I have 4 16TB EXO drives in a server for about 5 years now. They've been used pretty heavily during that time and has taken the work like a champ. I recommend them 100%.
@@euersascha8951 I have 6 bays and i can hear them. After that initial comment I had a crash and lost my data. But since then i replaced the drives with new ones and move to RAID 6 i have noticed a performance increase immediately.
I wanted a high capacity HDD for media, and the cheapest result per gigabyte at the time turned out to be an EXOs X16 16 TB. Pairing that with my 64 GB Optane, it is like a storage black hole. No matter how much I shove into it, it barely makes a dent and can still be accessed at near-SSD speeds. To get an SSD or NVME at those capacities however, would beggar a small nation.
@@euersascha8951 it was louder in my Silverstone case because their drive cages are rubbish, it's much quieter in my present BeQuiet. One update is that I strongly discourage anyone from using Optane. Since then, Optane has been solely responsible for losing all the data twice. PrimoCache(?) lets any drive be used as cache, so that's probably the better route and what I'll try next.
@@hovant6666 I use PrimoCache and haven't had many issues. It's not recommended to use it for write cache but I do and haven't had any issues other than when I had it turned on and tried to resize the partition on the drive I was caching. I don't know if it's the fault of PrimoCache, but extending the volume gave me an error and windows thinks it is resized, but I don't have any extra free space. I did purposely try shutting down PC once while transferring a file I didn't care about just to see what would happen. After copy file dialog disappeared and PrimoCache was still flushing write cache to the HDD I tried to shut down. PrimoCache properly prevented the shutdown and finished flushing before shutting down... though I didn't try "force shutdown?" on the "following programs are preventing shutdown" screen. How has your luck been with PrimoCache (if you bought it)?
@@euersascha8951 I like hearing my drives. Back in the 1980s cutting edge voice coil drives like the 'large' 5.25 in Miniscribe 3051 ST506-MFM unit had great sounds coming from their large rotary voice coil actuators.
Thank you so much for this video, helped me a lot. The EXOs drive at 16Tb has a huge price gap vs the ironwolf/pro. I thought you would not be able to use the EXOs drive in say a freenas server with plex on it. But by the sounds of it it does not matter ( because i will have my own back-up in place ). So you just saved me about 80 euro's!
Very useful review, I have just added a couple of the 8tb Ironwolf drives in 2 of my computers. I tend to build big workstations and having these big capacity drives is very useful for large storage. I use a mix of ramdisk and SSD's for the faster stuff.
What sort of computers do you put them in? I brought a 10tb drive for my pc which I use for gaming and video editing and after effects, should that be ok? One thing I have notice is that my boot time is longer even though I have my os on my m.2 nvme ssd
@@GarethWallace907 Don't install programs that load things on startup to a spinning disk. Also, consider getting PrimoCache and a quality 500GB ($60-70) SATA (or additional NVME) SSD to use as a cache drive to cache HDD reads. This will let your games/videos load as fast as if they were running from SSD after the data has been cached for that game/video. The first time you load the game/video it will take as long as it normally does but then have SSD speeds on subsequent loads until pushed out of cache because of loading a lot of data from other games/videos (a full virus scan can also push your desired content out of cache). Also, if boot time is a big concern, consider putting computer to sleep instead of turning off. A computer uses very little power in sleep mode, probably days worth of runtime on a 1500VA UPS during a power outage.
My hobby is collecting hardrives from all version and brand. i had my own museum , someday in 100 years later , hardrives no longer use in normal IT system , we might going for PURE OIL LIQUID for storage minimum from 100TB-100,000TB max each STORAGE LIQUID TUBE. trust me i know technologies evolving , now still in research for normal user future pc and the prototype also the first gen liquid storages has been used inside NASA satelite around 1,000,000,000,000 TB :)
@@stanleesomanly9585 if you buying a single drive and not using raid the barracuda is probably the "best fit" for your use case if you creating a small nas at home get, iron wolf. if you want to throw money away and buy something that you probably dont need get exos. summarize: barracuda - personal computers (home use) drives (single drive systems) iron wolf - nas storage (small business use) drive (multi drive systems 1-8) iron wolf pro - nas storage (small business, edge use) drive (multi drive systems 1-24) exos - enterprise storage (datacenter use) drive (server bays with 1-24+ drives)
Ok I just bought a 14 terabyte Barracuda Pro on-sale and now I'm seeing 16 terabyte Exos drives on-sale selling for quite a bit less, I'm wanting two, should I pull the trigger? 🤔
Don't forget, the EXOS is a helium drive too, most Ironwolf Pros floating out there for sale are air drives. You should've included Firecuda drives for sure or, at least, dedicate a video to them so you can explain the caching.
Just bought an Exos X16 16TB as a simple media storage drive. They're an absolute steal on NE right now but from a [highly rated] third party seller. I'll check its time as soon as it gets here. If it doesn't appear to have gotten a quick wipe and wash, I may pick up another. I took a LOT of time off bothering with PC upgrades at home and having gotten into ssd storage on personal pc's only a few years ago, I don't trust them.
Currently: NAS 4-bay RAID 5, WD RED @6TB each. Want: 8-bay, expandable, 14-16TB each same RAID. I write every day and ready every day. My RAID capacity is maxed (about 1TB space left). I'm torn EXOS and IronWolf Pro. When you say, "recovery service", are you saying a service provided, or a software package included inside of the HDD? If it's a service, mail in, or something like that, it's not a factor for me.
I have all of these drives like all these models. Some have some bigger capacity than others but all of them are 3.5 HDD. At the end of the day they have their own loose cases but none of them have died on me. Like the Barracudas are running as good as the Iron Wolves and Exo drives from my experience. The Skyhawks are also still alive. 😊
"Barracuda" drives go back some 30 years, when HDs had some 50 or 100 MB. The Barracudas had four number figures as a price and were the absolute high-end drives.
My favourite desktop PC Seagate 3.5" HDD in 2024 would be a >7500 rpm, 32TB unit with 14 platters/ 28 heads, big actuator magnets and a fat coil :-) using SATA3 interface, I suppose.
