By: Jonathan Kwan
January 5, 2018
What is being "extra"? While the exact line of where a necessity ends and being extra begins will vary from person to person, the concept of being extra is universal. For example, some may think Mercedes-AMG is the definition of extra in the automotive world. However, I would argue putting a twin turbo V8 and a sport suspension in every vehicle is awesome. I mean, who would not want an eight passenger SUV that weighs almost 6,000 pounds that accelerates from zero to sixty miles per hour in 4.3 seconds, finishes the quarter mile in 12.8 seconds, and pulls 0.91g on the skid pad? In another example, when I pulled out my brand new Apple iPhone X just under two months ago, the first comment I heard was, "This kid is so extra." (I personally think it is a necessity.) With that in mind, we can all agree we need to have extra storage space -- after all, no one wants to operate their hard drives at 100% capacity -- at what point does having too much storage space becomes "extra"? Here at APH Networks, I have covered quite a number of 8TB hard disk drives, including the Seagate NAS HDD 8TB, Seagate Enterprise Capacity V.5 8TB, and Western Digital Red 8TB. From four Western Digital Red 8TB HDDs, I built a massive 32TB NAS box. In the last year or so, I have also covered many 10TB hard drives, including the Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB and Seagate IronWolf 10TB. But 8TB and 10TB drives are no longer the largest money can buy. Recently, Seagate released a trio of HDDs with a whopping 12TB capacity. For about $470 at press time, is the Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB the epitome of extra or a necessity for storage hungry power users? Read on to find out!
As it was in our last review of the Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB, a medium sized, brown corrugated cardboard box containing our Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB was sent from the company's American headquarters in Cupertino, California, USA via a local print shop called MJR Print and Fulfillment. Seagate has always shipped to us with MJR Print and Fulfillment. Using UPS Saver, the package landed on our doorstep here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in excellent condition for our review today.
The Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB traveled along with its corporate cousins, the Seagate IronWolf ST12000VN0007 12TB and Seagate BarraCuda Pro ST12000DM0007 12TB; the former of which I will review in the coming weeks, and the latter reviewed a couple of weeks ago. Although the Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB only came in an OEM anti-static bag, there was a ton of bubble wrap inside to keep these OEM packaged drives safe and sound throughout the entire journey. When I say a lot, I really mean a lot. To ensure adequate protection for fragile, mechanical devices like these, they definitely went all the way. To be honest, I have never purchased a hard drive that is not in OEM packaging in the past, so experienced online shoppers will find this a relatively familiar sight.
Keeping this in mind, before we move on, let us take a look at the specifications of the Seagate IronWolf Pro ST12000NE0007 12TB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Specifications
Standard Model Numbers: ST12000NE0007
Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
Features
Drive Bays Supported: Up to 16 Bays
Multi-User Technology (TB/yr): 300
Rotational Vibration (RV) Sensors: Yes
Hot-Plug Support: Yes
Cache (MB): 256
Reliability/Data Integrity
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours): 1,200,000
Reliability Rating @ Full 24×7 Operation (AFR): 0.73%
Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max: 1 per 10E15
Power-On Hours per Year (24×7): 8,760
Sector Size (Bytes per Logical Sector): 512E
Rescue Services: Yes
Limited Warranty (years): 5
Performance
Spindle Speed (RPM): 7200
Interface Access Speed (Gb/s): 6.0, 3.0, 1.5
Max. Sustained Transfer Rate OD (MB/s): 250MB/s
Average Latency (ms): 4.16
Interface Ports: Single
Rotational Vibration @ 10-1500 Hz (rad/s): 12.5
Power Consumption
Startup Current, Typical (12V,A): 2
Idle Average, Average (W): 5.0
Average Operating Power (W): 7.8
Standby Mode (W): 0.8
Sleep Mode (W): 0.8
Power Supply Requirements: +12 V and +5 V
Environmental/Temperature
Operating (ambient, min °C): 5
Operating (drive case, max °C): 60
Nonoperating (ambient, min °C): -40
Nonoperating (ambient, max °C): 70
Environmental/Acoustics
Vibration, Nonoperating: 10Hz to 500Hz (Grms): 2.27
Environmental/Shock
Shock, Operating 2ms (Read/Write) (Gs): 70/40Gs
Shock, Nonoperating, 1ms and 2ms (Gs): 250
Physical
Height (mm/in): 26.11mm/1.028in
Width (mm/in, max): 101.85mm/4.01in
Depth (mm/in, max): 146.99mm/5.787in
Weight (g/lb, typical): 705g/1.55lb
Carton Unit Quantity: 20
Cartons per Pallet/Cartons per Layer: 40/8
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. NAS Performance, Power Consumption
11. Conclusion
