Seagate IronWolf Pro, 4 TB, NAS Internal Hard Drive, CMR 3.5 Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s 7,200 RPM, 256 MB Cache, for RAID Network Attached Storage, 3 years Rescue Services, FFP (ST4000NE001)

I bought this 6Tb IronWolf Pro NAS drive as backup server for my main servers. I’m using AOMEI backup software (also bought from Amazon) which has an excellent data compression option, so 6Tb is enough. The drive is fast and works perfectly in my spare NAS bay. It is online 24/7 for weekly scheduled incremental backups. This was my preferred choice because it uses CMR technology and is intended for the Enterprise environment. But like some other reviewers I found it very noisy. I could hear the loud hum from the drive two doors down the corridor from my office, and couldn’t tolerate it in the same room. The previous drive in this NAS bay was silent. But I found the answer. There was a tiny gap between the drive and the internal drive housing, and I could wiggle the drive slightly from side to side. So I inserted four tiny, very thin pieces of silicon rubber sheet into each side of the gap – and the noise stopped. I can now be alongside the NAS and remain more or less sane! Great news.

The HDD I received was not packaged in OEM packaging (it was a generic cardboard box lined with foam) - it was not sealed as it should be if it were new. There were no Seagate papers inside (e.g. warranty information, safety information) like I would normally see in OEM packaging. The date of manufacture was June 2022 -- not unbelievable but its not usual for a HDD to sit in a warehouse for 3 years. The 5 year warranty that is advertised is also not valid for the drive serial number I received. The drive showed signs of previous use, make strange clicky noises, and ultimately failed within 24 hours of being installed in a low stress and low load environment (no other disks or sources of vibration, low heat, and only ~200GB of space was used by the time it failed). All this suggests that the disk I received was used (likely a used ex-enterprise disk), which would have required deliberate tampering to reset the SMART data (it showed 0 hours use at initial installation - I am sure this is not true). Considering it is listed as "New", this is not a good sign... Sending it back to Amazon - hopefully the refund comes through OK.

Worked as advertised, great products and no issues. Have already bought another

This review is for the IronWolf Pro 12TB HDD. Before I was to place so much faith in any HDD over 8TB I dutifully researched what to be cautious of; which basically boiled down to what I planned to use the HDD for, and the length warranty that the manufacturer was prepared to back their product with. At present Seagate do offer a 16TB option (while other manufacturers offer up to 18TB), so I felt that the 12TB technology would be mature and thus reliable enough to grant me peace of mind, as well as the price being peachy enough (£315). The price to storage space these days is such that profit margins are thin, which is why manufacturers have coagulated to form the Goliaths that the market is mostly served by today. Of particular concern there is a storage technique known as SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) which is incompatible with NAS, and unless you're penny pinching then it is less hassle to go with the more familiar CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording). Seagate recognised this and released a table to allow customers to identify which of their HDDs use SMR/CMR, which can be found on Seagate’s own website under the title “Which Drive Has What?”. For my own needs this 12TB HDD will only ever be pushed hard from the outset, as once after transferring data it will be kept in cold storage; as a backup of a backup (remember, unless you back-up your backed up data, you don't have backup). For yourself you might be pushing it hard on a daily or weekly basis, but for myself I will likely keep it beyond the five year warranty period due to infrequent use. I opted for the “Pro” model as it offered a five year warranty over the two year for the normal option, and the price difference wasn’t that great. To confirm this I contacted Seagate support directly from their website on a free phone number, where they were very helpful. To be on the safe side I struck up a written line of communication via email as well, of which came in handy later on after I was unable to register the HDD for warranty cover once in possession of it. The advice I was given was that it would be best to opt for a Pro model as that model would have been sitting in a warehouse for less time, and these HDDs have a Date Of Manufacture, of which the Warranty commences from. The HDD that I received already had been sitting idle for one year, but I was assured that I could have the Warranty commence form the time of purchase instead. Contacting Seagate through the existing written line of communication I noticed that they had a habit of pulling away from the thread with new emails, and were initially reluctant to grant the full five year Warranty as my HDD was not from an “official seller”, even though it was purchased from the Seagate store on Amazon ! So I decided to press the matter by challenging them on this fact: that it was NOT the customer’s responsibility to manage Seagate’s logistics i.e. if I purchase from Seagate’s Amazon store then it was THEIR responsibility to only sell from official sellers (but there we go again with the issue of thin profit margins I suppose). It didn’t take long for Seagate to capitulate under the weight of the facts against them, and to their credit they granted me a full five year warranty form the date of which my receipt stated I had purchased the HDD. However, even though I was told that the registration would be visible on their website after twenty four hours, it was not. Again, chasing this up I was informed that as the HDD was not meant to be sold in my region, apparently, then it would not be technically possible to display this on their website, and that the email itself was a guarantor of the Warranty. I make this information known to those before purchasing, and to shame Seagate for their purposefully obtuse logistics system which puts their customers in this position. If anything untoward occurs during the time of use, I will revisit this review…

I purchased a Seagate HDD from this seller expecting a brand new drive, but after running diagnostics using smartmontools, it’s clear this is not a new drive at all. The SMART report revealed: • Power-On Hours: 28,000+ hours • Start/Stop Count: Extremely high (indicating long-term use) • Reallocated Sector Count & UDMA CRC Errors: Present – early signs of potential failure • Firmware & Serial Info: Shows signs of tampering – possibly from a data center or crypto farm The drive clearly came from a heavily used environment, likely repurposed from a server or mining/farming setup, and someone attempted to reset or manipulate the SMART data to hide its real condition. Fortunately, not all SMART attributes can be reset easily, and this is how I uncovered the deception. This is a huge red flag. Selling a drive with over 3 years of usage (24/7) and marketing it as brand new is outright dishonest and dangerous for buyers relying on these drives for storage integrity. If you’re considering this seller, double-check your drive with smartmontools right after receiving it. Any genuine new drive should show: • Power-On Hours: 0–1 • Start/Stop Count: 0–1 • No reallocated sectors or errors Hope this helps Do NOT trust this listing if you’re expecting actual new hardware. Avoid unless you’re comfortable dealing with used enterprise drives and possibly failing hardware.

Does what it says on the tin works well at a good price

Good

It is worth emphasising that these drives are specifically designed for installation in a NAS or storage server. The vibration sensors enable them to work better when there are multiple spinning drives in use all alongside each other, 24x7. The chance of in-life failure is small and the Pro version of Ironwolf means that you have a higher workload rate limit and a five-year warranty plus three-years of data recovery service. You should be using them with some kind of data redundancy such as RAID 5 or better. Don't forget the 3-2-1 rule for backup: at least 3 copies of the data, on two different physical devices, one of which is off-site. If you get a working hard drive, it's excellent. I'd give it five stars, really. After about a month, I have two of these 16TB Ironwolf Pro drives running in my NAS and will probably buy another if/when my storage requirements need it. With a working drive, plugging it into the NAS and making use of it should take less than five minutes. As with all makes of NAS drives, noise levels are noticeable when the NAS is busy, but they are almost silent when just spinning. Apparently (unlike some of the existing single-starred commentaries for this product), one cannot make remarks about the quality of enclosure of the delicate product for its apparently very bumpy voyage down the big river to me, or about the level of effort and time that it takes to deal with the practical and financial consequences, twice. My overall marking reflects the chances of me buying another one the same way.