Seagate increased the stakes in the capacity race for hard disk drives. The company just released updates to two popular models, the BarraCuda Pro and IronWolf product lines, that service consumer and enthusiasts needs. Both lines gained a new 12TB capacity size that overtakes the previous flagship 10TB capacity models in each series.
Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB
The BarraCuda product line has been a stable in Seagate's lineup for over 20 years. After a brief break in the product naming convention, Seagate brought the iconic line back as part of the Guardian Series that also includes the IronWolf and SkyHawk.
The series is the fastest consumer hard disk drive sold today, according to our internal testing. The new 12TB model (part number ST12000DM0007) increases the maximum sequential performance to 250 MBps, up from the 10TB's 220 MBps. The series uses 7,200 RPM platter speeds and a large 256MB DRAM cache to also increase random performance.
Best-Fit Applications
- For Creative Professionals
- Desktop or all-in-one PCs
- Home servers
- Direct-attached storage devices (DAS)
Product Highlights
- 7,200 RPM makes BarraCuda Pro one of the fastest hard drives on the market
- Large onboard cache is designed to quickly access frequently-used applications and files
(256MB) - BarraCuda Pro 12TB draws a mere 7.8W, making it one of the lowest-power 3.5"
drives on the market - Store data faster with SATA 6 Gbps interface that optimizes burst performance
- Up to 250 MBps maximum sustained transfer rate - worry less with a hard drive that has your back
- BarraCuda Pro comes equipped with a five-year warranty
- Two years of data recovery included (Seagate Rescue)
Seagate IronWolf 12TB
The IronWolf is Seagate's entry-level NAS hard disk drive designed for consumer-level workloads in one- to eight-drive arrays. The secret sauce for IronWolf comes from two sensors that accurately measure, and counter, vibration. HDDs introduce vibration in the system from the spinning parts, and that vibration becomes a problem when several are installed. The special RV sensors allow the drives to make fine changes to compensate for the jitter.
The IronWolf 12TB (part number ST12000VN0007) doesn't show a performance gain in paper over the 10TB model. Both show maximum sequential performance at 210 MBps. Like the BarraCuda Pro, the high capacity IronWolf products use a 7,200 RPM platter speed and 256MB of DRAM memory.
Best-Fit Applications
- Home/SOHO NAS Desktop Towers
- Desktop RAID and servers
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Print and file servers
- Multimedia server/storage
- Archival
- Virtualization
- Small-business file sharing
- Backup servers
- Personal cloud
Product Highlights
- Optimized for NAS with AgileArray. IronWolf HDD is built with dual-plane balancing and RAID optimization in multi-bay environments with the most advanced power management
- High performance means no lag time or downtime for users during high traffic times for the NAS. Seagate leads the competition with the highest performance in NAS-class drives
- Range of capacities of up to 12TB. More capacity options mean more choices that will fit within the budget. Seagate provides a scalable solution for any NAS use-case scenario
- Get ahead with more cache. IronWolf provides high-cache options allowing your NAS to serve data faster
- Do more in multi-user environments. Built with a workload rate of 180TB/year, multiple users can confidently upload and download data to the NAS server, knowing it can handle the workload, whether you’re a creative professional or small business
- Designed for always on, always accessible 24×7 performance. Access your data on your NAS any time, remotely or on site
- 1M hours MTBF, 3-year limited warranty represents an improved total cost of ownership with reduced maintenance costs
- IronWolf 12TB with IronWolf Health Management provides access to full health information through popular NAS systems coming soon in Q4 2017
Seagate didn't disclose pricing details, but we expect to see these products available later today. Retailer B&H listed the BarraCuda Pro and IronWolf 12TB briefly this morning for $489.00 and $449.00. Both were later removed. We're still testing our drives and will prepare a full review in the coming weeks.
