Seagate IronWolf 12 TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD &ndash
Seagate IronWolf 12 TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6 GB/s 7200 RPM 256 MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, 3 Years Data Recovery – Frustration Free Packaging (ST12000VNZ008)
 |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ideal for | Home, SOHO | Creative Pro, SMB | Large scale-outs |
| No. of bays | Up to 8-bay NAS | Up to 24-bay NAS | Unlimited |
| Capacity | 1 TB to 20 TB | 2 TB to 20 TB | Up to 20 TB |
| Health Management (4 TB+) | 4 TB to 20 TB | 4 TB to 20 TB | |
| Data Recovery | 3-years included | 3-years included | Optional |
| Weight: | 700 g |
| Dimensions: | 14.7 x 10.18 x 2.61 cm; 700 Grams |
| Brand: | Seagate |
| Model: | ST12000VNZ008 |
| Colour: | NAS HDD |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Seagate |
| Dimensions: | 14.7 x 10.18 x 2.61 cm; 700 Grams |
As mentioned, this was bought as a replacement drive for my Plex server, as the original drive was slowly dying. I’ve had zero issues with this drive and it worked as expected as soon as it was installed.
It has since continued to run daily with no problems reading and writing, at advertised speeds.
So I like to Ed’s about with media files a lot and like to do a bit of sound studio and stuff in my limited spare time and it is nice to be able to throw my tracks on my server and play them on Plex when I’m out and about without having to fill my phone or a flash drive all the time. Well this certainly served its purpose and made it possible. Transfer speed is good and noise levels almost none existent. I was only sceptical because I have ordered mechanical HDD online before and the have a habit of being thrown around the warehouse, scoring warehouse goals into the back of the truck before being thrown around the back of the van several times in an effort to score a basket before arriving knackered. Not the case this time. Will certainly use them again.
Did it’s job perfectly. Been running it for approx 2 months without any issues.
Great drive – typo in the listing this is model ST4000VN006. Confirmed it works with Synology DS920+.
Works great for my PC. Fast for loading all my games and so far has been reliable
Well packaged , works as expected.
Will update the review if and when I have any problems.
So far this has surpassed the WD Red drives that I had to replace 3 of in warranty time
Bought these (4TB IronWolf) to put into a synology NAS/xpenology. Taking it to 7 disks in total. Works, does as it says on the tin. Good.running in SHR mode; no issues.
My first experience of a Seagate internal drive was when I purchased the 8Tb Ironwolf a couple months back (See my review here on Amazon). Since then, the drive has functioned perfectly. That drive is being used in my NAS and since the review of that drive, I have upgraded my 13 year old NAS to a new unit.
However, i recently reached a point where I was running low on space on my existing 4 WD Red 4Tb drives, so wanted to add another WD Red 40EFRX model. Searching Amazon and other resellers, I couldn’t find this exact model available any more, since being replaced by the WD Red Plus 40EFZX. I wanted matched drives, despite my new NAS using a RAID implementation not demanding this. However, being perhaps old fashioned, I really wanted identical drives.
What to do?
Well, I could add value to my old NAS by installing the 4 WD Red’s I have and sell it. With that goal in mind, I looked to replace the WD’s with new 4Tb Ironwolf’s. Having been impressed with the 8Tb Ironwolf I have as a stand alone drive in my NAS, I was further tempted by the 20% cheaper 4Tb Ironwolf’s compared to the WD Red Plus equivalents, no mean saving when looking to purchase 5 of them!
Amazon was selling the Seagate Ironwolf’s for just 80 at the time of purchase. This was just too good a deal to ignore, so I purchased 3 of them. Oddly, and something I’ve never encountered before, Amazon was restricting my purchase to a maximum of just 3. There appeared no stock limitations to account for this, though. That put me in a pickle, but thankfully the wife had her own Amazon account and so I was able to obtain the remaining couple of drives at the aforementioned excellent price.
So, how do these compare to my old WD’s?
