, Windows and Android devices

– You can also access the data as a network drive (where the location of the drive with being an IP – 192.168. etc) and then the drive can be read and written to as needed

How does a NAS device work?

Excellent Question. A NAS device is like a computer that is dedicated to storing data that is made accessible across all your internet-enabled devices. It connects to your home network (in simple terms, the internet connected network in your home or office) and makes the data that is stored on it accessible. You can also access the data from outside the phone via WiFi at hotspots and other buildings, or via your mobile 3G or 4G internet connection.

What is a NAS drives for home?

A NAS drive for Home is the means of storing your data in a central location that can be used for more home and entertainment based applications. Often these are 2-Bay or 4-Bay NAS Devices that support applications such as Plex, DLNA Server support, Backups like Apple Time Machine and Surveillance over IP cameras from companies such as Edimax and Reolink. The Hard drives on a NAS Drive for Home are recommended to be WD Red NAS Drives or Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives.

Is there a difference between network drive, backup drive, network hard drive and NAS drive?

There is no physical difference between a network drive, backup drive, network hard drive and NAS drive, the MAIN difference is about the use of the equipment. So:

A Network Drive is an area of storage that is useable to anyone on the network and will be visible to the device you are using if you have the correct login/password.

A Backup Drive is a storage device is an area of NAS or DAS storage that is used JUST for backups and only for writing, not reading – it backs up one or multiple devices on a regular basis.

A Network Hard Drive is the same as a network drive, but instead of a portion of online storage that is network/internet access, it is an entire disk drive. Much larger and often includes a RAID drive acting as a fallback.

A NAS Drive can do all of the above. It can be set up to be a backup drive for all your devices, it can make either a portion or ALL of the storage available over the internet or network, it can do all of these at the same time and can give you much, much more access options thanks to NAS software from the likes of QNAP, Synology, WD, Asustor, Buffalo and Drobo.

Need Help?

Where possible (and where appropriate) please provide as much information about your requirements, as then I can arrange the best answer and solution to your needs. Do not worry about your e-mail address being required, it will NOT be used in a mailing list and will NOT be used in any way other than to respond to your enquiry.

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Best 10Gbe NAS of the Year

Rob Andrews — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 00:10:00 +0000

Choosing the Best 10Gbe NAS Drive of 2020

The popularity and affordability of 10Gbe in 2020 cannot be understated. Over the last few years we have seen this considerably faster network architecture rise in affordability thanks to a number of key manufacturers and technological genius’ making it much lower in price for network hardware brands to develop. Thanks to companies like Aquantia and their great development of 10G network controllers, we have seen a huge jump in the number of low price 10Gbe NAS solutions available to both home and business users. The advantages of 10Gbe to both these kinds of users is pretty clear, with 10 times the typical network speed available than the default 1Gbe in most typical network environments, it allows up to 10 times the productivity, 10 times the time-saving and also allows enormous amounts of data to travel quicker than most home users thought they could enjoy on a budget. All of the current brands have produced some great 10Gbe NAS storage devices in 2020 and today I want to talk about the best 10-gigabit ethernet NAS servers to buy right now, based on your budget, your network environment and which users will benefit the most from. Each of these top 3 NAS has been selected based on their affordability, their speed or their power. So let’s see the best 3 10Gbe NAS of 2020/2021.

Best 10Gbe NAS – What Qualifies?

Even in a network subject as niche as 10G, there are still many, MANY solutions available to buy in the NAS industry, so narrowing down to just THREE is not easy. So, in order to ensure only the best solutions are considered, the first thing we need to do it decide what qualifies as a ‘good 10G NAS solution. So, in order to qualify, they need to be:

The NAS server needs to have been released before October 31st 2020, so it has been officially available to buy and review
Although the solution does not need to have been released this year (i.e. 2018/2019) it HAS TO have been available to buy in 2020
Only Desktop/Tower systems are being considered, Rackmount servers are generally harder to compare and are more tailored to industry
Each solution must be a combined Hardware+Software solution
Must have at least 2 years manufacturers warranty
Hardware Architecture must be able to provide 1000MB/s through a single connection if the device is populated with Hard Drives (not relying on SSD or SSD caching to hit 10Gbe)
NAS System MUST have 10Gbe AND 1Gbe (at least) to allow end-users to allocate bandwidth appropriately
NAS Solutions can be Copper (10GBASE-T) OR fibre-based (SFP+)

With the parameters in mind, it narrows the field of available good 10Gbe NAS drives a little. So, below are my top 3 10Gbe NAS of the year, based on Cost, Value and Power.

Best Low-Cost 10Gbe NAS Drive – Terramaster F4-422

0-72TB (HDD), 4-Bays SATA HDD, Intel J43455 1.5-2.3GHz 4-Core CPU, 4-8GB DDR3 Memory, 1x 10Gbe Ports, 2x 1Gbe Ports, 3x USB 3.1, 2yr Warranty, $499

Hardware Review – https://nascompares.com/2020/09/03/terramaster-f4-422-review-an-affordable-10Gbe

What We Said 03/09/20:

Internally the hardware that this unit arrives with is very competitive at this price point, even without 10Gbe. Include 10Gbe into the mix and this could likely be one of the most affordable Intel/4K enabled 10 gigabit NAS drives in the market right now. The Terramaster F4-422 4-Bay NAS features an Intel CPU and 4GB of DDR3 memory which is not even the limit, opening up the device and installing an additional 8GB stick is very easy indeed. This internal hardware certainly enables a number of features that a large number of cost-effective ARM CPU could not. Most important of which is acting as a proficient and encoding enabled Plex media server. The device can support many users at the same time, each with their own login and privileges thanks to this CPU. All the while, setting up, configuring and maintaining a stable RAID across all available hard drives or SSD. However, if your budget is tight, you will be pleased to hear this device can function with a single HDD/SSD if need be and you can add further storage media as your budget allows (and expanding a RAID).

Overall the terramaster F4-422 NAS is definitely worth the price. I have seen numerous NAS brands grow in the last 8 years and the speed with which terramaster is developing, both the hardware and software, massively outpaces the likes of Synology and QNAP, that have taken twice as long to reach the point that terramaster has. If you are looking to buy your first NAS, but want to ensure that you get maximum features at a modest price-tag, you genuinely would be hard pushed to beat the Terramaster F4-422 right now in 2020. That said, there is no denying that some cost-cutting measures have taken place, with the HDMI output not functioning as you would expect at release or the lack of USB Copy Button. However, you will never find features like those, or software options with this hardware at this price limit that still have 10Gbe on the table and the Terramaster F4-422 serves as a great middle-ground for those that want their cake and eat it in their first steps into the world of NAS at a higher speed going forward.