Wish I saw this before taking the plunge but I bought two 12TB EXO's, the price at the time was the cheapest at that size and came with the nice 5 year warranty !
Can you mix Ironwolf Pro drives with EXOs in the same NAS? I have 3 Ironwolf Pros and like the price to performance of the EXOs but wasn't sure if I could mix them. Thanks..
I consider myself a "power" PC user and for me long term sensible data storage is more important. I had 3 Seagate Barracudas, 2TB each, and 3 more Seagate 2TB USB3.0 external hard drives. There was no RAID or NAS array. None of them had bad sectors, however four were dangerously old with over 4 years of power on time, so I decided to replace all of these old drives for just one big and as reliable as possible (inside my budget) drive. After some research, I chose one 12TB Exos X12 ST12000NM0007 HD that I hope will hold my data safe for many years to come. However albeit being a trustworthy hard drive, I'm not sure if an Exos was the best choice in my case. Perhaps an Iron Wolf Pro or even a Barracuda Pro would suit my needs better. But there was just too many different choices among the Exos series alone and just by reading the maker provided disks' data sheet I wasn't sure of what was the best for my needs.
The one LARGE issue you traded up for, is the ability for you to lose ALL your data in one drive failure. Also, and it's unfortunate for me to tell you this but "years to come" bpmight not be as long as you think. The 12tb Exos lifetime, assuming no component failures, will be limited by the level of helium in the drive. Eventually it will decrease to the point of drive failure. Seagate only specifies that it should last 5 years. The helium level could last longer, maybe eve quite a bit, but thats all that they are rated for. It's a result of helium so ability to permeate matter such as metal. They took quite a bit of care to decrease deficiencies in manufacturing to slow the heliums escape. This isn't an Exos problem either. This issues exist with all helium drives and you'd find the same problem with the Ironwolf Pros and most other brands at this performance level and capacity.
@@robertt9342 Thank you for your insight. To be on the safe side, after copying the data from the 2TB drivers to the 12TB one, I didn't format them. I've stored them, so, if the 12TB drive fails, I can recover my data from the old ones (or so I hope). Plus, recently I've acquired a 6TB Iron Wolf HD. Finally almost every day I check my drivers performance with the Hard Disk Sentinel app.
So I’m making a gaming pc, but I need a lot of storage for my videos when I’m streaming. My SSD should not be the only drive I have, because that clearly won’t be enough. I’m getting a 1tb Samsung Evo ssd, then I was thinking about getting a 3tb Barracuda. Should I get the exos or stick with ironwolf?
I'm deciding for that same purpose between Barracuda and Barracuda Pro. The loudness of one or other is the main dilemma in my case because sometimes I let the PC working in my room when I'm sleeping.
@@Allen7 ty for the fast reponse ^^. That Barracuda Pro you have has 7.200RPM, right? I heard about the Iron Wolf series that, with their 7.200RPM, they never stay idle (non-stop spinning) so they become annoying, hence my doubt about this.
@@Adri9570 yep i think i had noticed that..sometimes when i dont use anything from that disk, and like 30min later i click on some video it needs like 3 seconds to start spinning and working again...i thought it was something wrong with my pc or connection 😆
I have 3 TB WD green ("Computer" disk :) ) with more then 8 years uptime in a NAS system, powered 24x7 and no issues... Similar with Toshiba standard SATA disks, all before this fancy "NAS" and "Surveillance" buzzwords became popular :)
Can you make a video on owc, terramaster, yottamaster, orico, ... external usb hdd bays ? Those aren’t NAS but some have RAID capabilities. The orico 3559RU3 seems to have the best/latest JMS chipsets Keep the good things up, thanks
Great video! How about a drive for long term back up and duplicated that gets written to maybe once a month? I current have WD gold 8TB with a partition for NTFS and one for AFS?
i really don't get the part of EXOs drives should be highend. these are made on SMR and should normally be seen as storage for archiving as the random access can take a huge hit. It also reflects in the low price pr TB.
I find it interesting that both the Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro get better ratings than the Exos from customer reviews on etailers sites. Nonetheless, if you were building a raid 10 NAS, wouldn't it be a waste of money for data recovery since you'd already have a backup copy at all times and can just have the lost drive copied? Meaning just get the Exos if it's less expensive than the Ironwolfs. One final thought: I don't have much faith in Seagates data recovery. I remember years ago they had a major firmware flaw in their boards on a big batch of hard drives. They never helped out their customers, nor even knew how to fix it. It took a bunch of smarter people dedicated to solving it - and a custom cable jumper I got to bypass the board and reset the heads. After that, the drive was copied and surprisingly still works until this day - although I don't put anything useful on it. I'd like to see how Ironwolf(pro)/Exos really compares to the Western Digital Gold enterprise drives. The downside so far for me is gold only goes to 14TB and not 16TB. It may seem a small concern but I have very limited space and want to squeeze all the TB out that I can.
oh my ... go search info about real backups, that is ... you Nas isn't a replacement for a backup. recovery service is for lazy & dumb people. if you need it ... you know what class you are...
I was asking myself, "Why shouldn't I buy Barracuda drives for my NAS?" You didn't say it absolutely won't work, but point taken. (My old LaCie external drive came with 2 3TB barracuda drives, so they aren't listening to you.)
very helpful... i'm still going to go with the exos 12tb for my desktop.... i run all my fans at a min of 50% anyway so i don't see any extra noise being an issue. will be nice to finally have the data space and the physical space in my case using this to replace 3 x 2tb drives.
Well I like to exos drive simply because it's just faster on all accounts and once the drives that hit above 500 GB traditional I just too freaking slow. Just doing a scan takes all the two days only 500 GB on a traditional one head drive. I do realize with the exos that with the additional head was going to be extra power usage. Although with the additional heads and lower RPMs they might moderate it
I have a stupid question: Is it possible to use a Nas drive as a signle drive plugged directly to the motherboard and PSU? I mean, I want to use a Nas drive temporarily as single drive until I buy a network diskstation later. Thank you.
