How much storage is too much storage? Whatever that limit may be, it clearly hasn’t been hit yet, since Seagate just eclipsed the current class-leading capacity of 14TB with the introduction of 16TB IronWolf and IronWolf Pro hard drives. Both the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro drives feature the SATA III 6 Gb/s interface, a rotational speed of 7200 rpm, a 256MB cache, a 3.5" form factor, and are designed for use in 24/7 NAS environments, or 8,760 hours per year. However, between the IronWolf and the IronWolf Pro, which may be better suited for your needs?
The IronWolf is best used in 1-8 bay NAS environments within home, SOHO, and SMB settings. It features data-transfer speeds of up to 210 MB/s, has an MTBF (mean time between failure) rating of 1 million hours, can withstand 600,000 load/unload cycles, 1 in 1015 no-recoverable read errors per bits read, and a workload rate of up to 180TB per year. The IronWolf is protected by a limited three-year warranty.
If your NAS setup is more serious, you’ll want to consider the IronWolf Pro, which is made for 1-16 bay NAS environments within commercial and enterprise settings. To handle any increased workloads, data transfers speeds are increased up to 250 MB/s, its MTBF failure rating is increased 1.2 million hours, and its workload rate grows to 300TB. It also features an annualized failure rate (AFR) of 0.73%, a limited 2-year data recovery warranty, and a limited 5-year general warranty.
Both the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro drives use AgileArray technology, which helps with dual-plane balancing and RAID optimization in multi-raid environments with advanced power management. Furthermore, Rotational Vibration (RV) sensors come standard to help maintain high performance in multi-bay NAS enclosures. Overall drive health is maintained by IronWolf Health Management.
Is 16TB enough for you, or do you still need more? Feel free to leave your comments below.
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