PROS	CONS
VERY Affordable 10Gbe Intel Celeron 4-Core 10G at a great price Great RAID Options Fluid GUI Snapshot Replication BTRFS Supports Plex 4K Video transcoding Full Plex Transcoding DLNA Compliant RAM upgradable	No Copy button HDMI Currently Unsupported SSD Caching requires the loss of 1-2 Bays No Surveillance or VM App

Best Value 10Gbe NAS Drive – Synology DS1621xs+

0-108TB, 6-Bays, Xeon 4-Core CPU, 8-32GB Memory, 10Gbe and 2x 1Gbe Ports, NVMe SSD Cache Bays, PCIe Gen 3 x8 Slot, 5yr Warranty, $1650+

Hardware Review – https://nascompares.com/2020/09/10/synology-ds1621xs-nas-review

What We Said 10/09/20:

Whatever way you look at it, you cannot what question the sheer level of hardware value present in the DS1621xs+, especially compared with other similarly priced Synology NAS. In the DS1621xs+, you find one of the best performing internal and external NAS systems in the entire Synology portfolio, as well as providing you with an enterprise rackmount grade solution in a desktop form. I know it seems like a big statement, but this could genuinely be one of the best examples of what Synology provide to business users and certainly reorganises the portfolio for small and medium business users for the better in 2020/2021. Is it perfect, of course not, few things ever can be. But if your budget can extend to it, the Synology DS1621xs+ easily represents the very best of everything that Synology has to offer, while still maintaining a fantastic high standard to third-party software users worldwide.

Synology DS1621xs+ PROS	Synology DS1621xs+ CONS
10Gbe Equipped! Desktop Xeon Solution Dual NVMe M.2 cache PCIe Gen 3 x8 PCIe Equipped Great RAID Options (inc RAIF F1) Excellent choice of Apps DDR4 ECC Memory Numerous Backup Software Options Huge Virtualization Support 5yr Warranty 2x 5-Bay Expandable	1Gbe Ports seem a bit unnecessary No SHR Support Shame it does not support 1/2 x DX1215 NVMe SSDs cannot be used for RAW storage

Best & Most Powerful 10Gbe NAS Drive – QNAP TVS-872XT

0- 144TB, 8-Bays, 8th Gen i3 6-Core CPU, 16-64GB DDR4 Memory, Ports, NVMe SSD Bays for Caching and/or RAW Storage, 8 Camera License included, Thunderbolt 3 Connectivity, 3 yr Warranty, $1969

Hardware Review – https://nascompares.com/qnap-tvs-872xt-thunderbolt-3-nas-review

What We Said 21/12/18:

The QNAP TVS-872XT is a NAS drive that has taken the elite and overpowered attitudes that were previously the hallmarks of the Thunderbolt 3 NAS range and turn it into something a great deal more mature and accessible to mid-range users. Till now, if you wanted access to the full features and functionality of a fully equipped thunderbolt and 10Gbe enabled 4K NAS, you were forced to either compromise too much with the TS-453BT3 or break the bank with the TVS-1282T3. Thanks to this new QNAP TVS-872XT NAS however, you no longer need to compromise and have access to a much more balanced and well equipped NAS platform for photo and video editing post-production in 2019.

This 8 bay thunderbolt equipped NAS is about quality, not quantity and although may lack the wider coverage of users that the TVS-1283T3 has, it makes up for it with a much, much better and higher dedicated performance to those fewer connected users. What the XT series brings to the NAS industry is to fill a much-needed gap in the thunderbolt NAS portfolio and gives users an important choice between the existing product family. It is worth mentioning that you lose out on the 3rd tier of storage offered by the 82T series, as well as the long-term future-proofing it offers for PCIe upgrades to the GPU and adding high-speed users later – but unless you think this is a necessary possibility in the next 3-4 years, you should save your money and go for the QNAP TVS-872XT. Easily in my top 3 NAS of 2018 and going forward into 2019 (ed – and now 2020!)

What the QNAP TVS-872XT can do (PROS):

High Virtualisation Use
Two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 Ports which can allow 2 devices access at once
SSD Optimized with NVMe Support
Business Use
SMB Storage
Optimized for Post Production and Broadcasting
Embedded 10Gbe Port
Thunderbolt-to-10Gbe Adapter possible
DLNA Support
Apple Time Machine Support
Surveillance including multiple camera licences – 8 Licences FREE
iTunes Server
email server
Download server (FTP, HTTP, BT,NZB)
CMS and CRM systems
Office applications
Media Center support

What the QNAP TVS-872XT cannot do (CONS):

Only 2 TB3 Ports – so only 2 Editors at once
No Remote Control
no Intel i7 8th Gen option
Only 1 10Gbe Port
PCIe Slot that is available not compatible with 40Gbe cards

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WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD for NAS Comparison

Rob Andrews — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 09:50:20 +0000

Comparing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 vs WD Red SN700 SSD – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

Over the last few years of NAS Drive releases from brands like Synology, QNAP and Asustor, we have seen most Prosumer and SMB releases arriving with support of either M.2 NVMe SSD bays, or PCIe slots that allow you to add this feature in the system’s lifespan. The appeal of SSD cache has grown considerably in recent years, as the demands in speed and responsiveness of the data on NAS drives has grown considerably. Despite the well-established fact that SSDs are faster than Hard drives, there is no ignoring that the available capacity and price point of hard drives makes them ultimately more viable and desirable in a NAS than SSDs. However, SSD Caching serves as a nice middle ground, allowing you to enjoy the bigger and lower cost hard drive RAID storage pools, but also adding two or more individual SSDs to bolster the system in performance. The Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 are SSD’s that are designed with NAS use in mind and can be used in the process of write caching (where data is written to the faster performing SSD first, then migrated over to the HDDs), read caching (whereby more frequently accessed data is copied over to the SSDs in order to seed up their access by connected clients) or both together. There are numerous other SSD caching methods and protocols, but these are ultimately the most common and today I want to help you decide which NAS SSD you should install in your NAS Drive. There is around an 18-month release date difference between these two SSDs and although both are M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3×4 SSDs, there is a large degree of difference in their architecture to take into consideration. So let’s compare the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 and see which one deserves your cache.

It is worth remembering that the two SSDs in today’s comparison are m.2 NVMe in architecture and although PCIe Gen 4 is compatible with Gen 3 and old, they will not suitable for NAS drives with M.2 SATA connections. We have seen more modern NAS systems released in the last few years abandon m.2 SATA in favour of its PCIe counterpart, but both Seagate and WD both provide SATA alternatives in their Ironwolf and WD Red series. Examples of SATA SSDs for NAS can be found HERE on Amazon.

How do the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD Compare on Specs?