Thanks you for clearing up a question I had but I have another. I currently have a Terra-master F5-421 NAS that is primarily a Plex server. I'm using 3xIronWolf 12tb, 1IronWolf Pro 12tb drive along with a 5th IronWolf ssd in a RAID 10 setup. Recently I got a warning saying that a HD was missing; thinking it was failing I started looking at replacements and saw that the Exo drives can be had at nearly $100/drive cheaper than the IW. The built in IW health monitor is showing that everything is working normally but the TOS does not. Trying to get to the bottom of this I ended up completely resetting and erasing the NAS and completely rebuilding it (don't want to do that again, which is why I'm using the RAID 10). The error never went away and I'm still using that drive which is working fine. This comes up with the question that I had. In the event on any future failures I'm probably going to replace the drives with 14tb Exos once they fail. If I understand this RAID correctly which currently has 24tb usable. Now that your video clears up the higher performance and cheaper price than the IW (don't care about the data recovery, however the noise is something to consider). Will performance of my system suffer any by replacing the 12tb drive with 14tb drive as they fail with the understanding that not until the 4th drive is replaced will I benefit from the additional 4tb of usable data in my RAID 10?
Very helpful on the video. As a side question, if drives installed on a NAS are mixed are those installed drives able to be targeted for their function? In otherwords, on a device like the NVR DVA3219, can one use both Skyhawk and Ironwolf drives. Can the video recording be sent directly to the SkyHawk(s)... and then general NAS functions to the Ironwolf(s)? As one can tell, my knowledge on NAS is limited as I endeavor to learn about them. Kind regards, Shawn
Tengo un NAS Terramaster, pero la marca desaconseja el uso del seagate exos (que sería similar al wd ultrastar). ¿Alguien sabe el por qué lo desaconseja?
Hey! Just subbed. I have 21 tb worth of data... On my 6 Seagate 4.5 tb drives. Can I use EXOS to just store data on it? Not in nas. Just archival purpose. Just copy and store data and then only read from it now and then. Replace it after 10 years.
The host mentioned economies of scale. Because EXOS drives are built for data centers and large-scale servers for companies, that so many are built to the point where the drives can sometimes be the same or cheaper in price than IronWolf Pro, even though both hard drives have different uses.
Barracuda might not be designed for RAID, but my NAS is just a PC case and I can spread them apart. I run RAID 1, so it will probably just work. Even performance isn't much of a concern for archive and photos. What I really need is lots of storage and a nice quiet 5400RPM drive. The 8TB Barracuda 5400 might be that. Edit: not sure about SMR. The search continues...
The recovery plan sold by Amazon covers only single-disk units, by opposition to multi disk devices. Anyone knows if the plan from Seagate is the same^ If it is the case, is it really useful to have that on a IronWolf Pro since clearly it will be used in a multi-disk device. And if it works with the multi disk, how does it work? Do you have to send in your whole installation? You clearly can't hold the actual NAS running with new activities adding and removing files while one of the drive is being recovered: anyway it would be useless when it would come back in. All this would defies the first goal of the NAS (being able to quickly but data back online).
holly shit, this video was the ultimate video for people who have no idea what they're doing and want almost everything explained to them. on top of that, you even mentioned noise, awesome. If i got an iron wolf pro and had it in my gaming tower, would the noise be bad? i want reliability - and maybe i'm willing to sacrifice some quiet for it - but not if it's god awful?
Great, great great video. here´s Here´s my scenarios. I run a small studio, I´ll planning to put 12tb exos on the server (about 3/4 people write and read high amount of data on it), and 10tb firewolfpro for my workstation/personal pc.... ? what you guys think? for the server it is better to backup on the cloud or have a mirror HD? For my workstation/personal Pc... cloud of mirror HD?
As a novice, commenting on your setup, so take with a grain of salt, it depends on the critical nature of your work. 1) You might want to have some redundancy in your server. A single drive isn't going to be great in terms of dealing with drive failures. It also may not have enough speed to properly serve 3-4 people actively accessing the storage. You may need to consider whether your server is capable of handling high demand, and having multiple drives in an effective raid setup that suits your needs might be required. 2) You would want to consider having at least 2 backups. 1 on site and 1 offsite. Having Backups onsite allows for shorter down times, and one offsite would be a good way to avoid the server and backup being damaged at the same time. Offsite can be through the cloud. I guess ideally 3 (Onsite/Offsite/Cloud) would be best, but may be unnecessary. What is the best way to set this up.... That's a bit beyond me unfortunately.
if you are planning on having multiple people read and write to the drive consider an enclosure that supports flash storage for caching. mirror isnt backups, it does not protect against things like ransomware its designed for "availability" not "recovery" of data. if the data is important to your business you should have both, and before you say mirror consider the performance impact why not get a multi bay and put more drives. the larger the drives, the longer the rebuild times (around 30 hours) and during that time an increase risk of subsequent disk failure (in a mirror can only tolerate one disk failure) causing complete data loss requiring recovering from backups. original option: in order to get mirror of 12 tb, you would need 2x 12 tb drives (around $499CAD) = 1000CAD that would get 12tb in mirror recommend option: if you would instead buy, 5 x 4 TB (around $100CAD) = 500CAD and you could instead use RAID6 with can tolerate 2 drive failures with much smaller rebuild times (10 hours) for 4tb optimal: add some ssd caching 2x 500GB raid 1 iron wolf sata ssd, (around 99CAD) = 198CAD than backup to the cloud. this could be done nightly to lessen the load on your systems. the time for recovery for the cloud provider (such as blackblaze) can be long (depending on your bandwidth and the cloud storage providers speed) so do plan your recovery time accordly and understand the impacts and time your employees will be offline.
