Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS Hard Drive 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s CMR 3.5″ Internal HDD for RAID Network Attached Storage ST8000VN0022

Pros: The drive is massive in capacity. Relatively quiet for a NAS drive (not super loud but certainly not completely silent).

The large cache really seems to help with speeds (see speeds below in Other Thoughts). To that note, the drive also seems to be able to spin up quite quickly.

Even when under full load it manages to maintain a peak temperature of less than 35C at all times. I’d say that’s pretty good.

Looking at the architecture, I’d wager that it’s built to last, with its large bearing/motor design. However, time will tell.

You really see this drive excel in random reading and writing of small files. Which is probably what most people would be using NAS drives for.

So far, it’s held up to many many torture tests for this review.

Cons: Not a lot to put here. Obviously, this drive is still nearly 300 bones at the time of this review. That’s still a good chunk of money for a hard drive. That being said, it is 8TB.

Seagate in recent years has had some problems with QA in some of their drive models. I can only hope that those days are behind them now.

The drive is insanely heavy. Not that this matters a whole lot, but its over 700 grams!

Overall Review: Speed tests performed with Crystal DiskMark:
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CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64
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Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 173.884 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 190.660 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.174 MB/s [ 530.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.159 MB/s [ 527.1 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 172.183 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 189.994 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.677 MB/s [ 165.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.111 MB/s [ 515.4 IOPS]

Test : 32768 MiB [D: 67.4% (5019.7/7451.9 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/01/12 5:39:17
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 173.477 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 189.500 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.826 MB/s [ 689.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.374 MB/s [ 579.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 188.747 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 186.639 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.895 MB/s [ 218.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.392 MB/s [ 584.0 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [D: 67.4% (5019.7/7451.9 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/01/12 5:50:24
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 203.825 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 170.063 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 53.370 MB/s [ 13029.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 4.997 MB/s [ 1220.0 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 187.258 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 174.877 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 31.483 MB/s [ 7686.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 5.468 MB/s [ 1335.0 IOPS]

Test : 50 MiB [D: 67.4% (5019.7/7451.9 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/01/12 5:55:25
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Pros: This drive delivers a ton of space and it feels very well built. It may sound strange but when I pick up a hard drive and it’s light as a feather, I feel discouraged, but this drive feels like it’s got some quality materials in its construction.

In testing, the performance of the drive was outstanding. The throughput I achieved was very impressive, with read rates averaging 136MB/s and write rates averaging 88MB/s.

I plan on using this drive to provide some additional space for a file server at my house, I am confident that it will hold up to the 24/7 operation and for this reason I’m glad it’s a NAS intended drive.

Cons: The drive is a bit louder than conventional hard drives I’ve worked with, but that’s not generally a problem for server or NAS type environments where the device is usually tucked away somewhere that noise isn’t much of a factor. In my file server, the fans will certainly still be louder than this hard drive.

The drive runs fairly warm but not unreasonably so.

Overall Review: The benchmark I performed on the drive used a 50MB sample size across 1000 samples. Average read rate was 136.6MB/s, average write rate was 88.3MB/s, and average access time was 15.79ms. These are all great figures in my opinion and this seems to outperform desktop hard drives I’ve used. It also seems to outperform NAS rated drives from another popular drive manufacturer I’ve used.

I’ve had some bad fortune with Seagate Barracudas over the years, but this drive gives me a lot of confidence and is a step toward earning back some of my respect for Seagate.

Pros: – Fast sustained data rates for a mechanical drive
– designed for 24/7 use
– software is great
– Respectable meantime before failure and workload rate
– Doesn’t run hot

Cons: not bundled with the data recovery service like the pro which could come in handy someday

Overall Review: Put this in alongside my 14tb ironwolf pro for my home nas and so far so good. 8tb is a lot of storage and it’s plenty fast. Backed up my first drive and still have room

This drive doesn’t have the chirp sound that my pro drive has when the heads get parked. But my nas isn’t in the same room so i never hear it anyway.

awesome drives for a basic nas or personal cloud storage, the software comes in handy for checking drive health and because its designed to be on all the time these are some really reliable drives.

Pros: The Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB mechanical hard drive is a mechanical hard drive, and just that. There’s very little now-a-days that separates mechanical hard drives among other mechanical drives from competing companies. It really comes down to longevity, noise, warranty, and price; and between these things, the only things (in my opinion) that really matter on making a purchase is the longevity and price.

The drive itself is 8TB and comes with nominal specs for its capacity and its class (note that this is marketed towards the NAS user where uptime is generally measured in contiguous months). Standard 3.5” form factor and 256 MB of cache (better than 128), it also spins at the standard speed of 7200rpm, connectivity is using standard SATA III, 6Gb/s. MTBF from Seagate states 1 million hours – this value from hard drives manufacturers is rather vague and pretty meaningless. What matters is the rate of premature failure based on a large set of drives. I’ve been using this drive in a home NAS in a RAID 6 config for about a week and the performance, noise, and thermals are all nominal. Only extended time will tell if the drive lasts for years to come, but so far I’m seeing no immediate concerns.

The thing comes with some vibration sensors and other ‘health management’ type functionality. But who cares really, most of these things, not just from Seagate but all manufacturers, don’t mean much for the home NAS user. Whether or not this actually brings some improvements to the life span of the device you can’t easily measure.

Cons: None identified so far, hoping it stays this way for several years.

Overall Review: Since this is marketed towards a NAS user, be sure to check with your NAS vendor to ensure that this model/size drive is compatible with their current solution before purchasing. You don’t have to use with a NAS, you can use this as a single storage drive in a desktop or throw it in a case to make for a heavy, but large capacity, external storage.

If you’re a Seagate fan boy then purchase and use and be happy; hopefully you’ll get a good drive that will last you many years. I’ve been buying mechanical hard drives for nearing 4 decades now it’s always a mixed bag in terms of longevity, generally though large manufacturers like Seagate put out quality products and will honor warranties.

Pros: Very fast sustained transfer rate: ~200MB/s, very large capacity at 8TB .
Runs cool, but not exceedingly quiet
Hopefully the NAS rated drive provides more reliable long term operation

Cons: As SSD drive is getting larger in capacity and cheaper in price, these spindle drives are getting less impressive despite a very good performance showing from this particular drive.

Overall Review: I updated a 1TB drive in my NAS system with this 8TB with 256MB cache unit, during data transfer about 289GB of data was transfered in 24 minutes which average about 200MB/s transfer rate. This is very good for an old school spindle drive. During data transfer I used USB 3.1 adapter, I could feel the driver creates a gyro-effect when the power is shut off on the unit. This would suspect the drive is less rugged compared to a SSD drive (but I guess everyone knows about that). Not sure about the drive longevity yet since I only had it for a few weeks, but so far no sign of any issue. This is a very good drive, only time will tell how reliable the drive will be in the long term.

Pros: I have been running 4x8TB in a NAS for almost a year now. I haven’t had a single problem. Would recommend

Cons: None

Pros: Faster than most other 8TB drives, Reliable, Well supported

Cons: Drinks power (but that IS the trade off for speed, isn’t it?)

Overall Review: I keep buying these things. So should you.