Both WD and Seagate are well known for their wide ranges of hard drive and SSD media, as well as both being pioneers of NAS server focused SSDs for caching and flash storage. Although SSDs are all built to a similar ground-level architecture, they will often have their later development shifted in favour of a specific targetted use. This is not a big surprise and much like the cutlery in your kitchen draw, they might be similar but one tool is much better at some tasks than others – ever tried using a spreading butter with a meat-claver? Or stirring tea with a ladle? The WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD are NAS targetted and although the performance is good, the true stand out factor in this design is the durability of the drive. SSDs for use in NAS systems will in most cases be used for caching and that means a very frequent turnover (i.e. data wrote, updated, deleted, repeat) daily as the demands of client users and devices change. Both of these SSDs arrive with a high level of durability and workload rating, but the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 definitely have differing ideas of preliminary architecture and what that price tag is being spent on. Let’s look at the shared base-level SSD architecture of each SSD (available on every capacity):

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr
MTBF/MTTF	1,800,000	1,750,000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 3×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS3 64L TLC	Sandisk 96L 3D TLC NAND
Controller	PS5012-E12DC	WD NVMe Controller

As you might know, WD develops practically all of their SSDs ‘in-house’ and feature proprietary NVMe controllers, subsidiary company NAND (in this case Sandisk) and this allows them to be able to control availability and pricing in a way that most other SSD brands cannot. Seagate uses 3rd party controllers and NAND manufacturers for the most part in their ranges, but are still generally quite top tier providers. The release time difference between the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 makes an impressive difference here in terms of the hardware on offer on either SSD, with the more recently released WD Red SN700 having notably superior connectivity, NAND quality and overall performance. The older Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD features 3years of forensic level data recovery services though (which caching NAS users might want to have in the event of ‘trapped data’ during write caching operations and a critical system failure/power-cut) which is very unique to the brand. However, overall the WD Red SN700 has the superior architecture here. Below is how the building blocks of the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 result in throughput, IOPS and Durability at each capacity tier (based on officially provided figures):

240/250GB	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020 ZP240NM30011 – $69	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021 WDS250G1R0C – $55
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2,450MB	3,100MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	290MB	1,600MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	100,000	220,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	12,000	180,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	435TB	500TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
480/500GB	ZP480NM30011 – $119	WDS500G1R0C – $79.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2,650MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	600MB	2,600MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	193,000	420,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	20,000	380,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	875TB	1000TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
960/1000GB	ZP960NM30011 – $209	WDS100G1R0C – $152.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	3,150MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	1,000MB	3,000MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	345,000	515,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	28,000	560,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	1,750TB	2000TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
1920/2000GB	ZP1920NM30011 – $409	WDS200G1R0C – $289.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	3,150MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	850MB	2,900MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	270,000	480,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	25,000	540,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	3,500TB	2500TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	0.7DWPD
1920/2000GB	N/A	WDS400G1R0C – $649.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,100MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	550,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	520,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	N/A	5100TB
DWPD	N/A	0.7DWPD

Overall, it should come as no surprise that the WD Red SN700 SSD is the notable leader here in practically all official benchmarks over the slightly older Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD, thanks to that improved architecture. Most notably in write performance and IOPS in general, it had a clear lead even in the lowest available capacities. Of course, these are officially provided performance figures and represent maximums based on the highest available hardware at the time of release. Let’s take a look at how these two SSDs compare in our own tests.

How Did the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 SSD Compare in OUR Tests?

Moving away from the official performance stats provided by WD and Seagate, I wanted to see how the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 compared in my own tests. Testing of these two SSDs will be broken down into 3 main parts, a CrystalDisk Benchmark test, Atto Disk Benchmark Test and an AJA media test. In each test, the SSD was in the 2nd storage slot (i.e not the OS drive). Each test was conducted three times and the system was left for 1 minute between tests to allow the SSD time to stabilize. The specifications of the test machine are:

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

CrystalDisk is still highly regarded as one of the most reliable tools for measuring storage media performance. Though it does create somewhat high-end results that may not be truly indicative of your own real-world setup, it can be used to display maximum potential throughput and IOPs at each tier. The first test for the Seagate Ionwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 was on a 1GB test file:

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

The next test was to perform the same parameters in CrystalDisk on the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510, but this time with a 4GB test file (larger files may result in higher sequential performance, but lower comparative IOPS):

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

ATTO DiskBenchmark 256MB Test File – Read, Write

Switching things up, I then moved testing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 SSD over to ATTO disk benchmark. A far more detailed tool that spreads performance testing over different file and block sizes. I started with the smallest ‘full range’ test file of 256MB (as smaller would reduce the range of block sizes). Here is how each SSD compared:

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

Sticking with ATTO DiskBenchmark, I then moved the testing of the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 onto a x16 bigger test file of 4GB. This would certainly shift where the peaks in performance would sit and hopefully produce a clearer disparity between these two SSDs:

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

I then switched to AJA, a popular media testing tool for video formats. Most SSDs will suffer over-saturated Memory/DRAM/SDRAM as sustained large file tests go on. The 1GB file test of AJA on the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 is still a small enough value not to be a problem though and we chiefly focused on the disk playback/reads graph to see how they compared in peak performance and also throughout the transfer:

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

Then we used a much, MUCH heavier test in AJA of 16GB on the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 SSD. Unsurprisingly this can often overflow the SSD cache/memory on board and result in a dip in performance as the SSD bottlenecks internally. So, when conducting this test, we are looking at peak performance AND how long the SSD maintained that performance before a potential dip. Here is how these two SSD compared:

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD – The Results

It will come as little surprise that in the case of comparing the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510, the more recently released and more modern architecture WD SSD was the victor in the majority of tests (both official 1st party and my own). Although it has taken WD almost a year and a half to release a competitor NAS NVMe SSD to Seagate’s entry, it is unquestionable the better performing drive as it takes advantage of numerous newer innovations in SSD architecture that have been developed and released in that time. The Durability across the entire range of the Ironwolf 510 series and three years of inclusive forensic level data recovery do make the Seagate Ironwolf an attractive choice in 2021, but in NAS use, general use and performance overall, the WD Red SN700 wins the day.

The WD Red SN700 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Overall Read Performance
Overall Write Performance
4K IOPs
Price Point per GB/TB
Capacity (4TB Max)

The Seagate Ironwolf 510 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Data Recovery Services (Rescue)
On-Board Over Provisioning
TBW and DWPD Overall

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#RunWithIronWolf and #WDRedNAS . This unit was supplied by @seagate and @WesternDigitalCorporation .The review provided was free of bias and my own independent opinions

Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs 510 NAS NVMe SSD Comparison

Rob Andrews — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 09:42:51 +0000

Comparing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 vs Seagate Ironwolf 525 – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

The Seagate Ironwolf series of NAS media has been around for a few years now and what started as a rebranding of their ‘NAS’ labelled series has now become a multi-tiered series of Hard drives and SSDs. Recently Seagate introduced a new entry into their Ironwolf SSD series with the 525 NVMe SSD. Presented as a higher bandwidth supporting alternative NVMe SSD to the Ironwolf 510 (released back in March 2020), the Ironwolf 525 is a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD that arrives in slightly larger capacities, much higher performance and still allowing backwards compatibility with PCIe Gen 3 m.2 slots in your NAS. So, with the release of this newer, faster and widely supported NVMe SSD, should you still consider buying the Seagate Ironwolf 510 at all? Well, yes! The older Ironwolf 510 still arrives with a few rather unique architecture and design choices that are not available in the Ironwolf 525 and today I want to take a close look at each of these NAS focused SSDs and help you decide which one you should buy for your NAS drive in 2021/2022.