I need a 8 TB hard for my business storage. It wont be in any NAS environment. Just gonna use it in my pc for backup of softcopies for games and softwares and movies along with my barracuda 4TB which is already full. its only gonna run for 8 or 10 hours a day Problem is with this covid pandemic with the imports are being blocked by our country. I looked everywhere and got no any barracuda 8TB drives to be found. But i got Skyhawk, Exos, abd Ironwolfs. Skyhawk is much cheaper, then the exos and ironwolf. Ironwolf got a 3 year warranty but its price tag is a bit high but its also affordable. exos got 2 year warranty and its price tag is lower than of an ironwolf. Got any recommendations? Should i got for ironwolf or exos?
what we need is comparison between WD Red and Ironwolf std. in more "normal" sizes like the 3Tb... for a small home NAS, 4 bay and without huge multimedia like movie, this is the size... not the very expensive 14Tb but the more affordable and big enough 3Tb
the exos brand is designed to run in 24/7 mission critical servers. it would be best suited for your workload. also its not just raid but its the number of drives that you put inside a single case. the vibration sensor will help when you have cages with a lot of drives.
What about storage purposes? Everyone talking about SkyHawk as surveillance but doesn't it also mean it's best for storage purposes? However, we have to use storage disks time to time make a read from for video, music or pictures etc. Also when it comes to price, Barracuda (ST4000DM004)[price_1889] is 50% more expensive than Skyhawk (ST4000VX007)[price_1271] at the moment. Exos (ST4000NM005A)[price_2084] is also close to Barracuda's price range, only 9-10% more expensive.
I’m a little annoyed the firecuda wasn’t talked about at all. I was also hoping for a little more on the exo series. I’m looking for a large volume hard drive for multiple uses. Movies, gaming, development.m, etc. I want to get the best performance for my dollar. From what I can tell the Exo is the most powerful and best bang for your buck. Right now 8tb Firecuda is $203 and a 16gb x16 is $223. I get double the space for $20 bucks and possibly even better performance so why would anyone go for the firecuda other than the power consumption?
Thanks for this . I have a drobo with 5 ironwolf 4x 8tb plus one which is 14tb . I now need to swap one drive . Can I remove one 8tb iron wolf and replace with a exos 14tb ?
data recovery isnt backup, its designed in cases of emergency where backups have failed or missing or not recent. please dont count on data recovery being your backup plan, if theres data you care about, sync the data to the cloud as a backup. in most cases you should never need a data recovery plan, if you backup often and offsite.
Just a quick question, building a TerraMaster F4-210 4-Bay NAS Quad Core could I use the EXOs drives in it to run a plex server? Or do I need to go with the Ironwolf Pros?
If I have a mixture of 3x WD 12TB 5900rpm drives in a DS1019+ five bay NAS, will it be a waste if I add a Seagate 16TB Exos X16 to the SHR? (And yes I’m aware I’ll lose some of the capacity but my plan is to add a 16TB for the fifth drive too in the future).
- Barracuda -> Home PC
- Iron Wolf -> NAS ( Network Attached Storage Devices )
- Skyhawk -> Surveillance
- EXOS -> High End Data Center Use.
I have 4 16TB EXO drives in a server for about 5 years now. They've been used pretty heavily during that time and has taken the work like a champ. I recommend them 100%.
That’s a fantastic video, thank you so much for so detailed and yet comprehensible explanation! 100% great value!
Incredibly helpful and exactly what I was looking for (as a non-techie!). Thank you 😃
I like the way you explain things.
Thanks dude!
Great comparison, im glad i went with Exxos in my NAS
Exxos are shit. Should have gone with WD golds.
@@TheLevitatingChin wd golds are louder than any other counterparts
How many bays? Can you hear them? Thanks
@@euersascha8951 I have 6 bays and i can hear them. After that initial comment I had a crash and lost my data. But since then i replaced the drives with new ones and move to RAID 6 i have noticed a performance increase immediately.
Good video. Informative. Thank You!
Respect from Siberia! 😉
I wanted a high capacity HDD for media, and the cheapest result per gigabyte at the time turned out to be an EXOs X16 16 TB. Pairing that with my 64 GB Optane, it is like a storage black hole. No matter how much I shove into it, it barely makes a dent and can still be accessed at near-SSD speeds. To get an SSD or NVME at those capacities however, would beggar a small nation.
How loud is your system? Is it noticeable within 2m? Thanks
@@euersascha8951 it was louder in my Silverstone case because their drive cages are rubbish, it's much quieter in my present BeQuiet. One update is that I strongly discourage anyone from using Optane. Since then, Optane has been solely responsible for losing all the data twice. PrimoCache(?) lets any drive be used as cache, so that's probably the better route and what I'll try next.
@@hovant6666 I use PrimoCache and haven't had many issues. It's not recommended to use it for write cache but I do and haven't had any issues other than when I had it turned on and tried to resize the partition on the drive I was caching. I don't know if it's the fault of PrimoCache, but extending the volume gave me an error and windows thinks it is resized, but I don't have any extra free space. I did purposely try shutting down PC once while transferring a file I didn't care about just to see what would happen. After copy file dialog disappeared and PrimoCache was still flushing write cache to the HDD I tried to shut down. PrimoCache properly prevented the shutdown and finished flushing before shutting down... though I didn't try "force shutdown?" on the "following programs are preventing shutdown" screen.
How has your luck been with PrimoCache (if you bought it)?
@@euersascha8951 I like hearing my drives. Back in the 1980s cutting edge voice coil drives like the 'large' 5.25 in Miniscribe 3051 ST506-MFM unit had great sounds coming from their large rotary voice coil actuators.
Meh. Get three old fusion io 4tb cards from ebay for about 200$ a pop
Thanks for the explanation, I will start to purchase the correct hard drive for the job its intended for.
Thank you so much for this video, helped me a lot. The EXOs drive at 16Tb has a huge price gap vs the ironwolf/pro. I thought you would not be able to use the EXOs drive in say a freenas server with plex on it. But by the sounds of it it does not matter ( because i will have my own back-up in place ). So you just saved me about 80 euro's!
What matters is the cache, the Read/Write Speed. And that's where I think the type-drive-fits-the-purpose comes into play.
Very useful review, I have just added a couple of the 8tb Ironwolf drives in 2 of my computers. I tend to build big workstations and having these big capacity drives is very useful for large storage. I use a mix of ramdisk and SSD's for the faster stuff.
