Hands On With Seagate’s 14TB IronWolf and Barracuda Pro Drives

Hands On With Seagate’s 14TB IronWolf and Barracuda Pro Drives

Now that 40MP+ cameras and 4K and higher video resolutions are commonplace, the demand for storage at all levels is going through the roof. Fortunately, disk drives are also getting larger. Less than a year after introducing 12TB models, Seagate has just launched several models of 14TB 3.5-inch drives that may be just the thing for your storage needs.

The Barracuda Pro is being marketed to creative professionals and others who need high-capacity desktop storage, while the IronWolf Pro version is aimed at 24 x 7 availability like that needed by business NAS systems or cloud storage applications. There are also IronWolf and Skyhawk versions available, alongside the already announced Exos Enterprise drives.

Performance and Features

Seagate has already been shipping helium-filled 14TB Exos Enterprise drives to some customers, but the new models are the first to be usable in typical consumer and mainstream business applications. I’ve been using both the IronWolf Pro and Barracuda Pro drives for a few weeks now, in a variety of applications, and they’ve been a straightforward plug-in replacement to lower-capacity versions. In the small amount of performance testing I’ve done the IronWolf Pro version performs somewhat better than the smaller ones I compared it with. (I don’t have a smaller Barracuda Pro to test the new one against, but it compares favorably to the other 3.5-inch 7200rpm drives I have around.)

Hands On With Seagate’s 14TB IronWolf and Barracuda Pro Drives

Both drives come with a data recovery and rescue service, although of course most serious users will deploy them in some type of redundant configuration anyway. The IronWolf Pro version uses about 8.5 watts when operating, while the Barracuda Pro draws about 6.9. Both drives use less than a watt in standby mode.

The IronWolf Pro version also features Seagate’s AgileArray technology, which provides for improved RAID-optimization in multi-bay environments, and IronWolf Health Management tools. This model also introduces Rotational Vibration sensors for use in maintaining performance in multi-drive enclosures. The Skyhawk version is slower but designed for cost-effective use in 24×7 applications like surveillance.

Price and Availability

IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, Barracuda Pro, Exos, and SkyHawk 14TB drives are all available immediately. The IronWolf and IronWolf Pro 14TB are priced at an MSRP of $529.99 and $599.99 respectively. The Barracuda Pro 14TB is priced at an MSRP of $579.99. The SkyHawk 14TB is priced at an MSRP of $509.99. The Exos X14 is priced at an MSRP of $614.99.

Continue reading

Protect Your Online Privacy With the 5 Best VPNs
Protect Your Online Privacy With the 5 Best VPNs

Investing in a VPN is a smart choice right now, but the options are vast. To help narrow things down a bit, we've rounded up five of our very favorite consumer services.

RISC-V Tiptoes Towards Mainstream With SiFive Dev Board, High-Performance CPU
RISC-V Tiptoes Towards Mainstream With SiFive Dev Board, High-Performance CPU

RISC V continues to make inroads across the market, this time with a cheaper and more fully-featured test motherboard.

The PlayStation 5 Will Only Be Available Online for Launch Day
The PlayStation 5 Will Only Be Available Online for Launch Day

The PlayStation 5 isn't going to be available in stores on launch day, and if you want to pick up an M.2 SSD to expand its storage, you'll have some time to figure out that purchase.

ARMing for War: New Cortex-A78C Will Challenge x86 in the Laptop Market
ARMing for War: New Cortex-A78C Will Challenge x86 in the Laptop Market

ARM took another step towards challenging x86 in its own right with the debut of the Cortex-A78C this week. The new chip packs up to eight "big" CPU cores and up to an 8MB L3 cache.