Important – It is worth remembering that the two SSDs in today’s comparison are m.2 NVMe in architecture and although PCIe Gen 4 is compatible with Gen 3 and old, they will not suitable for NAS drives with M.2 SATA connections. We have seen more modern NAS systems released in the last few years abandon m.2 SATA in favour of its PCIe counterpart, but Seagate provides SATA alternatives in their Ironwolf series. Examples of SATA SSDs for NAS can be found HERE on Amazon. Additionally, it is worth highlighting for the later stages of testing in this comparison, I was only able to obtain the 240GB model of the Ironwolf 510, so although the performance shown is low (and much lower than the Ironwolf 525 as expected in most cases) it is particularly low because the test drive is the 240GB Model. Please follow the official performance specifications in the table below for a better indication of how comparable capacity drives would differ.

How do the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD Compare on Specs?

Seagate are well known for their wide ranges of hard drive and SSD media, as well as both being pioneers of NAS server focused SSDs for caching and flash storage. Although SSDs are all built to a similar ground-level architecture, they will often have their later development shifted in favour of a specific targetted use. This is not a big surprise and much like the cutlery in your kitchen draw, they might be similar but one tool is much better at some tasks than others – ever tried using a spreading butter with a meat-claver? Or stirring tea with a ladle? The Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD are NAS targetted and although the performance is good, the true stand out factor in this design is the durability of the drive. SSDs for use in NAS systems will in most cases be used for caching and that means a very frequent turnover (i.e. data wrote, updated, deleted, repeat) daily as the demands of client users and devices change. Both of these SSDs arrive with a high level of durability and workload rating, but the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 definitely have differing ideas of preliminary architecture and what that price tag is being spent on. Let’s look at the shared base-level SSD architecture of each SSD (available on every capacity):

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr + 3yr Rescue
MTBF/MTTF	1800000	1800000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 4×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS 4 96L 3D TLC NAND	Kioxia BiCS3 64L TLC
Controller	PS5016 SSD Controller	PS5012-E12DC

Seagate uses 3rd party controllers and NAND manufacturers for the most part in their ranges, but are still generally quite top tier providers. The release time difference between the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 makes an impressive difference here in terms of the hardware on offer on either SSD, with the more recently released Seagate Ironwolf 525 having notably superior connectivity, NAND quality and overall performance. Both Seagate Ironwolf SSDs features 3 years of forensic level data recovery services though (which caching NAS users might want to have in the event of ‘trapped data’ during write caching operations and a critical system failure/power-cut) which is very unique to the brand. However, overall the Seagate Ironwolf 525 has the superior architecture here. Below is how the building blocks of the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 result in throughput, IOPS and Durability at each capacity tier (based on officially provided figures):

240/250GB	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021 N/A	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020 ZP240NM30011 – $69
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	2,450MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	290MB
480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	ZP480NM30011 – $119
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	2,650MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2500MB / 2500MB	600MB
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	ZP960NM30011 – $209
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,150MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	1,000MB
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	ZP1920NM30011 – $409
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,150MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	850MB
3840/4000GB	N/A	N/A
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	N/A
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	N/A
240/250GB	N/A	ZP240NM30011 – $69
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	100K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	12K
2480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	ZP480NM30011 – $119
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	420K / 420K	193K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	630K / 550K	20K
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	ZP960NM30011 – $209
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	760K / 640K	345K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	28K
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	ZP1920NM30011 – $409
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	740K / 640K	270K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	25K
3840/4000GB	N/A	N/A
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	N/A
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	N/A
Heatsink Option	No	No
TBW Rating	700/1400/2800	435/875/1750/3500
DWPD Rating	0.7 DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD
Note – BLUE Text is the Seagate Ironwolf 525 on a PCIe Gen 3×4 Slot

Overall, it should come as no surprise that the Seagate Ironwolf 525 is the notable leader here in practically all official benchmarks over the slightly older Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD, thanks to that improved architecture. Most notably in write performance and IOPS in general, it had a clear lead even in the lowest available capacities. Of course, these are officially provided performance figures and represent maximums based on the highest available hardware at the time of release. Let’s take a look at how these two SSDs compare in our own tests.

How Did the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 Compare in OUR Tests?

Moving away from the official performance stats provided by WD and Seagate, I wanted to see how the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and 525 compared in my own tests. Testing of these two SSDs will be broken down into 3 main parts, a CrystalDisk Benchmark test, Atto Disk Benchmark Test and an AJA media test. In each test, the SSD was in the 2nd storage slot (i.e not the OS drive). Each test was conducted three times and the system was left for 1 minute between tests to allow the SSD time to stabilize. The specifications of the test machine are:

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

The next test was to perform the same parameters in CrystalDisk on the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510, but this time with a 4GB test file (larger files may result in higher sequential performance, but lower comparative IOPS):

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

ATTO DiskBenchmark 256MB Test File – Read, Write

Switching things up, I then moved testing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 over to ATTO disk benchmark. A far more detailed tool that spreads performance testing over different file and block sizes. I started with the smallest ‘full range’ test file of 256MB (as smaller would reduce the range of block sizes). Here is how each SSD compared:

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

Sticking with ATTO DiskBenchmark, I then moved the testing of the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 onto a x16 bigger test file of 4GB. This would certainly shift where the peaks in performance would sit and hopefully produce a clearer disparity between these two SSDs:

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

I then switched to AJA, a popular media testing tool for video formats. Most SSDs will suffer over-saturated Memory/DRAM/SDRAM as sustained large file tests go on. The 1GB file test of AJA on the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 is still a small enough value not to be a problem though and we chiefly focused on the disk playback/reads graph to see how they compared in peak performance and also throughout the transfer:

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

Then we used a much, MUCH heavier test in AJA of 16GB on the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525. Unsurprisingly this can often overflow the SSD cache/memory on board and result in a dip in performance as the SSD bottlenecks internally. So, when conducting this test, we are looking at peak performance AND how long the SSD maintained that performance before a potential dip. Here is how these two SSD compared:

