Seagate IronWolf, 8TB, NAS, Internal Hard Drive, CMR, 3.5 Inch, SATA, 6GB/s, 5,400 RPM, 256MB Cache, for RAID Network Attached Storage, 3 year Rescue Services, FFP (ST8000VNZ04)

I was running low on my 2Tb drive and began to look around to replace it with something like a 4Tb option. I searched Amazon for my current go-to brand, Western Digital, and found their Blue range of drives in both 4 and 6Tb variants. Prior to choosing though, I decided to find out whether these drives were CMR (Conventional magnetic Recording) or SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording) models. Most drives today for the desktop market tend to be of the SMR type, especially at higher capacities. The 2Tb WD Blue drive I have is a CMR drive and has good write performance. BTW, for those that may not be aware, SMR drives suffer from far lower write performance. This means that saving files on such drives is going to be somewhat slower than for a CMR type drive. This, of course, for most desktop users is fine, the trade off is high capacity at good prices. After all, most consumers write data once when placing a file onto their drives and thereafter it's only ever read back, so not a big deal at all. As an archive drive, SMR in particular makes economic sense.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.

No issues with this. Review comes late, and the drive is quiet, fast and faultless.

Followed the article from Synology around replacing higher capacity drives and it was very simple. It took a long time for the volume to rebuild, but this was expected given it was nearly 90% full (12 TB). I only replaced 2 of the 4 x 4tb, so I do need to replace the other 2 at some point, but it gave me another 4 tb to play with and i'll purchase more when i have the £ to do it.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’m using these in a ds720 synology NAS. They’ve been working perfectly and were way to install. The only comment I would make, which I found out about after purchasing….is that 7200rpm is intended for professional/server usage. As a home user, I don’t really get any of the benefits of the higher rpm and, understandably, it makes a constant hum in the background. I would therefore recommend using the lower 5400rpm version if you simply want a home NAS for streaming, photos etc. Great product overall though.

It's a good drive & I'm looking forward to using it. You may need to enable your SMB 1.0 config for it to work on Windows 10+ systems (added a pic. of what to look for in your Control Panel/Turn Windows features on/off). The one down-point is that it didn't come with the screws I needed to fix it in the drive (managed to scrounge two from somewhere else) hopefully I can find more so it will be more securely installed...

Recently made a new NAS system which already had some 4TB versions of these and figured I would be better upgrading to some bigger 8TB ones to save too many drives going into my system.They really do the trick and the performance is really good as they are 7200rpm drives, but be warned this does come at a cost. They are noisy compared to the slower rpm drives which is a given really.As my NAS unit is in an office it’s not a problem as there is generally noise of some sort anyhow. But if this is going in your lounge you are likely to hear it in quiet moments of your favourite movie etc.

After a lot of years using WD RED NAS drives I decided to give these Ironwolf drives a try. Not a lightly considered change as I needed four of them to swap out in my NAS. A couple of days swapping a drive waiting for the RAID to rebuild and then swapping the next was straightforward and now a few months later the four drives are all running as they should. I'm appreciating and using the extra capacity with 24TB in the NAS now.Checking the health monitoring in the NAS the drives seem to run a couple of degrees warmer than the WD-RED 3TB drives they replaced. So over the summer in 35C ambient temperatures the NAS fans were more active. As winter approaches I might appreciate the extra warmth!

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.