Models and Overview

Seagate has stolen the march on its competitors with the rebranding and in some instances redesigning the NAS, SATA, and SAS hard disk drives as well as the Solid-State Drives. Clearly, with the advent of new model names – it does become challenging to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Selecting which drives best suited for NAS servers does depend on the nature of work and the load the drives are going to be exposed to. Workload is important as the drives must take the strain, using a NAS 24/7/365 is very different from the one used in an office or home infrequently.

Specification and Features

Seagate IronWolf NAS - The Seagate IronWolf NAS Series are ideally suited for the connected home, small home office, and entry-level small business NAS.

Observing the chart depicts the 1TB-4TB drives have a spindle rate of 5900rpm these will be slower than the 7200rpm drives and will also be less noisy as well.

The Seagate IronWolf NAS drives come with a standard three-year warranty, and the DATA Rescue Services are optional. Ideally suited for NAS appliances with 1-8 bays. Workload is also important here if data transfers are less than 180TB per year than these drives are fine to use if the workload is more all other factors are less relevant – we are focusing on reliability and longevity only for this exercise. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is 1 million hours

Seagate IronWolf PRO NAS - The Seagate IronWolf PRO NAS drives are classified too work within small home office, small and medium-size businesses and suited for NAS arrays with 1-16 bays, the scope of the PRO range is higher with support for a broader range of NAS arrays.

Workload on the PRO drives is measured at equal to or less than 300TB per year that is a whole load of data transfers. Drives are designed for resilience and longevity, value for money is good for the street price the drives typically sell for. From an investment perspective the 5-year warranty is as good as one will get for Hard Disk Drives, and with SimplyNAS you will also get an option to extend this to advance replacement (AR) as this allows for a drive to be sent before you can send the other back for warranty replacement/repair. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is 1.2 million hours

Seagate Exos Enterprise - The Seagate EXOS range is manufactured with the big data in mind, designed to take data brutality and I/O punishment we are made to understand this drive is the ultimate in Seagate’s SATA and SAS 7200rpm portfolio. The Exos X12 is helium based and has a higher than normal tolerance level and destined for longevity.

Just as the example above there are the Exos X10 that consist of the 10TB SAS and SATA drives, as well as the Exos 7E8 that hold the 8TB SAS and SATA drives, these are all advanced level Enterprise drives for use within a data center type of environment – 24/7/365 so if you have a require for a NAS that requires to be always on and is being accessed constantly carrying out multiple I/O’s, then this class of drive is what is needed to ensure data integrity and longevity. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is 2.5 million hours

Often one of the main questions asked of us is the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) hours for each of drive classification so here they are for the drives here.

MTBF - Most sources define this term to mean average time between failures 

MTBF (mean time between failures) is a measure of how reliable a hardware product or component is. For most components, the measure is typically in thousands or even tens of thousands of hours between failures. For example, a hard disk drive may have a mean time between failures of 300,000 hours. The desired MTBF can be used as a quantifiable objective when designing a new product. The MTBF figure can be developed as the result of intensive testing, based on actual product experience, or predicted by analyzing known factors. The manufacturer may provide it as an index of a product's or component's reliability and, in some cases, to give customers an idea of how much service to plan for.

NAS Integration

The question that arises is one of integration what factors determine which drive/s are integrated with the selected NAS. Pertinent factors considered will set the integration criteria. Category – (home, SOHO, SMB, Enterprise), Data Throughput, Usage (Primary, Secondary or Archival storage), and many other factors that determine what class of drives will work with the desired NAS. SimplyNAS provides pre-sales help for the best way forward  - call one of their experts +1 (407).960.4690 and they will provide the necessary assistance and help needed. SimplyNAS sells, HGST, Western Digital and Toshiba hard disk drives as well as Samsung, Micron, WD, Toshiba and Seagate solid state solutions.

As far as NAS arrays go, the QNAP, Synology, ReadyNAS, Thecus and Drobo all support the Seagate IronWolf NAS and Pro drives, but for the Exos you will need to check each manufacturer's compatibility list for specific models.

A Word on Warranty

All manufacturer warranties have an expectant clause for the faulty drive to be returned prior to a replacement being issued. The manufacturer warranty normally takes effect 30 days after from place of purchase. All warranty is handled online and as a word of warning is a rather arduous task.