There’s something about 12TB hard drives reading and writing at 250MBps that we just can’t get enough of. This go-round, we review Seagate’sIronWolf–the slightly slower, slightly lower-rent cousin to the mighty 12GB Seagate BarraCuda Prowe recently took for a spin. Game of Thronesmoniker aside, the IronWolf is still easily fast and enough, and should be reliable enough to make sense in the multi-drive setups for which it’s intended. We tested the IronWolf 12TB using both the AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark synthetic benchmarks. To verify the results, we followed up with real-world copying of a single large 20GB file and a 20GB mix of smaller files and folders to and from the platters. Our thoughts: We’re recommending the Seagate IronWolf Pro, not because it’s outright better than the Western Digital Red Pro, but because the drive with the least capacity has better specs. This makes it great to get into the pro range of drives without spending too much.

IronWolf, 12TB, NAS, Internal Hard Drive, CMR, 3.5 Seagate IronWolf, 12TB, NAS, Internal Hard Drive, CMR, 3.5

Our thoughts: Whilst you may not be able to match the specs of lesser capacity drives from Seagate, Western Digital does have the upper hand in terms of value and capacity. You can even buy a 22TB Red Pro drive for the ultimate storage machine. There wasn’t a lot to choose from in our 20GB copy tests, with the IronWolf reading and writing a tad slower than the BarraCuda Pro. Of course, it still blows away the vintage Seagate ES.2 1TB, which offers performance more in line with what the average user is accustomed to. IDG We’ll be using the IronWolf daily for the near future and we’ll let you know if there are any problems, or not. We don’t expect any. Performance The Seagate IronWolf Pro range of NAS hard drives offers capacities between 4TB and 20TB. They are capable of being installed in a configuration of up to 24 bays. With a workload rate of 300TB per year and a warranty of five years, you’ll be able to rely on them for long-term storage of data.The Western Digital Red Plus series of NAS drives are specially designed for server use. They’re better than the base Red range by using a better and more reliable way of storing data. This does mean they won’t be the absolute cheapest NAS drives from WD.

Best NAS hard drives 2023: Reliable storage for Synology

We didn’t test the lower-capacity 1TB through 10TB IronWolf drives, but Seagate’s performance claims decrease progressively with each drop in capacity. On the other hand, the company lists only 210MBps for the 12TB model we tested, not the 250MBps we saw. You might see better-than-claimed performance with the other capacities as well, depending on your computer. Seagate Where things differ slightly are speed, price, and capacities. Starting things off with the 2TB Western Digital Red Pro that can hit speeds up to 164MB/s. It offers among the worst value here with this family of drives. Then there’s the mighty 22TB variant. Buying the right 3.5-inch drive for your NAS is crucial since you’re going to rely on it to safely store all your data. You can’t simply use any old drive off the shelf, which is why we’ve compiled a list of only the best NAS hard drives for use inside enclosures.We’ve written up comprehensive guides on Western Digital Red, Red Plus, and Red Pro as well as Seagate IronWolf vs. IronWolf Pro. These should aid you in better understanding the differences between the family of drives. 1. Seagate Ironwolf Pro: Best overall NAS hard drive Seagate IronWolf Pro. (Source: Seagate) Please note that the 1TB through 4TB IronWolf drives spin at 5,900 rpm rather than the 7,200 that the larger capacity drives spin at. And only the 4TB drives and above sense and compensate the head assembly for vibrational factors. Also, the 4TB and larger drives feature Seagate’s IHM (IronWolf Health Management), which interfaces with NAS boxes from Synology, Thecus, and AsusStor (with more vendors on the way) to provide extensive monitoring of the IronWolf’s vital signs. the 1TB and 2TB models do not. As far as CrystalDiskMark 5 is concerned, the IronWolf and BarraCuda Pro might as well be the same drive. While we’re talking about mechanical drives here, these things aren’t necessarily slow (aside from when compared to an SSD). The 4TB Seagate IronWolf Pro is capable of hitting up to 214MB/s, which is enough to saturate the two 1Gb network connections frequently found on prebuilt NAS enclosures. they’re not quite as fast as Seagate IronWolf Pro drives, nor will you be able to use them in a configuration of more than eight drives, but they’ll be perfect for home and office use. A three-year warranty and 180TB per year workload rating shows just how capable these drives are.