Before that, a word on packaging. I’ve read a few reviews on Amazon complaining about how Amazon ship drives. Be assured that all 5 of the drives ordered, as well as the 8Tb one a couple of months back, all arrived in robust boxes.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about these 4Tb Ironwolf’s is their size. They are noticeably smaller and lighter than my old WD’s. The casing appears slimmer, especially towards the connector end of the drive. They still conform to standards, so will fit into systems, but I’d never seen a drive so noticeably different in its size before. The WD drives definitely feel heavier and more solid, but they are 5 years old, so perhaps use more platters to achieve the same capacity, I’m not sure.
I haven’t benchmarked these drives, but I understand these Ironwolf’s are faster than their WD counterparts and are, of course, all CMR type drives. They also boast an impressive cache size for such a relatively low capacity drive at 256Mb. The newest WD equivalent offers half of that, The Ironwolf also runs around 20MB/sec faster transfer rate at around 200 Megabytes/sec compared to my older WD’s.
These 5 new drives have all gone through many hours of cloning functions as I sequentially replaced each WD in my array with a new Ironwolf and then an 18.5 hours RAID expansion when adding the fifth drive. All has gone well.
These drives run cool and quiet, although they are still noisier than my old WD’s. I can hear the seek on these where I was unable to hear anything on the WD’s I had before. Nothing major at all, but noteworthy all the same. On a slight tangent, when discussing noise levels, the 8Tb Ironwolf I do have ticks away when idle. It makes a click sound about every 6 seconds or so, so that may bother those seeking a higher capacity model in quiet environments. However, this characteristic is shared with my external 14Tb WD Elements drive, so I believe this clicking is a function of higher capacity drives. The 4Tb drives reviewed here do not exhibit such clicking sounds when idle an spinning.
My new NAS now uses a pair of 120mm fans as opposed to the single on the old NAS. This appears to keep drive temperatures nice and low, even the 8Tb 7,200rpm Iron Wolf I was slightly concerned about when running in my old NAS, the temperature differential so far being only an extra 2 or 3C over the 5,400rpm Ironwolfs in the new NAS.
For those like me installing these 4Tb Ironwolf’s into their Synology NAS’s, a word of warning. On my DSM 7.1 system, these new 4Tb Ironwolf’s(Model: ST4000VNZ06) appear not to have the Seagate Ironwolf health Management feature available to DSM. The 8Tb IronWolf I have has this feature show up fine in DSM 7.1. As far as I know, IHM (IronWolf Health management) is a feature of all IronWolf drives, but I may be wrong on that front. Either way, if this model does come with that feature, Synology’s DSM 7.1 currently cannot recognize it, so you will be limited to only an S.M.A.R.T test option on those.
Other than that, those Seagate IronWolf 4Tb drives still offer excellent value for money and, so far, the 5 I have are working fine. As on my 8Tb review, I will update this one should any of the drives fail within, or soon after, the 3 year warranty period.
In summary, these 4Tb IronWolf drives offer exceptional value for money along with excellent performance. At current prices, they are a tempting option for those wanting a desktop hard drive in the form of the WD Blue or Seagate Barracuda ranges. You will get superior performance and better reliability with these over their desktop counterparts.
Good balance of cost / quality. Using several of these drives to archive media / host my own Plex server. Speed is good enough for my purposes and they seem reliable for this use, in particular the Ironwolf versions.
Good product. Fitted to my Nas and I’m getting full speed at all times.
110Mb/s transfer over network. 140Mb/s copying internal in NAS.
Worth the money
Be getting an 8tb next timeb
I have an old RAID array I am moving to a new chassis and one of the drives failed. As this was to be for near line backup, the slower spindle speed was not a big problem and the drive offered great capacity for a good price.
Really happy so far, seems to run, not too hot or noisy and just gets on with the job. Would buy another if other drives in the array need replacing.
I was once a WD Red fan but have now switched entirely to Ironwoof (that’s the doggie version!) as with their software integration for monitoring they give great peace of mind.
I bought this because it was the cheapest new 4TB CMR drive I could find – I’m using it for NAS uses, so SMR was not acceptable. It seems quiet enough and is basically as fast as you’d expect from a mechanical HDD (~200MB/s or so sequential IO; I haven’t benchmarked it precisely). I have only been running it for 243 hours so I can’t speak to reliability, but it seems to be working fine (SMART looks fine and I have not run into any data corruption).
