Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS 4TB HDD, ST4000NE001

Can't really review a new HDD that's had little use, but I can give you some real specs I didn't know. IronWolf Annualized Workload Rate: 76TB/yr. Compare this to a Hybrid HDD @ 16TB/yr and it's great value. What it means is the IronWolf drives will last more than 4 times longer than a hybrid HDD. I have a 2TB Seagate Surveillance drive that is more than 10 years old and still works ( they will last, almost forever!). IronWolf is CMR. If you don't know, google SMR vs CMR. it's very important! CMR is good. SMR is bad. SMR drives are only good for external USB storage and should only be attached when being used. Mine failed 2 days after warranty from little use, but was installed inside my pc, not in a USB case. Now I know better. So, Ironwolf for internal storage ... MoreCan't really review a new HDD that's had little use, but I can give you some real specs I didn't know. IronWolf Annualized Workload Rate: 76TB/yr. Compare this to a Hybrid HDD @ 16TB/yr and it's great value. What it means is the IronWolf drives will last more than 4 times longer than a hybrid HDD. I have a 2TB Seagate Surveillance drive that is more than 10 years old and still works ( they will last, almost forever!). IronWolf is CMR. If you don't know, google SMR vs CMR. it's very important! CMR is good. SMR is bad. SMR drives are only good for external USB storage and should only be attached when being used. Mine failed 2 days after warranty from little use, but was installed inside my pc, not in a USB case. Now I know better. So, Ironwolf for internal storage should give most of us years of use and Skyhawk will last most of us forever!

Iron Wolf HDs are great!

These HDs by Seagate are for my Synology NAS, and they're not only great drives, but the price at B&H can't be beat! As has always been the case for me, B&H shipped on time, packaged very well to prevent damage, and in the unlikely even you have a problem with any item, which I very rarely have, they take care of it! B&H always comes through for me!

Jack's review of SKYHAWK 2TB SURVEILLANCE 3.5IN 6GB/S SATA 64MB

Pros: Great drive, very fast transfer speeds in both read and write and cost effective for the capacity.Cons: Enterprise/NAS drives are much louder than standard consumer drives which can be a small annoyance when installed in a desktop computer. However this is a trade off for the capacity and performance.

Jeremy's review of Seagate IronWolf Pro ST4000NE001 - Hard drive - 4 TB - internal - 3.5 - SATA 6Gb/s - 7200 rpm - buffer_ 128 MB - with 2 years Rescue Data Recovery Service Plan

Pros: The company offers a two year recovery on failed hard drives but the unit is extremely reliable that it’ll never get used.When you compare the cost per Tb, the 16Tb drive is inexpensive. (I tried to post the price paid but the review company insisted I remove it)Cons: I use the 14Tb drives in my Drobo 5D3 DAS drive and the 16Tb drives in my Synology DS1621+ NAS drive. The drives aren’t quiet like SSDs though each drive enclosure has additional fan noise too. Once the SSDs come down in price, that will be the big improvement but these Iron Wolf Pro drives are the way forward.

Julian's review of Seagate IronWolf Pro ST4000NE001 - Hard drive - 4 TB - internal - 3.5 - SATA 6Gb/s - 7200 rpm - buffer_ 128 MB - with 2 years Rescue Data Recovery Service Plan

Pros: Seems to run in a NAS at a reasonable operating temperature (even in a heatwave)Cons: Not sure if it is just Seagate but along with a couple of other Seagate drives that I have it produces quite a lot of chatter although it spins fairly quietly. I have ended up having to place my NAS in a cupboard because of that. Thankfully I did plan for that possibility

Laurence's review of Seagate IronWolf Pro ST4000NE001 - Hard drive - 4 TB - internal - 3.5 - SATA 6Gb/s - 7200 rpm - buffer_ 128 MB - with 2 years Rescue Data Recovery Service Plan

Pros: Despite hearing from multiple sources, the drives themselves aren't very loud at all. Your case fans have a good chance of drowning out the noise anyway. Performance on Unraid at least is very good and didn't really require a cache SSD as seems fast enough. Good stuff!

Ordered two, working great.

Ordered two of these to start a raid nas and one of them came broken, easy replacement from b&h so no issue there, but I question the quality of these as this is the only drive I've ever purchased that one came broken. Giving 4 stars because the two I have now work great but I am concerned about the longevity. Will probably be ordering wd red pros next just to have separate brands backing up my data.

Paul's review of Seagate IronWolf Pro ST4000NE001 - Hard drive - 4 TB - internal - 3.5 - SATA 6Gb/s - 7200 rpm - buffer_ 128 MB - with 2 years Rescue Data Recovery Service Plan

Pros: NoneCons: Too noisy, I replaced them after only two days, we can't live with the noise. Can't rate anything else because I didn't use them long enough.

Pete's review of Seagate IronWolf Pro ST4000NE001 - Hard drive - 4 TB - internal - 3.5 - SATA 6Gb/s - 7200 rpm - buffer_ 128 MB - with 2 years Rescue Data Recovery Service Plan

Pros: In my experience, a good cheap drive with great reliability.You don't always need larger drives !Cons: Nothing to improve, although we all want cheaper ! LOL

Working but flaky

Got 5 of these. 4 in an IcyDock MB561U3S-4SB R1 (and later an IcyDock MB174U3S-4SB), plus one for a spare. Initially, all good. A month in and things started getting weird. 1) Suddenly the sequential write speed on two of the drives went from 100MBs to 12MBs. Read speed stayed at 140MBs. For some reason the drives were reading at USB 3.0 but writing at USB 1.0 speeds. Moved them to a different USB enclosure, same problem. Attached them directly to a SATA controller, same problem. In all cases, if I powered down and back up, sometimes they wrote at high speed, sometimes back to low speed. Which write speed you get seems almost random. Finally found that when they had downgraded to low write speed, the ATA Firmware Word 82, bit 5 = VOLATILE WRITE CACHE SUPPORTED was ... MoreGot 5 of these. 4 in an IcyDock MB561U3S-4SB R1 (and later an IcyDock MB174U3S-4SB), plus one for a spare. Initially, all good. A month in and things started getting weird. 1) Suddenly the sequential write speed on two of the drives went from 100MBs to 12MBs. Read speed stayed at 140MBs. For some reason the drives were reading at USB 3.0 but writing at USB 1.0 speeds. Moved them to a different USB enclosure, same problem. Attached them directly to a SATA controller, same problem. In all cases, if I powered down and back up, sometimes they wrote at high speed, sometimes back to low speed. Which write speed you get seems almost random. Finally found that when they had downgraded to low write speed, the ATA Firmware Word 82, bit 5 = VOLATILE WRITE CACHE SUPPORTED was OFF. For the drives running at high speed it was ON. I have no idea why this would cause a change in the sequential write speed. (Note - This is about the drive firmware, NOT Windows Disk Caching. In all cases Windows was set for no caching, USB = Quick Removal). 2) Then (after a power up) one of the drives showed a RAW partition, where it was NTFS before. Moved it to different PC and started looking at data recovery tools. Before I had done anything except inspect the SMART and ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE data the partition suddenly came back to life. I have 5 new Western Digital Reds on the way and will move everything off the Seagates. I know, "hard drives fail", no matter what brand or model. But maybe I'll have better luck with the WDs.