What sort of computers do you put them in? I brought a 10tb drive for my pc which I use for gaming and video editing and after effects, should that be ok? One thing I have notice is that my boot time is longer even though I have my os on my m.2 nvme ssd
@@GarethWallace907 Don't install programs that load things on startup to a spinning disk. Also, consider getting PrimoCache and a quality 500GB ($60-70) SATA (or additional NVME) SSD to use as a cache drive to cache HDD reads. This will let your games/videos load as fast as if they were running from SSD after the data has been cached for that game/video. The first time you load the game/video it will take as long as it normally does but then have SSD speeds on subsequent loads until pushed out of cache because of loading a lot of data from other games/videos (a full virus scan can also push your desired content out of cache). Also, if boot time is a big concern, consider putting computer to sleep instead of turning off. A computer uses very little power in sleep mode, probably days worth of runtime on a 1500VA UPS during a power outage.
Remember that some Seagate drives are SMR. If I recall correctly, the 8TB Barracuda (non Pro version) is one of them.
My hobby is collecting hardrives from all version and brand.
i had my own museum , someday in 100 years later , hardrives no longer use in normal IT system , we might going for PURE OIL LIQUID for storage minimum from 100TB-100,000TB max each STORAGE LIQUID TUBE. trust me i know technologies evolving , now still in research for normal user future pc and the prototype also the first gen liquid storages has been used inside NASA satelite around 1,000,000,000,000 TB :)
Which one is the better of these 5 I was wanting to get a seagate 12 tb exos is that one better than the others?
@@stanleesomanly9585 if you buying a single drive and not using raid the barracuda is probably the "best fit" for your use case
if you creating a small nas at home get, iron wolf. if you want to throw money away and buy something that you probably dont need get exos.
summarize:
barracuda - personal computers (home use) drives (single drive systems)
iron wolf - nas storage (small business use) drive (multi drive systems 1-8)
iron wolf pro - nas storage (small business, edge use) drive (multi drive systems 1-24)
exos - enterprise storage (datacenter use) drive (server bays with 1-24+ drives)
Don't forget the optical discs coming out that can store over a terabyte a pop
So so so helpful info. Thanks for making such informative contant 👍🔥
This video made me feel good that I just bought 4x 14TB EXOS drives for my video editing NAS
Same here. Exos or go home.
Ok I just bought a 14 terabyte Barracuda Pro on-sale and now I'm seeing 16 terabyte Exos drives on-sale selling for quite a bit less, I'm wanting two, should I pull the trigger? 🤔
How is the noise level?
Don't forget, the EXOS is a helium drive too, most Ironwolf Pros floating out there for sale are air drives. You should've included Firecuda drives for sure or, at least, dedicate a video to them so you can explain the caching.
Caching?
Just bought an Exos X16 16TB as a simple media storage drive. They're an absolute steal on NE right now but from a [highly rated] third party seller. I'll check its time as soon as it gets here. If it doesn't appear to have gotten a quick wipe and wash, I may pick up another. I took a LOT of time off bothering with PC upgrades at home and having gotten into ssd storage on personal pc's only a few years ago, I don't trust them.
My first drive was 17 GB Barracuda, still works to this day. Now I use Exos. Long live Seagate. Cannot wait to see 30 TB HAMR drives.
Glad I watched this before buying two barracuda to raid together. Going ironwolf now, only a little more expensive.
Excellent overview, I am glad you did this. I had no idea about the different drives. Take care.
Thanks a lot for this, it helps!
Great explanation. Very informative.
excellent video, learned a lot!
Thank you for the great video,
Today I just bought one Ironwolf 8T . After watching the video, I was thinking of buying another Exos 12T.
thanks.
finally some good advice and clearence.
Currently: NAS 4-bay RAID 5, WD RED @6TB each.
Want: 8-bay, expandable, 14-16TB each same RAID.
I write every day and ready every day. My RAID capacity is maxed (about 1TB space left).
I'm torn EXOS and IronWolf Pro.
When you say, "recovery service", are you saying a service provided, or a software package included inside of the HDD? If it's a service, mail in, or something like that, it's not a factor for me.
Great job on the video! Thank You. Question: Why did you not include the Firecuda? Thanks
I have all of these drives like all these models. Some have some bigger capacity than others but all of them are 3.5 HDD. At the end of the day they have their own loose cases but none of them have died on me. Like the Barracudas are running as good as the Iron Wolves and Exo drives from my experience. The Skyhawks are also still alive. 😊
The packet rustling noises were driving me up the bend. 😠
Exactly.
Ultimately, what is the performance difference between the Ironwolf and the Barracuda? When accounting for price.
Great explanation of the differences between drives
"Barracuda" drives go back some 30 years, when HDs had some 50 or 100 MB. The Barracudas had four number figures as a price and were the absolute high-end drives.
My favourite desktop PC Seagate 3.5" HDD in 2024 would be a >7500 rpm, 32TB unit with 14 platters/ 28 heads, big actuator magnets and a fat coil :-) using SATA3 interface, I suppose.
Hello. Please tell me which of these hard drives is better for archiving and which is better for video editing?
Wish I saw this before taking the plunge but I bought two 12TB EXO's, the price at the time was the cheapest at that size and came with the nice 5 year warranty !
If you had seen the video which one you would have gone for?
so, i can't use barracuda hdd for 2 bay?
Can you mix Ironwolf Pro drives with EXOs in the same NAS? I have 3 Ironwolf Pros and like the price to performance of the EXOs but wasn't sure if I could mix them. Thanks..
I consider myself a "power" PC user and for me long term sensible data storage is more important. I had 3 Seagate Barracudas, 2TB each, and 3 more Seagate 2TB USB3.0 external hard drives. There was no RAID or NAS array. None of them had bad sectors, however four were dangerously old with over 4 years of power on time, so I decided to replace all of these old drives for just one big and as reliable as possible (inside my budget) drive. After some research, I chose one 12TB Exos X12 ST12000NM0007 HD that I hope will hold my data safe for many years to come. However albeit being a trustworthy hard drive, I'm not sure if an Exos was the best choice in my case. Perhaps an Iron Wolf Pro or even a Barracuda Pro would suit my needs better. But there was just too many different choices among the Exos series alone and just by reading the maker provided disks' data sheet I wasn't sure of what was the best for my needs.
