Seagate Introduces 12TB IronWolf and BarraCuda Drives

As if 10TB drives weren’t impressive enough, Seagate announced the addition of 12TB version to their IronWolf, IronWolf Pro and BarraCuda Pro series. All three drives belong to the so-called Guardian series which is Seagate’s latest drives. Whether you’re home or SMB user, there is a drive for every need.

BarraCuda Pro Desktop Drive

This isn’t the first time that a 12TB drive hits the market, but it is the first time there is one designed for desktop usage. The 12TB BarraCuda Pro HDD is the fastest, highest-capacity, and most reliable hard drive for desktop computing available today.

How impressive this is, is shown by the fact that it has double the capacity of the closest competitor. That’s impressive. While it is a desktop drive, it can still meet the demands of creative workflows to gaming systems. Now you certainly won’t need to uninstall a game again, at least not for the foreseeable future.

IronWolf and IronWolf Pro for NAS

NAS users need a lot more storage capacity than desktop users, so they’ll surely welcome the new additions too. Both the IronWolf and the IronWolf Pro series get the 12TB treatment. With such a capacity per drive, it will become easy to add a lot more storage to your system without increasing the amount of drive bays.

“Whether it’s storing your family photos, collaborating on important documents at work, or protecting your home with our video surveillance solutions, Synology NAS enthusiasts will be excited by the addition of Seagate’s 12TB IronWolf drives,” said Alex Wang, CEO of Synology America Corp. “By working together, Seagate and Synology are providing great ways for people to safeguard their digital lives and get the most out of their private cloud.”

Naturally, the new 12TB IronWolf drives also support the IronWolf Health Management (IHM). While it is a similar function as SMART, it goes beyond that. SMART is only able to detect errors after they happened, IHM can predict them. That’s a feature which allows you to switch out a drive before a potential failure. Synology, ASUSTOR, and QNAP NAS’ already support this feature.

“We are excited with Seagate’s launch of the industry’s largest capacity NAS drive – the 12TB IronWolf and IronWolf Pro,” said Meiji Chang, general manager of QNAP. “QNAP has collaborated with Seagate for many years on product and technology enhancements, working with them to create the best hard drives for NAS users. We believe that Seagate’s new IronWolf family provides the performance, reliability, and capacity needed to dependably store the vast data generated by virtualization, high-resolution media workflows, the Internet of Things, and other applications driven by modern QNAP NAS solutions.”

Performance

There are natural differences between the three new drives as they’re all target at different areas. Still, there is one factor that’s the same, and that’s the performance. All three new drives have a sustained transfer rate of 250MB/s. That’s up from the ~220MB/s of the 10TB versions. Another impressive feature of the Guardian series.

With 12TB capacity and such a speed, you can transfer all your files in no time. A 12TB drive can hold more than 100 hours HD video or 2400 standard DVDs. You could even store a full year worth of data captured by the Hubble Telescope which captures about 10TB data per year.

Pricing and Availability

The new 12 IronWolf and BarraCuda Pro drives are shipping now to customers worldwide. Seagate didn’t announce an MSRP at this time.