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD – The Results

It is probably no surprise that the Seagate Ironwolf 525 is the better drive overall. With performance in throughput and IOPS that outshine the Ironwolf 510 in both Read and Write on a PCIe Gen 3 m.2 slot, then upping the ante considerably by allowing 2-3x that performance via a PCIe 4 M.2 Connection. That said, the adoption of PCIe 4 x4 as the connection of choice in a NAS is currently very low indeed, largely down to the large availability of PCIe 3 SSDs in the market AND the simply fact that manufacturers would need to dedicate notably more CPU PCIe Lanes to a Gen 4 connection than they would a Gen 3 (lanes that might be better used in improved NAS external connectivity or other hardware services). Additionally, the Seagate Ironwolf 510 has higher durability in all capacities, as well as a smaller 240GB capacity for those considering caching on much smaller systems/HDDs. The Seagate Ironwolf 525 is still the better SSD choice over the Ironwolf, but if you see it at a bargain price, have intensive data re-writes in mind or are looking for a smaller SSD, it’s still a viable option. And don’t forget, both SSDs include that 3 year Rescue Data Recovery service and Seagate Ironwolf Health Management that is accessible via your NAS Storage Manager (supported on Synology, QNAP, Asustor and more).

The Seagate Ironwolf 525 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Higher Performance (Read & Write), even in a PCIe Gen 3 Slot
Supports PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD Slots
Better Sustained Performance
Massively Higher IOPS ratings (Read and Write)
Takes Advantage of a several gen higher Phison Controller

The Seagate Ironwolf 510 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Higher Durability at 0.9-1.0 DWPD on all Capacities (IW 525 t 0.7 DWPD)
Smaller 240GB Capacity Available
PCIe Gen 3 is still at more than 95% adoption on NAS systems compared with PCIe 4
Been available longer, so might have more flexible pricing online

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#RunWithIronWolf This unit was supplied by @seagate and the preview provided was free of bias and my own independent opinions

WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD for NAS Comparison

Rob Andrews — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 00:22:15 +0000

Comparing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 vs WD Red SN700 SSD – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

How do the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD Compare on Specs?

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr
MTBF/MTTF	1,800,000	1,750,000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 3×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS3 64L TLC	Sandisk 96L 3D TLC NAND
Controller	PS5012-E12DC	WD NVMe Controller

240/250GB	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020 ZP240NM30011 – $69	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021 WDS250G1R0C – $55
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2,450MB	3,100MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	290MB	1,600MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	100,000	220,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	12,000	180,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	435TB	500TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
480/500GB	ZP480NM30011 – $119	WDS500G1R0C – $79.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2,650MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	600MB	2,600MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	193,000	420,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	20,000	380,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	875TB	1000TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
960/1000GB	ZP960NM30011 – $209	WDS100G1R0C – $152.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	3,150MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	1,000MB	3,000MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	345,000	515,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	28,000	560,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	1,750TB	2000TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
1920/2000GB	ZP1920NM30011 – $409	WDS200G1R0C – $289.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	3,150MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	850MB	2,900MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	270,000	480,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	25,000	540,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	3,500TB	2500TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	0.7DWPD
1920/2000GB	N/A	WDS400G1R0C – $649.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,100MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	550,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	520,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	N/A	5100TB
DWPD	N/A	0.7DWPD

How Did the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 SSD Compare in OUR Tests?

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

ATTO DiskBenchmark 256MB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD – The Results

The WD Red SN700 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Overall Read Performance
Overall Write Performance
4K IOPs
Price Point per GB/TB
Capacity (4TB Max)

The Seagate Ironwolf 510 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Data Recovery Services (Rescue)
On-Board Over Provisioning
TBW and DWPD Overall

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#RunWithIronWolf and #WDRedNAS . This unit was supplied by @seagate and @WesternDigitalCorporation .The review provided was free of bias and my own independent opinions

Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs 510 NAS NVMe SSD Comparison

Rob Andrews — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 00:10:22 +0000

Comparing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 vs Seagate Ironwolf 525 – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

How do the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD Compare on Specs?

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr + 3yr Rescue
MTBF/MTTF	1800000	1800000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 4×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS 4 96L 3D TLC NAND	Kioxia BiCS3 64L TLC
Controller	PS5016 SSD Controller	PS5012-E12DC

240/250GB	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021 N/A	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020 ZP240NM30011 – $69
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	2,450MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	290MB
480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	ZP480NM30011 – $119
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	2,650MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2500MB / 2500MB	600MB
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	ZP960NM30011 – $209
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,150MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	1,000MB
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	ZP1920NM30011 – $409
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,150MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	850MB
3840/4000GB	N/A	N/A
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	N/A
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	N/A
240/250GB	N/A	ZP240NM30011 – $69
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	100K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	12K
2480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	ZP480NM30011 – $119
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	420K / 420K	193K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	630K / 550K	20K
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	ZP960NM30011 – $209
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	760K / 640K	345K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	28K
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	ZP1920NM30011 – $409
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	740K / 640K	270K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	25K
3840/4000GB	N/A	N/A
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	N/A
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	N/A
Heatsink Option	No	No
TBW Rating	700/1400/2800	435/875/1750/3500
DWPD Rating	0.7 DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD
Note – BLUE Text is the Seagate Ironwolf 525 on a PCIe Gen 3×4 Slot

How Did the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 Compare in OUR Tests?

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

ATTO DiskBenchmark 256MB Test File – Read, Write

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

I then switched to AJA, a popular media testing tool for video formats. Most SSDs will suffer over-saturated Memory/DRAM/SDRAM as sustained large file tests go on. The 1GB file test of AJA on the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 is still a small enough value not to be a problem though and we chiefly focused on the disk playback/reads graph to see how they compared in peak performance and also throughout the transfer:

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD – The Results

The Seagate Ironwolf 525 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Higher Performance (Read & Write), even in a PCIe Gen 3 Slot
Supports PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD Slots
Better Sustained Performance
Massively Higher IOPS ratings (Read and Write)
Takes Advantage of a several gen higher Phison Controller

The Seagate Ironwolf 510 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Higher Durability at 0.9-1.0 DWPD on all Capacities (IW 525 t 0.7 DWPD)
Smaller 240GB Capacity Available
PCIe Gen 3 is still at more than 95% adoption on NAS systems compared with PCIe 4
Been available longer, so might have more flexible pricing online

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New Seagate 20TB Ironwolf Pro and EXOS Hard Drive Revealed

Rob Andrews — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 13:00:05 +0000

Seagate 20TB Irownolf Pro and EXOS Hard Drives for NAS/Server

It’s been in the pipeline for a while (originally revealed way back in Jan 2020 with hopes of arriving in Q1 2020 and developed deployed in the background since) that Seagate has had a planned 20 Terabyte 3.5″ SATA and SAS hard drive for 24×7 server use – but data center users may be pleased to hear that it is looking like an end of 2021 release. Arriving in their popular Ironwolf Pro NAS server and EXOs data centre-class series, these are among the biggest commercially available drives in the market and are a real feather in the cap for Seagate – who recently announced their roadmap for reaching 20TB, 50TB and a staggering 100TB by 2030 – see video here. Both the EXOs and Ironwolf Pro 20TB hard drives are arriving with helium seal design, high workload rating, CMR architecture and maximum drive speeds reported at 285MB/s. For those concerned with early adoption, 20TB Hard drives have already been in usage with the likes of major cloud companies and providers (for example Facebook, Google, Amazon Web Services, Azure etc) for well over a year now, so this tier of storage is by no means in its early days of development. These are going to be some serious kit (with the EXOS series arriving in SATA/SAS and onboard encrypted hardware versions) that are going to be available to the average company. Let’s take a closer look at each of these drives, how Seagate hit the big 2-0 and whether these should be your next big business storage purchase to hit the Petabyte mark?

