Seagate is introducing new flagships in their IronWolf lineup today on two fronts - the SMB/SME-focused IronWolf Pro, and the SATA SSDs line. On the HDD front, we have 18TB hard drives based on conventional magnetic recording (CMR) technology, while the SATA SSD line sees two new SKU sets - the IronWolf 125 and the IronWolf Pro 125 (joining the current IronWolf 110 and the NVMe-based IronWolf 510).

Given the premium nature of the 18TB capacity point, Seagate is launching the capacity only in the IronWolf Pro line (the vanilla IronWolf models top out at 16TB). The ST18000NE000 18TB Pro model is compatible with NAS units of up to 24 bays, and has a workload rating of 300TB/yr. It is a 7200 rpm 9-platter helium-filled drive, with a DRAM cache of 256MB (which seems to be half of what is offered by Western Digital in their Gold line of enterprise hard drives - the other 18TB choice in the retail market). The drive comes with a 5-year warranty and is rated for 24x7 operation, with a MTTF of 1.2M hours.

The average power consumption sees an increase from 7.6W for the 16TB model to 8W for the 18TB version. The drive does use TDMR technology for the heads, and we have reached out to Seagate for information on possible HAMR usage (Update: HAMR is NOT used in the IronWolf Pro 18TB).

The new SATA SSDs are 2.5" drives with different optimizations for varying use-cases. The IronWolf 125 is meant as a capacity play - available in capacities ranging from 250GB all the way to 4TB. It comes with a 0.7DWPD rating, and no power-loss protection. On the other hand, the IronWolf Pro 125 has a 1DWPD rating, more over-provisioning (rated capacities range from 240GB to 3.84TB), and comes with power-loss protection. The Pro drives come with a 2M hour MTTF, while the corresponding metric is 1.8M hours for the non-Pro version. Both drives come with a 5-year warranty, with the Pro series including a 3-year data recovery service.

The Seagate IronWolf 125 SSDs for NAS
Capacity 250 GB 500 GB 1 TB 2 TB 4 TB
Controller Phison S12 (Seagate-validated)
NAND Flash 3D TLC NAND
Form-Factor, Interface 2.5" x 7mm, SATA III 6 Gbps
Seq. Read (128KB @ QD32) 560 MBps
Seq. Write (128KB @ QD32) 540 MBps
Rand. Read IOPS (QD32T8) 95K
Rand. Write IOPS (QD32T8) (Peak) 90K
Pseudo-SLC Caching Yes
DRAM Buffer Yes (Size?)
TCG Opal Encryption No
Power Consumption Avg Active 2.3 W 2.4 W 2.6 W 2.8 W
Avg Idle 0.11 W 0.115 W 0.13 W 0.14 W
Warranty 5 years
MTBF 1.8 million hours
TBW 300 700 1400 2800 5600
DWPD 0.7
UBER 1E10^17
Additional Information Link
MSRP $63 $84 $142 $294 $609
The Seagate IronWolf Pro 125 SSDs for NAS
Capacity 240 GB 480 GB 960 GB 1920 GB 3840 GB
Controller Phison S12DC (Seagate-validated)
NAND Flash 3D TLC NAND
Form-Factor, Interface 2.5" x 7mm, SATA III 6 Gbps
Seq. Read (128KB @ QD32) 545 MBps
Seq. Write (128KB @ QD32) 360 MBps 500 MBps 520 MBps
Rand. Read IOPS (QD32T8) 90K 96K
Rand. Write IOPS (QD32T8) (Sustained) 12K 16K 25K 30K
Pseudo-SLC Caching No
DRAM Buffer Yes (Size?)
TCG Opal Encryption No
Power Consumption Avg Active 2.5 W 3 W 4 W 4.4 W 5 W
Avg Idle 1.4 W 1.6 W 1.8 W 1.9 W
Warranty 5 years (including 3 years of Rescue Data Recovery Services)
MTBF 2 million hours
TBW 435 875 1750 3500 7000
DWPD 1
UBER 1E10^17
Additional Information Link
MSRP $98 $146 $264 $474 $888

The new IronWolf Pro 18TB HDD is priced at $609 (compared to $593 for the equivalent WD Gold drive). Pricing for the different models in the IronWolf (Pro) 125 SSD series is available in the tables above. The main competition here is Western Digital's WD Red SA500 series. Seagate does more product segmentation / firmware tweaking for the NAS SSD market, allowing consumers to choose a SSD tuned for their requirements.

Source: Seagate

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  • cjl - Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - link

    That 6.73% represents one single drive failure. One. That means that given their drive count, the failure rate for a given quarter is either 0% or some multiple of 6.73%, since they don't have enough drives to actually achieve better data than that.

    I'd probably not put much stock in that data until they have a lot more of those drives. A sample size of 60 drives just isn't big enough to do much with.
  • Samus - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link

    As a life-long WD guy, I have been more impressed by Seagate drives lately. The only saving grace for WD has been the Hitachi heritage models.
  • elmimmo - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link

    The article states that the non-Pro IronWolf tops at 16TB, but that model (ST16000VNZ01) has been seemingly retired and the top one at Seagate’s website is now the 12TB model. Why? (Synology’s compatibility page for their DS1819+ NAS discourages activating hibernation for the Pro 16TB model but not so for the non-Pro, app that’s one reason to prefer the non-Pro model).

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