Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD CMR 3 5 Inch SATA 6Gb s 5900 RPM 64MB

I rarely write a review but decided to. First, I am old, like dirt. Retired as a system, network, cyber engineer a long, long time ago. How old? I started with Assembly language and the OSI model. LOL. I still enjoy playing with computer stuff though. I don't use these drives in a NAS but do use the IronWolf drives for my media server (recently rebuilt on a mini pc) from the old tower which I keep as a backup. I really like these drives. They can run 24x7 or on/off, depending on the system. I use them as my backup media across my desktops, laptops and servers via 6e wifi and also direct attached. They hang off external USB to SCSI enclosures and run like a charm. Well, so much for the background. The first three I bought in 2021. The next in 2022, another in 2023 as a replacement and now an IronWolf Pro just ordered as another replacement (7200RPM!) a few minutes ago. Real world experience is simply this. As of today, the last one bought in 2021 is showing signs of file corruption. Nothing major, but definitely getting some bad blocks. I scanned the drive and repaired it, but in my world, it is either perfect or replaced. Sure, they could probably go for another year, but I don't want the hassle. And for a few extra details. The drives did all not get the same usage. Some have one year, other three years. The one-year usage ones are running great, the three-year ones are showing errors. My conclusion? The IronWolf drives are great for the money. Whether in an on/off environment or 24x7, they give a solid three years of great performance and reliability. I decided to buy the IronWolf Pro 4TB running at 7200RPM for a little extra spin for those Ultra 4K movies. It was only 20 dollars more. They get my vote, just plan a three-year endurance unless you are running a NAS. Then it is not that big a deal. Enjoy! PS: I was going to buy SSD's, but with the crazy price increases since the first of the year, I'll stick with HDD's. They work great for my purposes. Read more

I held off on submitting a review until I had a chance to put some time and usage on this hard drive. I ordered 3 of IronWolf 4TB hard drives in January 2021 and use them in a RAID 5 configuration on an Asustor AS4004T NAS. They have been in use for about 13 months. It is used in a home office setting with me as the sole user. I also use the Asustor Surveillance Center app to record 24/7 security camera footage to these hard drives. After 13 months of use, the drives have performed with no issues. The drives run quiet and cool, but keep in mind that this is due to the disks only spinning at 5900 RPM. Consequently, you'll need to manage your expectations on the read and write speeds to these disks, even if they are in a RAID configuration. I did check the serial numbers on the drives that I received on the Seagate website to confirm if these drives are covered by Seagate, and my drives had warranty periods as follows: Drive #1, Date of Manufacture: 3DEC2020; Warranty valid until 28MAR2024 Drive #2: Date of Manufacture: 2DEC2020; Warranty valid until 28MAR2024 Drive #3: Date of Manufacture: 2DEC2020; Warranty valid until 28MAR2024 Considering that I bought these drives in January 2021, these drives are practically fresh off the manufacturing line and haven't stayed in Amazon's inventory very long. However, those warranty periods don't appear to be in line with Seagate's claim of a 5-year warranty for these drives. Just wanted to point this out for those who are expecting a 5-year warranty on this particular model. Overall, there have been no issues with these drives. Expectations just need to be managed, considering that these disks only spin at 5900 RPM. Otherwise, they have performed reliably under the workload conditions I described. Read more

Running for 3+ years and SMART status still acceptable. Read more

very good Read more

I needed a new archive drive for my machine as the current one was reaching 11 years. As a western digital green drive, anyone in IT can tell you thats an amazing feat for the little guy. None the less I decided to swap for a new seagate drive as they had been pretty reliable in my sever setting for raid setups. The drive operates just as expected if not a bit slower than the old one but not abnormally slow for a massive drive at 5.9k rpm and only 64 mb or cache. The issue is its loud, concerningly loud. It sounds like the head is hitting the spindle sometimes when it wakes up. Pros: 1. large capacity for a very good price 2. CRM style drive with traditional memory cells instead of shingled cells (just know that shingled media is slow) Cons: 1. only 5900rpm 2. only 64 MB of cache 3. loud on wake up Conclusion: Though slower drives can mechanically last longer, often damaged is caused by the head rather than the spindle. This leads to the noise issue which sounds like the head is crashing against the drive on wake up. Despite these noises the drive operates fine and reports no errors. I can only assume this is just how large seagate drives act. The final thing that makes this hard to recommend is its tiny 64 MB of cache, cache can speed up reads and writes to drives and the bigger the drive the bigger the cache you want to help buffer that reaction time of the mechanical parts of the drive. I cant suggest this drive to anyone as an archive... with noise issues, and cut down cache... it just sets it over the top. A lot of us dont want to be concerned about performance or longevity as soon as we open up a new drive and back up to it. Try and find something else if you can. Read more