What Are the Hardware Specifications of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drive?

The Seagate Ironwolf drive media range still continues to be one of the biggest in the NAS market, arriving at a better price point than most, yet still providing top-level performance and endurance. Alongside the inclusive business-level data recovery services included with the Ironwolf HDDs (so 5 years standard warranty and 3 years of inclusive data recovery coverage in the event of failure), this drive is also heavily geared towards the 24×7 use of NAS systems in both home and business. This new 20TB NAS hard drive is part of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro series, so that means an impressive 300TB workload rating, 5-year warranty, 7200RPM, 256MB cache and perfect for much, MUCH larger rackmount arrays. Although not likely to be the quietest drive, this will likely be largely dwarfed by the active cooling systems of even the most conservative business NAS solution. Below is a breakdown of those specifications in full:

Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drive
Product Family	SEAGATE IRONWOLF Pro
Capacity	20TB
Standard Model Number	ST20000NE000
Interface	SATA ONLY
Drive Bays Supported	Upto 24-Bays
Recording Technology	CMR
Drive Design (Air or Helium)	Helium
Workload Rate Limit (WRL)	300TB
Spindle Speed (RPM)	7200
Cache (MB)	256
Max. Transfer OD (MB/s)	285MB/s
Annual Power-On Hours	8760
Sector Size (Bytes per Logical Sector)	512E
Startup Current, Typical (12V, A)	2..0
Idle Power, Average (W)	5.5
Average Operating Power (W)	7.7W
Standby Mode, Typical (W)	1
Sleep Mode, Typical (W)	1
Vibration, Nonoperating: 10Hz to 500Hz (Grms)	2.27
Acoustics, Idle (typical, measured in Idle 1 state) (dBA)	28
Acoustics, Seek (typical) (dBA)	32
Rescue Data Recovery Services	3yr
Warranty	5yr

Unfortunately, this drive will not be seeing a non-PRO release, given the restructuring of Seagate in their capacities across PRO/non-PRO ranges. Additionally, the Seagate Ironwolf Pro will likely be quite a pricey drive, both for those enterprise build specs, the capacity and simply the exclusivity of the drive on the market.

What Are the Hardware Specifications of the Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB NAS Hard Drive?

The Seagate EXOS series, although often compared and similar to that of Seagate Ironwolf due to it’s server design and deployment, is a drive with a much larger focus of heavy, HEAVY workloads. The Seagate 20TB EXOs hard drive, much like the previous capacities before it, arrives with a hefty 550TB workload limit (TBC!), choice of SATA or SAS interfaces, 7200 PRM and a massive 2.5 million hours MTBF. As you would expect from an enterprise-grade drive, there is also a choice of self-encrypted drive (SED) versions that also features FIPS support (government class encryption). Below is a breakdown of the SATA/SAS EXOs 20TB hard drives and how they compare:

SPECIFICATIONS	SATA DRIVE – 20TB X20 Series	SAS DRIVE – 20TB X20 Series
Product Family	EXOS X20	EXOS X20
Capacity	20TB	20TB
Standard Model Number	ST20000NM007D	ST20000NM002D
SED Model	ST20000NM000D	ST20000NM003D
SED FIPS Model	N/A	ST20000NM005D
Helium Sealed-Drive	YES	YES
CMR	YES	YES
RPM	7200	7200
Cache (MB)	256MB	256MB
Sustained Read (OD)	285MB/s	285MB/s
Sustained Write (OD)	272MB/s	272MB/s
Random Read 4K QD16	165 IOPS	165 IOPS
Random Write 4K QD16	550 IOPS	550 IOPS
Average Latency (ms)	4.16	4.16
Idle A (W) Average	5.4W	5.8W
Vibration, Nonoperating: 2 to 500Hz (Grms)	2.27	2.27
Shock, Operating 2ms (Read/Write) (Gs)	40	40
MTBF	2.5Million	2.5Million
Power-On Hours per Year	8760	8760
Warranty	5yr	5yr

Although lacking the Rescue data recovery services of the Ironwolf Pro HDDs, the Seagate EXOS 20TB has an incredibly sharp focus on robust deployment and touch-of-a-button responsiveness (i.e low latency) which is vital in considerably larger data center/hyperscale environments.

When will the Seagate EXOS and Ironwolf Pro 20TB HDDs Be Released?

Seagate has been particularly firm on their stance about introducing 20TB hard drives into their portfolio before the close of 2021 (despite HDD market-changing factors, SUCH as Chia, Hardware shortages and the pandemic) and all indications so far would heavily indicate the availability of the new Seagate Ironwolf Pro and EXOS 20TB hard drives landing (not just announcing, but being business-available) on time. Despite SSD prices and NVMe SSD technology growing in its appeal and affordability these last few years, Seagate still seems fantastically committed to hard drive technology as still the best option for BIG data this decade and these new 20TB drives are going to be a big step for any business looking at the realistic need to store petabytes of data. Pricing for each version of the 20TB Seagate HDD series is almost certain to be a sore point for some, but Seagate almost certainly knows that people will pay it.

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Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs WD Red SN700 NAS SSD Comparison

Rob Andrews — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:10:22 +0000

Comparing the WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

Utilizing NVMe SSDs inside your Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive is the opulent and business-only option that it once was! Many new and existing users are looking at the performance benefits of populating dedicated available NVMe SSD bays on their NAS alongside a larger RAID array in order to use this small but high-performance area of media to bolster their entire storage system. Serving as a significantly more affordable option than fully populating your NAS completely with SSDs, it allows you to improve the speed of files being written to the NAS (write caching) and the responsiveness of the system to file requests and overall responsiveness (Read caching). Although the NVMe SSD market is heavily populated with options, Seagate and WD are keen to highlight their NAS targeting NVMe SSDs, the Ironwolf and Red SN700 respectively, as the perfect choice to populate the m.2 SSD bays on your NAS. Both of these SSDs were released in Autumn 2021 and although similarly built, are actually quite different in terms of price, capacity and flexibility of utilization. Today I want to take a close look at their official specifications, their architecture, perform some testing of my own and ultimately help you decide which one you should buy your NAS Drive in 2021/2022. Let’s begin.

