Seagate Ironwolf or Barracuda

[another random person]

I am currently browsing for yet another drive for my computer and am wondering which would be the better choice. I am aware there are WD options too but 5400 is a bit slow compared to 7200 RPM drives. The price difference between the drives is AUD 11 with the Ironwolf being the more expensive of the two. I understand that the Iron wolf is intended for NAS use but would there be a difference between the two types of drives? Like with regards to performance, reliability etc.

 

I will be using the drive for mass storage and image sequence playback on Premiere Pro of RAW images from timelapse shooting. My current 1TB and 3TB are filling up quite fast and I still have a long way to go with my 2018 timelapse film/other projects. 

 

 

[Jurrunio]

You pay more for Ironwolf's extra durability, though I wont buy Seagate drives at all. I lost 4 1TB 7.2k RPM Seagate Barracuda within 1.5 years of home use (as games, picture and video storage). That said I still have a 3 year old 500GB Barracuda running just fine.

[another random person]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

You pay more for Ironwolf's extra durability, though I wont buy Seagate drives at all. I lost 4 1TB 7.2k RPM Seagate Barracuda within 1.5 years of home use (as games, picture and video storage). That said I still have a 3 year old 500GB Barracuda running just fine.

Are there any 7200RPM drives that you would recommend?

[Jurrunio]

Just now, another random person said:

Are there any 7200RPM drives that you would recommend?

WD > Toshiba > Hitachi > Seagate. My Toshiba P300 is still working quietly after 3 years of abuse (was in a NAS that runs 12hours per day for 1 year, later as game storage in my PC).

[LunaP0n3]

1 minute ago, another random person said:

Are there any 7200RPM drives that you would recommend?

The WD Black series is 7200RPM and the come in capacities up to 6TB. They sport 128MBs of cache on the 5 and 6TB models and are designed for the workload you are considering.

[another random person]

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

WD > Toshiba > Hitachi > Seagate. My Toshiba P300 is still working quietly after 3 years of abuse (was in a NAS that runs 12hours per day for 1 year, later as game storage in my PC).

There have been so many mixed feelings about the Toshiba drives and some view it as amazing whereas others hate it. 7200 low cost Hard drive shopping is somewhat confusing. 

4 minutes ago, LunaP0n3 said:

The WD Black series is 7200RPM and the come in capacities up to 6TB. They sport 128MBs of cache on the 5 and 6TB models and are designed for the workload you are considering.

Yes but it is very very expensive in Australia and I'm unsure if it's even worth it because I've had 2 fail on me in the past year. 

[Princess Luna]

7 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

WD > Toshiba > Hitachi > Seagate. M

This is so wrong it is not even funny, all WD aside black are garbage that dies on me every time, Seagate Barracuda is the most reliable well priced HDD in the market, I have several of those at home, the oldest is 6 years old already and it has the very same write and read speeds from when it was brand new.

 

I do like Toshiba drives too, specially 2,5 inch ones though so I'll accept it in second place

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, Princess Cadence said:

This is so wrong it is not even funny, all WD aside black are garbage that dies on me every time, Seagate Barracuda is the most reliable well priced HDD in the market, I have several of those at home, the oldest is 6 years old already and it has the very same write and read speeds from when it was brand new.

 

I do like Toshiba drives too, specially 2,5 inch ones though so I'll accept it in second place

Hmm interesting. So buying a HDD is a lottery in which you hope you have been a good boy/girl for the last year?

 

4 minutes ago, another random person said:

There have been so many mixed feelings about the Toshiba drives and some view it as amazing whereas others hate it. 7200 low cost Hard drive shopping is somewhat confusing. 

Checking on PCPP, there's a WD Gold 10TB drive for 529. It's expensive even for the huge size (bottomless pit to me), but being a Gold disk means it's not going to fail so easily.

[another random person]

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

This is so wrong it is not even funny, all WD aside black are garbage that dies on me every time, Seagate Barracuda is the most reliable well priced HDD in the market, I have several of those at home, the oldest is 6 years old already and it has the very same write and read speeds from when it was brand new.

 

I do like Toshiba drives too, specially 2,5 inch ones though so I'll accept it in second place

So many mixed views and experiences...but I guess I'll just go for the Ironwolf because of the warranty and because I cheaped out on my PC case and it runs hotter than an oven in there. 

[Princess Luna]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Hmm interesting. So buying a HDD is a lottery in which you hope you have been a good boy/girl for the last year?

It seems so sadly... might come down to get a well priced 7200rpm one and pray plenty

[another random person]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Hmm interesting. So buying a HDD is a lottery in which you hope you have been a good boy/girl for the last year?

 

Checking on PCPP, there's a WD Gold 10TB drive for 529. It's expensive even for the huge size (bottomless pit to me), but being a Gold disk means it's not going to fail so easily.

I wish I had that much money, tops for me is around 150 AUD, any more and I might as well start using JPEG and buy a new lens.

[Morgan MLGman]

27 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

This is so wrong it is not even funny, all WD aside black are garbage that dies on me every time, Seagate Barracuda is the most reliable well priced HDD in the market, I have several of those at home, the oldest is 6 years old already and it has the very same write and read speeds from when it was brand new.

 

I do like Toshiba drives too, specially 2,5 inch ones though so I'll accept it in second place

I also dislike Seagate, had a similar experience as @Jurrunio, Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives dying for no reason while WD drives are still going strong, I had an almost new Seagate Barracuda 1TB drive that had around 14 hours of time it was even turned on and it died It was a gift so I didn't mind, but it was practically a brand-new drive that just stopped working.

 

Hitachi drives are manufactured by WD, same goes for HGST and they have the lowest fail rate, so it's Hitachi/HGST -> WD/Toshiba -> Samsung -> Seagate for me. Toshiba P300 drives give great performance for a low price so I can recommend that model in particular.

[seagate_surfer]

Part of the reason that the IronWolf is so well-suited for NAS/server use is that it has firmware engineered for drives working in RAID teams. One component of this is a feature called error recovery controls. When a normal desktop drive not in RAID runs into errors, it aggressively tries to resolve them so as to prevent errors from piling up. This is what you want in a desktop drive. The IronWolf, on the other hand, expects to be working in a RAID, and it keeps performance snappy and consistent by limiting the amount of time the drive can spend trying to correct the errors before the controller decides to give it the short hook and pass that data to another drive in the array so that it doesn't get bogged down. So while this is ideal in a NAS, it can cause the IronWolf to start running into more errors faster than is ideal and isn't the best for single/non-RAID desktop use. NAS drives also tend to run hotter than desktop ones, so if you're worried about heat in your system, then that's another important consideration here. You'd be better off with the BarraCuda for your particular needs. If you'd like some of the robust features and longer warranty that people find appealing about NAS drives like the BarraCuda, then you could always check out the BarraCuda Pro as well. The Pro version is rated for up to 300TB of data per year, 24x7 use, 5 year warranty, with 2 free years of rescue services. Although, still want to keep in mind that beefier drive typically = more heat.

Edited January 26, 2018 by seagate_surfer
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