Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB HDD Review

Rating: 8.0.

Seagate's IronWolf Pro range of hard drives have been designed for use in commercial and enterprise NAS devices from 1-bay units all the way up to 16-bay systems. The latest 12TB model is the new flagship drive of a range that starts at 2TB.

The new 12TB drive uses Seagate's latest platter (disc) technology which together with a helium filled enclosure allows for 8 1.5TB platters together with 16 heads to be built in a 26.11 mm high drive.

As you might expect from a drive aimed at the NAS market, the IronWolf Pro has a couple of extra features up its sleeve to help it survive in a multi disk environment. AgileArray, Seagate’s NAS optimisation technology which blends together drive balance, RAID error recovery and power optimisation. The drive also has Rotational Vibration (RV) sensors to protect the drive against any damage caused by the vibration that is set up in the larger multi-bay NAS enclosures. NAS-aware Error Recovery Control (ERC) is also used in the IronWolf Pro.

ERC ensures that hosts don't mistakenly see busy drives as dead ones needing maintenance but at the same time flagging up drives that do have errors, so saving time and indeed money caused by unnecessary drive changes and RAID rebuilds. The drives also feature multi-user technology that provides a 300TB/year user workload rate.

The quoted maximum sustained data rate for the 12TB IronWolf is 250MB/s and Seagate back the drive with a five-year warranty.

Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 12TB
Spindle Speed: 7,200rpm
No. Of Heads: 16
No. Of Platters: 8
Cache: 256MB
Recording Method: Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR)
Interface: Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s (SATA III)
Form Factor: 3.5in
Dimensions: 26.11 x 101.85 x 146.99 mm
Drive Weight: 705g

Firmware Version: ENO1

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