How do the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700 SSD Compare on Specs?

Both WD and Seagate are well known for their wide ranges of hard drive and SSD media, as well as both being pioneers of NAS server focused SSDs for caching and flash storage. Although SSDs are all built to a similar ground-level architecture, they will often have their later development shifted in favour of a specific targetted use. This is not a big surprise and much like the cutlery in your kitchen draw, they might be similar but one tool is much better at some tasks than others – ever tried using a spreading butter with a meat-claver? Or stirring tea with a ladle? The Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700 SSD are NAS targetted and although the performance is good, the true stand out factor in this design is the durability of the drive. SSDs for use in NAS systems will in most cases be used for caching and that means a very frequent turnover (i.e. data wrote, updated, deleted, repeat) daily as the demands of client users and devices change. Both of these SSDs arrive with a high level of durability and workload rating, but the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 definitely have differing ideas of preliminary architecture and what that price tag is being spent on. Let’s look at the shared base-level SSD architecture of each SSD (available on every capacity):

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr
MTBF/MTTF	1800000	1750000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 4×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS 4 96L 3D TLC NAND	Sandisk 3D TLC
Controller	PS5016 SSD Controller	WD NVMe Controller

As you might know, WD develops practically all of their SSDs ‘in-house’ and feature proprietary NVMe controllers, subsidiary company NAND (in this case Sandisk) and this allows them to be able to control availability and pricing in a way that most other SSD brands cannot. Seagate uses 3rd party controllers and NAND manufacturers for the most part in their ranges, but are still generally quite top tier providers. The release time difference between the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 makes an impressive difference here in terms of the hardware on offer on either SSD, with the more recently released Seagate Ironwolf 525 having notably superior connectivity, NAND quality and overall performance. The older WD Red SN700 SSD features 3years of forensic level data recovery services though (which caching NAS users might want to have in the event of ‘trapped data’ during write caching operations and a critical system failure/power-cut) which is very unique to the brand. However, overall the Seagate Ironwolf 525 has superior architecture here. Below is how the building blocks of the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700 result in throughput, IOPS and Durability at each capacity tier (based on officially provided figures):

Model	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021
240/250GB	N/A	WDS250G1R0C – $55
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,100MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	1,600MB
480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	WDS500G1R0C – $79.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2500MB / 2500MB	2,600MB
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	WDS100G1R0C – $152.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	3,000MB
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	WDS200G1R0C – $289.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	2,900MB
3840/4000GB	N/A	WDS400G1R0C – $649.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,100MB
240/250GB	N/A	WDS250G1R0C – $55
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	220K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	180K
2480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	WDS500G1R0C – $79.99
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	420K / 420K	420K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	630K / 550K	380K
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	WDS100G1R0C – $152.99
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	760K / 640K	515K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	560K
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	WDS200G1R0C – $289.99
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	740K / 640K	480K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	540K
3840/4000GB	N/A	WDS400G1R0C – $649.99
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	550K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	520K
Heatsink Option	No	No
TBW Rating	700/1400/2800	3,430MB
DWPD Rating	0.7 DWPD	0.7-1.0 DWPD
Note – BLUE Text is the Seagate Ironwolf 525 on a PCIe Gen 3×4 Slot

Overall, it should come as no surprise that the Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD is the notable leader here in practically all official benchmarks over the slightly older WD Red SN700 SSD, thanks to that improved architecture. Most notably in write performance and IOPS in general, it had a clear lead even in the lowest available capacities. Of course, these are officially provided performance figures and represent maximums based on the highest available hardware at the time of release. Let’s take a look at how these two SSDs compare in our own tests.

How Did the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD Compare in OUR Tests?

Moving away from the official performance stats provided by WD and Seagate, I wanted to see how the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700 compared in my own tests. Testing of these two SSDs will be broken down into 3 main parts, a CrystalDisk Benchmark test, Atto Disk Benchmark Test and an AJA media test. In each test, the SSD was in the 2nd storage slot (i.e not the OS drive). Each test was conducted three times and the system was left for 1 minute between tests to allow the SSD time to stabilize. The specifications of the test machine are:

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525 Overall

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

The next test was to perform the same parameters in CrystalDisk on the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700, but this time with a 4GB test file (larger files may result in higher sequential performance, but lower comparative IOPS)

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525 Overall

ATTO DiskBenchmark 1GB Test File – Read, Write

Switching things up, I then moved testing the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD over to ATTO disk benchmark. A far more detailed tool that spreads performance testing over different file and block sizes. I started with the smallest ‘full range’ test file of 1GB. Here is how each SSD compared:

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525 Overall

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

Sticking with ATTO DiskBenchmark, I then moved the testing of the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700 onto a x16 bigger test file of 4GB. This would certainly shift where the peaks in performance would sit and hopefully produce a clearer disparity between these two SSDs:

Overall Winner: A Draw

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

I then switched to AJA, a popular media testing tool for video formats. Most SSDs will suffer over-saturated Memory/DRAM/SDRAM as sustained large file tests go on. The 1GB file test of AJA on the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and WD Red SN700 is still a small enough value not to be a problem though and we chiefly focused on the disk playback/reads graph to see how they compared in peak performance and also throughout the transfer:

Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD

WD Red SN700 SSD

Overall Winner: A Draw

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

Then we used a much, MUCH heavier test in AJA of 16GB on the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 SSD. Unsurprisingly this can often overflow the SSD cache/memory on board and result in a dip in performance as the SSD bottlenecks internally. So, when conducting this test, we are looking at peak performance AND how long the SSD maintained that performance before a potential dip. Here is how these two SSD compared:

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525 Overall

Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs WD Red SN700 SSD – The Results

Both the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and the WD Red SN700 are great examples of NVMe SSDs that will be remarkably useful in your NAS. With both drives largely saturating a PCIe Gen 3×4 SSD connection, arriving with a high level of durability and Throughput+ IOP performance that will certainly see your hard drive storage pool improve in it’s transfers with clients, whichever one you choose is going to be a great fit. That said, it is impossible to ignore that the Seagate Ironwolf 525 is overall the better SSD choice in the majority of ways. With its support of PCIe 4 and PCIe 3, matching the same connectivity performance on the WD Red SN700, the Seagate Ironwolf pulls further ahead with higher IOPS performance and that inclusive forensic data recovery services included. That said, it is by no means a clean sweep by Seagate here, with the WD Red SN700 arriving in more capacities (adding a smaller 250GB and larger 4TB model to the series), as well as a better price point at every tier and the same/higher durability as the Seagate Ironwolf at all storage sizes. As mentioned, both of these SSDs are great examples of what users should look for in an SSD for their old/new NAS system in order to improve the performance of cheaper, larger but slower hard drives.