As usual Seagate storage is easy to set up and reliable. This disc has a lot of capacity at a sensible price point and has allowed me to create a large expansion of my storage for backup in a simple RAID.
Ordered on Wednesday was here by Friday. very easy to install in my Synology NAS. Working perfectly
It seems quieter than the other disks. I now have 3 Ironwolf 4Tb disks and one remaining WD Red drive (CMR) I’m trying to remove all the WD drives once Western Digital tried to trick people into installing SMR drives into a NAS … a recipe for disaster . Much happier with these Ironwolf drives, I just hope Seagate don’t make the same mistake as WD.
This absolute gem came in a purpose-made cardboard box with Seagate branding. Just look at it in the 1st photo. That’s one safe and sound HDD shipment.
It’s a Seagate Iron Wolf 4TB using CMR. I’ve got several, of varying ages. This one is beautiful like the box. Looking at the underside all the surface mount components are facing inside, the pcb is a smooth green plate. Looking edge-on, it’s thinner, I think. It’s fit for purpose as a caddyless drive . I know these drives are good, but this one oozes quality.
It’s gone into my NAS, erm, cheap-as-chips USB3 to dual SATA disk adapter. That’s fast enough for backups of the drives in the PC, and the adapter can power a USB cooling fan. 40 quid for a 2-slot enclosure and PSU, 10 quid for the fan . It looks plastic and Heath Robinson / Blue Peter but it runs cool without vibrating.
Bear in mind that the difference between an SMR and CMR drive, certainly in the case of some WD drives, is a single letter in the model number. So, for example, the 2Tb WD Blue drive I have, model number 20EZRZ is a CMR drive. The 2Tb WD Blue 20EZAZ is a SMR version. It’s safe to assume that most desktop class hard drives will be SMR, certainly many of those above 1Tb capacity.
Does this matter? For most users as stated above, no.
However, I’ve seen some reviewers using SMR type drives within their network attached storage (NAS) systems. This is not a good idea as using drives in RAID arrays often involves heavy write operations as data has to be written across multiple drives. Rebuilding an array using SMR drives is a big no-no, as build times will be dramatically increased and therefore placing more stress on the drives. This is why I use Western Digital Red drives for my five bay NAS. The WD Red range are designed for NAS environments where 24/7 365 day a year continual running is supported. However, on a slight tangent, be advised that I use the 4Tb WD Red drives and was considering an upgrade to perhaps the 6Tb Red models to expand the capacity of my NAS. Oddly though, according to the NAS compares table listing which drives are SMR and CMR, one model of the aforementioned drive is an SMR type. This is a baffling choice for a drive marketed for NAS operation.
Apologies for the preamble on this review of the Seagate IronWolf 8Tb drive, I just wanted to help those perhaps unaware of the potential pitfalls of choosing a drive.
So, this is the first Seagate internal drive I’ve ever purchased. As alluded to earlier, I have always been a WD man in that regard, having over 30 years experience with hard drives and, from my personal experience, finding Seagate to suffer more drive failures than WD, certainly back in the 90’s when I saw plenty fail. However, Amazon’s deal on the Seagate IronWolf 8Tb, 163 at time of purchase and some 80 cheaper than WD’s closest equivalent I could find, was just too good to pass up. The IronWolf brand is Seagate’s equivalent to WD’s Red, so a more robust drive designed for NAS environments. besides, it had a three year data recovery plan included. Now, this could be a positive or negative depending on your point of view. My prior cynicism of Seagate’s reliability made me wonder why Seagate were offering such a data recovery plan. It could be interpreted that Seagate have less confidence in the longevity of their drives compared to WD, I don’t know. Anyway, what further appealed to me was that this drive was indeed a CMR model, witch it should be if designed for NAS use. However, the real thing that surprised me was that it also boasted a higher 7,200 rpm spin speed as opposed to the far more common 5,400 rpm alternatives. Those as old as me will recall a time where all standard desktop hard drives were 7,200 rpm. However, over the years as platter data densities increased dramatically and thus transfer rates rose as a result, the lower rotational speed became common place, its added benefits of quieter, cooler and more power efficient operation now able to be realized without significant speed penalties.