The one LARGE issue you traded up for, is the ability for you to lose ALL your data in one drive failure.
Also, and it's unfortunate for me to tell you this but "years to come" bpmight not be as long as you think. The 12tb Exos lifetime, assuming no component failures, will be limited by the level of helium in the drive. Eventually it will decrease to the point of drive failure. Seagate only specifies that it should last 5 years. The helium level could last longer, maybe eve quite a bit, but thats all that they are rated for. It's a result of helium so ability to permeate matter such as metal. They took quite a bit of care to decrease deficiencies in manufacturing to slow the heliums escape.
This isn't an Exos problem either. This issues exist with all helium drives and you'd find the same problem with the Ironwolf Pros and most other brands at this performance level and capacity.
@@robertt9342 Thank you for your insight. To be on the safe side, after copying the data from the 2TB drivers to the 12TB one, I didn't format them. I've stored them, so, if the 12TB drive fails, I can recover my data from the old ones (or so I hope). Plus, recently I've acquired a 6TB Iron Wolf HD. Finally almost every day I check my drivers performance with the Hard Disk Sentinel app.
So I’m making a gaming pc, but I need a lot of storage for my videos when I’m streaming. My SSD should not be the only drive I have, because that clearly won’t be enough. I’m getting a 1tb Samsung Evo ssd, then I was thinking about getting a 3tb Barracuda. Should I get the exos or stick with ironwolf?
Great video man
I just bought a Seagate Skyhawk Surveillance for my Desktop as it was cheapest available. Its just for storage.
is it working normally? do i need certain app to use it?
i'm planning to buy skyhawk just for strorage for my desktop pc
@@BiyaneshaMaster Its working fine, i think its slower than regular HDD. But since its secondary drive for storage, it does not matter.
I'm just want to upgrade my ps4 I just wanted to no what's the difference between gaming barracuda and the computer barracuda
Sir Can We Use Exo 14x for NVR
decided to buy Barracuda...was that good choice? i need it for my photos, videos etc etc...
I'm deciding for that same purpose between Barracuda and Barracuda Pro. The loudness of one or other is the main dilemma in my case because sometimes I let the PC working in my room when I'm sleeping.
@@Adri9570 i have pro version and u can barely hear it
@@Allen7 ty for the fast reponse ^^.
That Barracuda Pro you have has 7.200RPM, right? I heard about the Iron Wolf series that, with their 7.200RPM, they never stay idle (non-stop spinning) so they become annoying, hence my doubt about this.
@@Adri9570 yep i think i had noticed that..sometimes when i dont use anything from that disk, and like 30min later i click on some video it needs like 3 seconds to start spinning and working again...i thought it was something wrong with my pc or connection 😆
I have 3 TB WD green ("Computer" disk :) ) with more then 8 years uptime in a NAS system, powered 24x7 and no issues... Similar with Toshiba standard SATA disks, all before this fancy "NAS" and "Surveillance" buzzwords became popular :)
Can you make a video on owc, terramaster, yottamaster, orico, ... external usb hdd bays ? Those aren’t NAS but some have RAID capabilities. The orico 3559RU3 seems to have the best/latest JMS chipsets
Keep the good things up, thanks
I have a yottamaster 4bay external hdd case and it's build quality is great, I love the thick anodized aluminum body.
Great video! How about a drive for long term back up and duplicated that gets written to maybe once a month? I current have WD gold 8TB with a partition for NTFS and one for AFS?
i really don't get the part of EXOs drives should be highend. these are made on SMR and should normally be seen as storage for archiving as the random access can take a huge hit. It also reflects in the low price pr TB.
i have you on a 32 in tv and volume way up but can barely hear you. Great info anyways. Please reupload with higher volume. thanks.
I find it interesting that both the Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro get better ratings than the Exos from customer reviews on etailers sites.
Nonetheless, if you were building a raid 10 NAS, wouldn't it be a waste of money for data recovery since you'd already have a backup copy at all times and can just have the lost drive copied? Meaning just get the Exos if it's less expensive than the Ironwolfs.
One final thought: I don't have much faith in Seagates data recovery. I remember years ago they had a major firmware flaw in their boards on a big batch of hard drives. They never helped out their customers, nor even knew how to fix it. It took a bunch of smarter people dedicated to solving it - and a custom cable jumper I got to bypass the board and reset the heads. After that, the drive was copied and surprisingly still works until this day - although I don't put anything useful on it.
I'd like to see how Ironwolf(pro)/Exos really compares to the Western Digital Gold enterprise drives. The downside so far for me is gold only goes to 14TB and not 16TB. It may seem a small concern but I have very limited space and want to squeeze all the TB out that I can.
oh my ... go search info about real backups, that is ... you Nas isn't a replacement for a backup. recovery service is for lazy & dumb people. if you need it ... you know what class you are...
Can I use the Exos drive as external storage for my ps4?
Thank you. Second time I seen this.
Should I use enterprise capacity hard disk for my home desktop pc? Will it conflict?
I was asking myself, "Why shouldn't I buy Barracuda drives for my NAS?" You didn't say it absolutely won't work, but point taken. (My old LaCie external drive came with 2 3TB barracuda drives, so they aren't listening to you.)
Presumably the Skyhawk would also be a good option as a backup drive?
very helpful... i'm still going to go with the exos 12tb for my desktop.... i run all my fans at a min of 50% anyway so i don't see any extra noise being an issue. will be nice to finally have the data space and the physical space in my case using this to replace 3 x 2tb drives.
I am curious how loud is it? How is it working?
@@Dalagante i sent it back. Was very annoying. Constant stud/spin every 2secs. Worse at idle. Ridiculous
@@NzStumpyTech LOL.. putting enterprise (datacenter) hdd's inside a desktop and then complaining it's loud. Should have gone for a barracuda drive.