The Seagate Ironwolf 525 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Supports PCIe 4 and PCIe 3
Better Sustained Performance
Higher IOPS
Higher Write Performance on PCIe 3 and PCIe 4
Data Recovery Services included (3yrs)

The WD Red SN700 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Same or Higher Durability Across the Range
In house Development
Higher Read Performance on PCIe 3
Most NAS Drives are M.2 PCIe 3 Right Now

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#RunWithIronWolf and #WDRedNAS . This unit was supplied by @seagate and @WesternDigitalCorporation .The review provided was free of bias and my own independent opinions

WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD for NAS Comparison

Rob Andrews — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:29:25 +0000

Comparing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 vs WD Red SN700 SSD – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

How do the WD Red SN700 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD Compare on Specs?

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr
MTBF/MTTF	1,800,000	1,750,000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 3×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS3 64L TLC	Sandisk 96L 3D TLC NAND
Controller	PS5012-E12DC	WD NVMe Controller

240/250GB	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020 ZP240NM30011 – $69	WD Red SN700 Released September 2021 WDS250G1R0C – $55
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2,450MB	3,100MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	290MB	1,600MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	100,000	220,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	12,000	180,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	435TB	500TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
480/500GB	ZP480NM30011 – $119	WDS500G1R0C – $79.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2,650MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	600MB	2,600MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	193,000	420,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	20,000	380,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	875TB	1000TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
960/1000GB	ZP960NM30011 – $209	WDS100G1R0C – $152.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	3,150MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	1,000MB	3,000MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	345,000	515,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	28,000	560,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	1,750TB	2000TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	1.0DWPD
1920/2000GB	ZP1920NM30011 – $409	WDS200G1R0C – $289.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	3,150MB	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	850MB	2,900MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	270,000	480,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	25,000	540,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	3,500TB	2500TB
DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD	0.7DWPD
1920/2000GB	N/A	WDS400G1R0C – $649.99
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,430MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	3,100MB
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	550,000
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	520,000
Total Terabytes Written (TBW)	N/A	5100TB
DWPD	N/A	0.7DWPD

How Did the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and WD Red SN700 SSD Compare in OUR Tests?

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

ATTO DiskBenchmark 256MB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

WD Red SN700 SSD

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The WD Red SN700 SSD

WD Red SN700 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD – The Results

The WD Red SN700 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Overall Read Performance
Overall Write Performance
4K IOPs
Price Point per GB/TB
Capacity (4TB Max)

The Seagate Ironwolf 510 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Data Recovery Services (Rescue)
On-Board Over Provisioning
TBW and DWPD Overall

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Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs 510 NAS NVMe SSD Comparison

Rob Andrews — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:28:23 +0000

Comparing the Seagate Ironwolf 510 vs Seagate Ironwolf 525 – Which Should You Use in Your NAS?

How do the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD Compare on Specs?

Below Specifications are taken from official brand sources, data sheets and reputable sources (real-world tests we performed ourselves are a little lower in the article):

Specifications	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020
Warranty	5yr + 3yr Rescue	5yr + 3yr Rescue
MTBF/MTTF	1800000	1800000
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 4×4	PCIe Gen 3×4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.3	NVMe 1.3
NAND	Kioxia BiCS 4 96L 3D TLC NAND	Kioxia BiCS3 64L TLC
Controller	PS5016 SSD Controller	PS5012-E12DC

240/250GB	Seagate IronWolf 525 Released September 2021 N/A	Seagate IronWolf 510 Released March 2020 ZP240NM30011 – $69
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	2,450MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	290MB
480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	ZP480NM30011 – $119
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	2,650MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	2500MB / 2500MB	600MB
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	ZP960NM30011 – $209
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,150MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	1,000MB
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	ZP1920NM30011 – $409
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	5000MB / 3400MB	3,150MB
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	4400MB / 3200MB	850MB
3840/4000GB	N/A	N/A
Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	N/A
Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128 KB	N/A	N/A
240/250GB	N/A	ZP240NM30011 – $69
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	100K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	12K
2480/500GB	ZP500NM30002 – $99	ZP480NM30011 – $119
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	420K / 420K	193K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	630K / 550K	20K
960/1000GB	ZP1000NM30002 – $179	ZP960NM30011 – $209
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	760K / 640K	345K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	28K
1920/2000GB	ZP2000NM30002 – $369	ZP1920NM30011 – $409
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	740K / 640K	270K
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	700K / 565K	25K
3840/4000GB	N/A	N/A
Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	N/A
Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4 KB QD32	N/A	N/A
Heatsink Option	No	No
TBW Rating	700/1400/2800	435/875/1750/3500
DWPD Rating	0.7 DWPD	0.9-1.0 DWPD
Note – BLUE Text is the Seagate Ironwolf 525 on a PCIe Gen 3×4 Slot

How Did the Seagate Ironwolf 510 and Seagate Ironwolf 525 Compare in OUR Tests?

Test Machine:

Windows 10 Pro Desktop System
Intel i5 11400 Rocket Lake – 6-Core 2.6/4.4Ghz
16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory
Intel B560M mATX Motherboard
OS Storage, Seagate Firecuda 120 SSD
Test SSD connected to Secondary PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 Slot

CrystalDisk 1GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

CrystalDisk 4GB Test File – Read, Write, 70/30% Mixed and IOPS Performance

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

ATTO DiskBenchmark 256MB Test File – Read, Write

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

ATTO DiskBenchmark 4GB Test File – Read, Write

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

AJA 1080i Media Test 1GB Test File – Read, Write

I then switched to AJA, a popular media testing tool for video formats. Most SSDs will suffer over-saturated Memory/DRAM/SDRAM as sustained large file tests go on. The 1GB file test of AJA on the Seagate Ironwolf 525 and Seagate Ironwolf 510 is still a small enough value not to be a problem though and we chiefly focused on the disk playback/reads graph to see how they compared in peak performance and also throughout the transfer:

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

AJA 1080i Media Test 16GB Test File – Read, Write

Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Overall Winner: The Seagate Ironwolf 525

Seagate Ironwolf 525 vs Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD – The Results

The Seagate Ironwolf 525 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Higher Performance (Read & Write), even in a PCIe Gen 3 Slot
Supports PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD Slots
Better Sustained Performance
Massively Higher IOPS ratings (Read and Write)
Takes Advantage of a several gen higher Phison Controller

The Seagate Ironwolf 510 NVMe SSD Wins on:

Higher Durability at 0.9-1.0 DWPD on all Capacities (IW 525 t 0.7 DWPD)
Smaller 240GB Capacity Available
PCIe Gen 3 is still at more than 95% adoption on NAS systems compared with PCIe 4
Been available longer, so might have more flexible pricing online

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