I replaced my 2Tb WD drive in my case with the new Seagate IronWolf and powered up. After completing the drive initialization prompted by Windows and creating a partition, ending up with around 7,400 Gb available space, I began to notice something I was sure wasn’t there before, a low, resonant humming coming from my large tower case. Strangely, moving my head father away from the case to determine if the hum was coming from there, resulted in it being more noticeable. The ever present hum was mildly irritating to someone like me with sensitive hearing. Not a deal breaker for most, I’m certain, and it would depend on what kind of PC case you’re mounting this drive in. But given my large case is designed for silence, even having the hard drive sleds using rubber grommets between the mounting screws and the sleds, the hum was annoying.
However, for the sake of fairness, I needed to find out if this was the new drive or just something that had been there and I had suddenly become aware of for some reason. I altered the power management option in Windows to turn off the new drive after 10 minutes. I waited and then I knew it was the new drive when the hum faded into blissful silence.
I really wanted this high capacity, fast drive sat in my main PC, but not with this ever present low hum. If you play games or have a case that doesn’t resonate with the 7,200 rpm drive, then this is a blisteringly fast option (See below for more details). However, I spend much of my time writing and so sadly, the hum proved too distracting for me.
I swapped out the new drive for my old 2Tb WD Blue, powered on the computer and blissful silence once more reigned. Prior to doing that though, I ran the Crystal Disk Mark benchmarking tool on it and … Wow! … this 7,200 rpm IronWolf drive is the fastest mechanical hard drive I’ve ever used, even besting my prior champion, the external WD 14Tb Elements drive I have, with a sequential read speed of 260 Mb/ sec with a sequential write of 253 Mb/sec. Truly stellar performance figures, but at a price. Not only the added noise, but I noted, too, the higher operating temperatures. The drive was running at a toasty 47C during my tests as compared with my 5,400 rpm drives at around 32C. So, for those wanting a very fast, high capacity mechanical hard drive, this is the one for you!
The problem I had now was what to do with this impressive drive. I decided to employ it in it’s natural environment, my NAS. Drive 5 was a stand alone drive used for generalised backup purposes and not part of my RAID 5 array of 4 WD 4Tb Red’s. Once the new drive was slotted into bay 5 and began to spin up, the subtle, but noticeable noise of the new drive could be heard. Even within my NAS, this drive could be heard over the other 4 WD Red’s that were running. To be clear, this is a very subtle difference and those that run their NAS’s in busy rooms or elsewhere will never notice. Even those like me with a small NAS box in one corner of a small room will likely not pick up on the change. Had I put five of these IronWolf 7,200 rpm drives into my NAS though, the overall increase in sound levels would be noticed if sat within a short distance of them. Seek noise is also much more noticeable on this drive compared to the 4Tb WD Red drives. One can hear a sharper, crisper sound as the IronWolf’s head actuators move. My WD drives seek action is almost imperceptible. TO be fair though, I believe a heavier, more noticeable seek sound is par for the course for high capacity drives.
I set about copying some 1.5Tb of data from my old drive to the new one which took almost 5 hours. I noticed though, how the NAS’s internal fan would regularly ramp up to keep the unit cool now it had a warmer running 7,200 rpm drive sat in the bottom bay. This turned my otherwise silent NAS, an unobtrusive box sat in one corner, into a presence that reminded me of a distant hair drier. I shudder to think had I had all five bays populated with these drives, my NAS may have trouble with the heat under sustained load. If it did, it’s 120mm rear fan would be running at max continually to try and stay cool.
