With SSDs reaching a brand new stage of affordability, we now not suggest utilizing mechanical arduous drives as main system storage. Nevertheless, for a secondary drive with substantial storage capability, Seagate IronWolf NAS drives stay unbeatable.
Being NAS-optimized, the IronWolf collection will not be cheap for a disk drive, as it’s designed for intensive workloads involving fixed learn/write operations over prolonged durations. These drives are extra dependable, provide greater capacities, and carry out properly (for a tough drive). It is value noting that higher-end collection just like the IronWolf Professional and Exos are meant for bigger servers and focus extra on vibration resistance than on efficiency.
The newest IronWolf HDDs can be found in capacities of 1/2/3TB (5,900 RPM, 64MB cache), 6TB (5,600 RPM, 256MB cache), and eight/10/12TB (7,200 RPM, 256MB cache). The latter variations include a five-year guarantee and three years of knowledge restoration companies. Moreover, these drives use typical magnetic recording (CMR) know-how as a substitute of shingled magnetic recording (SMR), avoiding the write efficiency penalty related to SMR utilized in cheaper, denser disks.
Inevitably, this additionally means paying a small premium over finances drives. For instance, an 8TB IronWolf drive will set you again round $170, whereas an equivalent capability Barracuda may be had for $125.
A Worthy Different: WD Pink Plus
WD NAS drives have been priced to compete with Seagate’s IronWolf throughout their complete vary of 1/2/3/4/6/8/10/12/14TB fashions. There are, nonetheless, minor spec variations between the 2, together with RPM speeds and cache measurement. Notably, the most recent model of the Pink Plus drives provide 512MB of cache within the 12TB and 14TB fashions. Nevertheless, these nonetheless include three years of guarantee.
HDD Price range Choice
When you merely need an affordable, barebones HDD, the Seagate Barracuda line has quite a lot of choices to get you probably the most storage in your cash. A 4TB mannequin may be had for simply $80, or you may double the area with the capacious $125 8TB model. The Barracuda can be out there in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 6TB variants.
The 2TB mannequin of the Barracuda is the candy spot by way of pace, spinning at 7,200 RPM with 256MB of cache. The 1TB mannequin spins on the identical pace, however solely consists of 64MB of cache. The 3TB and above fashions decelerate to 5400 RPM, however we expect that is cheap for the value. A bigger cache is beneficial for storing continuously used information without having to maintain them on the slower disk.