@@NzStumpyTech I have 8x Exos x20 20TB in my NAS. They work very well and are not even that loud for what they are.
I went with 2x 16TB exos drives in RAID1 in a 2 bay nas lol decent for $700 altogether though
Nas is Synology DS224+
On Amazon in Canada the IronWolf pro is almost 30% more expensive than the standard.
Pro are loud enough or my personal use so there is no way that I will buy an Exos drive even with for 30% less then Pro. Thanks for the review.
Is it better to get a 2tb 5400 rpm barracuda or 3tb 7200 rpm skyhawk? Mostly for gaming and normal desktop usage
Barracuda. Skyhawk is most suited for surveillance while Barracuda is for day to day normal use like storing games, videos, files etc.
Well I like to exos drive simply because it's just faster on all accounts and once the drives that hit above 500 GB traditional I just too freaking slow. Just doing a scan takes all the two days only 500 GB on a traditional one head drive. I do realize with the exos that with the additional head was going to be extra power usage. Although with the additional heads and lower RPMs they might moderate it
I have a stupid question: Is it possible to use a Nas drive as a signle drive plugged directly to the motherboard and PSU? I mean, I want to use a Nas drive temporarily as single drive until I buy a network diskstation later. Thank you.
@PC-ONE . It's fine.
RAID is Redundant Array if Independent Disks, not Random. Everything but rRAID level 0, JBOD, and Spanning, gives redundancy in some form.
Thanks you for clearing up a question I had but I have another. I currently have a Terra-master F5-421 NAS that is primarily a Plex server. I'm using 3xIronWolf 12tb, 1IronWolf Pro 12tb drive along with a 5th IronWolf ssd in a RAID 10 setup. Recently I got a warning saying that a HD was missing; thinking it was failing I started looking at replacements and saw that the Exo drives can be had at nearly $100/drive cheaper than the IW. The built in IW health monitor is showing that everything is working normally but the TOS does not. Trying to get to the bottom of this I ended up completely resetting and erasing the NAS and completely rebuilding it (don't want to do that again, which is why I'm using the RAID 10). The error never went away and I'm still using that drive which is working fine. This comes up with the question that I had. In the event on any future failures I'm probably going to replace the drives with 14tb Exos once they fail. If I understand this RAID correctly which currently has 24tb usable. Now that your video clears up the higher performance and cheaper price than the IW (don't care about the data recovery, however the noise is something to consider). Will performance of my system suffer any by replacing the 12tb drive with 14tb drive as they fail with the understanding that not until the 4th drive is replaced will I benefit from the additional 4tb of usable data in my RAID 10?
Channels like this never reply. The give a video, get clicks and never look back.
Very helpful on the video. As a side question, if drives installed on a NAS are mixed are those installed drives able to be targeted for their function? In otherwords, on a device like the NVR DVA3219, can one use both Skyhawk and Ironwolf drives. Can the video recording be sent directly to the SkyHawk(s)... and then general NAS functions to the Ironwolf(s)? As one can tell, my knowledge on NAS is limited as I endeavor to learn about them. Kind regards, Shawn
Yep, create different raid and storage pools
I recently saw a Seagate Firecuda. Any idea what those are?
Can I use the Exos has normal 4 bay drive? Just for light personal use. Its cheaper for me to get a Exos than the Ironwolf
Whats best for movies that sit on the hdd for watching later. For personal use, no NAS. I wanted to get the EXOs 18TB
Do you have to use Exxos as a NAS or could you use it in a normal desktop computer as normal?
can we use any of the drive as a normal compact external hard drive
Got about a dozen of those "Not for NAS use" Barracuda LP drives going into their 13th year of spin time.....
Tengo un NAS Terramaster, pero la marca desaconseja el uso del seagate exos (que sería similar al wd ultrastar). ¿Alguien sabe el por qué lo desaconseja?
Hey! Just subbed.
I have 21 tb worth of data... On my 6 Seagate 4.5 tb drives. Can I use EXOS to just store data on it? Not in nas. Just archival purpose. Just copy and store data and then only read from it now and then. Replace it after 10 years.
Why do the Seagate EXOS model HDDs cost less than the other lower specification models?
no data recovery included. ironwolf has
The host mentioned economies of scale. Because EXOS drives are built for data centers and large-scale servers for companies, that so many are built to the point where the drives can sometimes be the same or cheaper in price than IronWolf Pro, even though both hard drives have different uses.
Barracuda might not be designed for RAID, but my NAS is just a PC case and I can spread them apart. I run RAID 1, so it will probably just work. Even performance isn't much of a concern for archive and photos. What I really need is lots of storage and a nice quiet 5400RPM drive. The 8TB Barracuda 5400 might be that. Edit: not sure about SMR. The search continues...
I need HDD for Gopro video storage , 8TB to 12TB which one you suggest ?
thank you for this!!
The recovery plan sold by Amazon covers only single-disk units, by opposition to multi disk devices. Anyone knows if the plan from Seagate is the same^ If it is the case, is it really useful to have that on a IronWolf Pro since clearly it will be used in a multi-disk device. And if it works with the multi disk, how does it work? Do you have to send in your whole installation? You clearly can't hold the actual NAS running with new activities adding and removing files while one of the drive is being recovered: anyway it would be useless when it would come back in. All this would defies the first goal of the NAS (being able to quickly but data back online).
use a backup and you don't need recovery.
Thank you!
Can I mix ironwolf pro and ironwolf in the same 6 bay nas?
Very helpful
holly shit, this video was the ultimate video for people who have no idea what they're doing and want almost everything explained to them. on top of that, you even mentioned noise, awesome.
If i got an iron wolf pro and had it in my gaming tower, would the noise be bad? i want reliability - and maybe i'm willing to sacrifice some quiet for it - but not if it's god awful?
Cheers for the kind words dude. Appreciated.
no speed test ?
What if i install an Exos 14tb inside my desktop?? will it operate normall or i won´t work since it´s not a server or NAS??
It will be fine. They're optimized for server usage but work fine in a standard desktop.