Do you need such a drive for your NAS? Probably not. Most NAS’s are fine with 5,400 rpm drives as their transfer rates often exceed 120Mb/sec, possibly more when combined into a RAID array. bear in mind that the 260 Mb/sec read speed of this IronWolf model will totally saturate a 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection. In other words, if you run a NAS over a 1Gigabit Ethernet network, as most people do, you will never realize the speed potential of these drives in that environment. 1 Gigabit Ethernet translates to a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 125 Mb/sec. Many folks get Mega/giga bits and Mega/giga Bytes confused (ISP’s are the worst for this). Thus, your 260 Mb/sec IronWolf drive will be crippled to 125 Mb/sec at best, less than half its rated speed, over a standard 1 gig Ethernet network. So, you’ll have all that added noise and heat for nothing. I’m sure there is a market for such drives within NAS arrays … somewhere in the semi-pro/professional space and on NAS devices far more expensive than mine, but for the vast majority here, nope, you don’t need one of these in your NAS unless your entire network uses 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet or faster.
This Seagate IronWolf 8Tb 7,200 rpm drive is fast, very fast! But it’s not for everyone. It’s a technical marvel to be sure to squeeze this much performance from a mechanical hard drive and if you aren’t sensitive to noise or concerned with heat, then this is a fantastic storage device. As for longevity, I’ll update this review should this drive fail within its warranty period … or even soon after.
Bought this for my Netgear 6-bay server. Not used it yet, it’s in case I have a hard drive failure. The drive was supplied in a fit for purpose, shock and crush resistant HDD packaging. It looks like that’s how Seagate ship them to Amazon. I normally buy ST4000VNZ08 but this seems to be a later equivalent. Hopefully it will il, be a long time before I have to try i
I have a few of these drives in my server and they’re exactly what I was expecting: fast for a mechanical drive, but slightly louder than a normal RPM one you’d get in most pre-built desktops. They’re more than adequate for the media server I built. The initial spinning up of the disc is quite loud, but once the drive has spun up to a continuous RPM it’s relatively quiet.
Very happy with this purchase. Bought two for my initial set up of Synology DS920+. All working well after several months of use. You can hear these click clack in the background (actually on my office desk) but not too obtrusive. As I have nothing to compare with I cannot state as to the noise level against other drives.
Overall I am very happy with these drives and will be purchasing another for bay 3 in the coming months.
My opinion highly recommended.
Synology has a tie in with Seagate Ironwolf as they have specific status and testing when you look at the drives in the Synology OS, which is quite cool.
Drives themselves are fine, a little noisy but not much different to the other drives (HGST) that were replaced. Been running for over a month without issue. I’ve marked 4 stars on value for money because they’re still a little pricey and will be good to see these come down a bit more to 150 but I understand the logistics and scarcity of parts.
Overall very pleased and glad I went with these rather than the WD Reds with all their SMR issues.
I have had no issue at all with the Seagate Ironwolf 8TB drives, read and write speeds across my network is acceptable and quick enough for video editing etc. They seem to run cool enough and appear to be reliable.
If I were to have any negative feedback then I’d say that they aren’t particularly quiet drives as there is a lot of typical clicking and buzzing when the whole rack is running flat out serving data – but probably no worse than any other mechanical set of drives when mounted in a long row inside a confined metal box.
I’ve found them quicker than WD drives and at the time of purchase, were slightly cheaper. Obviously I use NAS drives over the standard desktop ones (Barracuda?) as these complement SSD/NVMe that are used for the actual editing process. (for speed).
After doing some research on drives before sticking a load of money into buying a pile of these I read that Seagate is like the whippet of mechanical drives – nippy and willing, where as WD are more like the old guy that reliably just turns up but will be there every time you need him – just maybe not quite so full of beans as the whippet.
Overall, happy customer! Would buy more when the need arises.
Good Value for Money from Amazon, delivered efficiently and in a timely manor. Easy to install, when used as a replacement drive. But does not include and connecting cables, as advertised.
My last Seagate drive finally died after 10 years hard service in my NAS drive, I replaced the standard drive with this one designed for NAS systems, it immediately rebuilt the RAID and seems slightly faster than before. So far very happy, if it lasts as long as my last one I will be over the moon.
I have 2 of these drives in my NAS in a raid 1 configuration.
They are fantastic, they take all the data I need them too from games when my main PC’s hdds were dying to the photos from my family from the last 15 years.
I couldn’t recommend anything different for a small home set up like this.
This one I have in my home server nas and works great.