Seagate IronWolf 8Tb NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6GB/S 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for Raid Network Attached Storage (ST8000VN0022),Silver

Pros:- High Capacity.- Quiet compared with other 7200 rpm NAS Drives (HGST).- Seagate Tools provides an excellent suite of testing and drive monitoring software to test drives before Installation.- Read and Write Speed are very Good for a HDD.- 256MB Cache which is 2X the Cache on WD RED or HGST NAS Drives.- 3 Year Warranty.- Drives are HEAVY with a lot of Thermal Mass compared to other NAS Drives.- Low vibration.- Drives run Cool (compared to other similar capacity NAS Drives).- No Drive Failures in 10 months of 24/7 use.Cons:- Cost per Terrabyte is still higher than for IronWolf 4TB NAS Drives.I have 15 of these Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS drives operating in RAID and non-RAID configurations. Some of the drives have been operationg for 10 months of 24/7 Data Server and Media Server conditions. So far, I have had no failures. I test each drive before installing it in the servers by doing a full format of the disc, doing short and long self tests in Seagate Tools, updating the firmware to the latest versions available, and generally running the drives through the entire gamut of tests in the Seagate Tools menu. The testing suite takes more than 48 hours to complete but, I would rather spend the time up front to ensure the drives are not going to fail from infant mortality and there are no bad portions of the drives before spending more than 24 hours to load data unto the drive and have it fail.So far, I am very satisfied with these Seagate IronWolf Drives compared to NAS Drives from HGST and WD. The HGST drives are noisy and I am concerned that there will be head crashes. After having the same problem with 8 of these drives, I realized that it was just a characteristic of the HGST drives. I still don't like it. The WD Red 8TB NAS drives are slower to read and write and are loud compared to the IronWolf drives. I also prefer the Seagate Tools maintenance suite over the one for WD.I watch for the sales on the IronWolf NAS drives and save 20% on the price. This adds up when ordering multiple drives.Other Comments:I have started buying the IronWolf 10TB drives. The outer case must be made from Magnesium or the drive spindles and platters must be made from some ultra-light material and different design. The 10TB drives are quite a bit lighter than the 8TB drives with the same outer dimensions. The 10TB drives are also quiet and low vibration. So far, after 3 months, the 10TB drives are performing good also. I recommend the Seagate IronWolf NAS Drives.Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Seagate or any other drive manufacturer. Every one of the drives I own have been purchased with my own money I have no incentive to give a good review other than the fact that I like the product and it performs to my expectations.

I have six of these in my NAS, and it runs 24/7. The reliability is outstanding. Over the course of 7 1/2 years I only had 1 drive fail on me, and that was after running continually for 7 years. To only have 1 failure after 65,000 hours of continual use is pretty amazing. Since I was running RAID, not a single byte of data was lost. At the rate we tend to upgrade technology, it is wonderful to know these drives and the QNAP NAS still exceeds my expectations today.

I bought a couple of these as well as some WD Reds and HGST Deskstars and ended up keeping these and the Reds and returning the Deskstars which, along with the Reds, were slower and noisier. Both make a regular clicking sound, but are otherwise quiet, quieter than the Ironwolf's in fact, though barely (the main noise the IronWolfs make is spinning up, where they're a bit louder). As far as I can tell, the clicking is normal, though WD/HGST (same company) can't seem to make up their minds, as one person that contacted them about it was told it's normal and another was told it's not. It seems to be due to the drive redistributing lubricant every few seconds, in an attempt to increase longevity, but considering I've never had an issue with that, I wasn't willing to put up with that noise for a possible increased lifespan (though possibly not), with no ability to even adjust its frequency, especially for the cost. I kept the Reds though, because they were much cheaper than either of the others, so for that price, I was willing to deal with it. Also, the Deskstars were slow, performing similarly to the Reds, despite being 7200RPM. Had it not been for the clicking (and possibly even despite the clicking), I would have considered returning the Seagates as well, simply due to the Reds being so much cheaper, but I decided to keep them because they are a good bit faster, and so I used them to replace my main data drives to give a bit of a speed boost there, not to mention more capacity. Interestingly, the Reds don't seem to click any more, so maybe it's something that goes away after a little while. Still, the Deskstars weren't worth the extra price, even if the clicking did subside.To sum up, if you want the best bang for your buck regardless of speed or noise, the Reds are the better choice (and even with the clicking it may not be audible from a few feet away, and it may go away). If you want speed, the IronWolfs are better. Of course, even a very slow SSD would still be much faster, but you're going to be much more limited on capacity and it's going to cost a lot more, so it really just depends on what you're going for. For my setup, paying a bit more for the IronWolfs for the extra speed for just the two drives I use for my main data was worth it, whereas my other drives don't need that and so I'm much more happy saving money and using Reds. (NB: I got my Reds through Best Buy as external drives and shelled them to use them internally. If you're not comfortable doing that, and just want to buy an internal drive, the Seagates are definitely the better buy, as they're cheaper and faster and don't click. While it's not a direct comparison, and therefore these drives aren't really in direct competition with the Best Buy Reds, they effectively are, and so it would be nice to see the pricing come down some to reflect that.)Another thing I want to mention is that many people are very anti-Seagate (some might call them WD fanboys), claiming they aren't reliable. Unfortunately, many of these people are basing these claims on the old BackBlaze test, which has been shown to be a poor source of reliability information due to the vast difference in environment between how those drives were tested and how drives are used in a home computer and, more importantly, because the poor reliability of the Seagate drives was due to the 3TB drives, which were very problematic, and not only for Seagate. And, of course, others are basing their claims on what others have said or because they had one Seagate drive fail, and they believe that means all Seagates are bad. Personally, I've used numerous Seagates (probably 20+) over the course of several years, and not one has failed. I've also done extensive research and digging into the BackBlaze and other data, and Seagate and WD are pretty much even, with HGST being slightly better (though I'm not sure if the difference is statistically significant). So I will buy either, depending on the value and performance, and don't worry much about the reliability difference between them. I just do extensive testing on each drive when it's new (I run it through a series of different hard drive tests: HGST DFT, WDDLG, Seagate SeaTools, and EaseUS Partition Master). This obviously takes a few days, but if a drive handles all that without issue, I can be fairly certain it's not gong to fail anytime soon, and typically drives either fail within a few weeks or last for years (bathtub curve). I also keep everything backed up, so a failure might cause some data loss, and will be a bit of a pain, but it won't be a disaster.