It would just be a bit loud on random writes and reads
can i use Exos drive in a file server? The server is IBM System x3250 M4
Great, great great video.
here´s Here´s my scenarios.
I run a small studio, I´ll planning to put 12tb exos on the server (about 3/4 people write and read high amount of data on it), and 10tb firewolfpro for my workstation/personal pc.... ? what you guys think? for the server it is better to backup on the cloud or have a mirror HD?
For my workstation/personal Pc... cloud of mirror HD?
As a novice, commenting on your setup, so take with a grain of salt, it depends on the critical nature of your work.
1) You might want to have some redundancy in your server. A single drive isn't going to be great in terms of dealing with drive failures. It also may not have enough speed to properly serve 3-4 people actively accessing the storage. You may need to consider whether your server is capable of handling high demand, and having multiple drives in an effective raid setup that suits your needs might be required.
2) You would want to consider having at least 2 backups. 1 on site and 1 offsite. Having Backups onsite allows for shorter down times, and one offsite would be a good way to avoid the server and backup being damaged at the same time. Offsite can be through the cloud. I guess ideally 3 (Onsite/Offsite/Cloud) would be best, but may be unnecessary.
What is the best way to set this up.... That's a bit beyond me unfortunately.
if you are planning on having multiple people read and write to the drive consider an enclosure that supports flash storage for caching.
mirror isnt backups, it does not protect against things like ransomware its designed for "availability" not "recovery" of data.
if the data is important to your business you should have both, and before you say mirror consider the performance impact why not get a multi bay and put more drives.
the larger the drives, the longer the rebuild times (around 30 hours) and during that time an increase risk of subsequent disk failure (in a mirror can only tolerate one disk failure) causing complete data loss requiring recovering from backups.
original option:
in order to get mirror of 12 tb, you would need 2x 12 tb drives (around $499CAD) = 1000CAD
that would get 12tb in mirror
recommend option:
if you would instead buy, 5 x 4 TB (around $100CAD) = 500CAD and you could instead use RAID6 with can tolerate 2 drive failures with much smaller rebuild times (10 hours) for 4tb
optimal:
add some ssd caching 2x 500GB raid 1 iron wolf sata ssd, (around 99CAD) = 198CAD
than backup to the cloud. this could be done nightly to lessen the load on your systems.
the time for recovery for the cloud provider (such as blackblaze) can be long (depending on your bandwidth and the cloud storage providers speed) so do plan your recovery time accordly and understand the impacts and time your employees will be offline.
I need a 8 TB hard for my business storage. It wont be in any NAS environment. Just gonna use it in my pc for backup of softcopies for games and softwares and movies along with my barracuda 4TB which is already full. its only gonna run for 8 or 10 hours a day Problem is with this covid pandemic with the imports are being blocked by our country. I looked everywhere and got no any barracuda 8TB drives to be found. But i got Skyhawk, Exos, abd Ironwolfs. Skyhawk is much cheaper, then the exos and ironwolf. Ironwolf got a 3 year warranty but its price tag is a bit high but its also affordable. exos got 2 year warranty and its price tag is lower than of an ironwolf. Got any recommendations? Should i got for ironwolf or exos?
what we need is comparison between WD Red and Ironwolf std. in more "normal" sizes like the 3Tb... for a small home NAS, 4 bay and without huge multimedia like movie, this is the size... not the very expensive 14Tb but the more affordable and big enough 3Tb
Any recomendations for business grade desktop (price not relevant & no raid) for Chia mining 24/7. Thanks.
the exos brand is designed to run in 24/7 mission critical servers. it would be best suited for your workload. also its not just raid but its the number of drives that you put inside a single case. the vibration sensor will help when you have cages with a lot of drives.
Which series is best suitable for gaming?
In HDD? Firecuda, EXOS or Red Po. Though I would always recommend an SSD for this or event a hybrid drive (SSHD).
What about storage purposes? Everyone talking about SkyHawk as surveillance but doesn't it also mean it's best for storage purposes? However, we have to use storage disks time to time make a read from for video, music or pictures etc. Also when it comes to price, Barracuda (ST4000DM004)[price_1889] is 50% more expensive than Skyhawk (ST4000VX007)[price_1271] at the moment. Exos (ST4000NM005A)[price_2084] is also close to Barracuda's price range, only 9-10% more expensive.
13:45 I think you meant “redundant” not “random”
I’m a little annoyed the firecuda wasn’t talked about at all. I was also hoping for a little more on the exo series. I’m looking for a large volume hard drive for multiple uses. Movies, gaming, development.m, etc. I want to get the best performance for my dollar. From what I can tell the Exo is the most powerful and best bang for your buck. Right now 8tb Firecuda is $203 and a 16gb x16 is $223. I get double the space for $20 bucks and possibly even better performance so why would anyone go for the firecuda other than the power consumption?
Noise.
Thanks for this . I have a drobo with 5 ironwolf 4x 8tb plus one which is 14tb . I now need to swap one drive . Can I remove one 8tb iron wolf and replace with a exos 14tb ?
gonna get the Exos 12TB for my desktop Gaming rig because am always running out of space with my SSDs, gonna get the data recovery, package as well,
data recovery isnt backup, its designed in cases of emergency where backups have failed or missing or not recent.
please dont count on data recovery being your backup plan,
if theres data you care about, sync the data to the cloud as a backup.
in most cases you should never need a data recovery plan, if you backup often and offsite.
which drive is best suited for p2p file sharing?
Just a quick question, building a TerraMaster F4-210 4-Bay NAS Quad Core could I use the EXOs drives in it to run a plex server? Or do I need to go with the Ironwolf Pros?
If I have a mixture of 3x WD 12TB 5900rpm drives in a DS1019+ five bay NAS, will it be a waste if I add a Seagate 16TB Exos X16 to the SHR? (And yes I’m aware I’ll lose some of the capacity but my plan is to add a 16TB for the fifth drive too in the future).
Do you know if it is good to use a EXOs in a video surveillance NVR like the Ubiquity UDM-Pro
You should use Seagate SkyHawk in a NVR.
Will the Exos fit inside a Synology NAS?
Yes