INTRODUCTION

   3.5 inch hard disk drives have always enjoyed the highest possible price/capacity ratio found in storage media and with projected availability for 22TB capacity models by the end of 2020 things are only getting better for demanding professionals, enthusiasts and consumers in general with very high storage capacity demands/needs. If higher capacities weren't enough however Seagate is also planning on releasing their very first multi-actuator technology (MACH2) HDDs (dual actuator 14TB models at first) by the end of the year which should boost sequential read and write performance all the way up to 500MB/s (still no word on availability however). With that out of the way as we've already mentioned Toshiba may have been the very first HDD manufacturer to officially announce an 16TB 3.5" model (MG08) in January of this year but Seagate actually beat both Toshiba and WD in drive availability not with one but three different models announced earlier this month, the enterprise grade EXOS X16 (review here) and the NAS oriented IronWolf and IronWolf Pro. For the past week or so we've been thoroughly testing both the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro 16TB models and today we can finally share our results with all of you.

   Seagate is the global leader in data storage solutions, developing amazing products that enable people and businesses around the world to create, share and preserve their most critical memories and business data. Over the years the amount of information stored has grown from megabytes all the way to geopbytes, confirming the need to successfully store and access huge amounts of data. As demand for storage technology grows the need for greater efficiency and more advanced capabilities continues to evolve.

   The IronWolf (currently available in 1/2/3/4/6/8/10/12/14/16TB capacities) and IronWolf Pro (2/4/6/8/10/12/14/16TB) 16TB 3.5" hard disk drives are both calibrated/tweaked for use in NAS devices/servers (up to 8 bays for the IronWolf and 24 bays for the IronWolf Pro), desktop servers and private cloud storage. Both models sport a total of 9 platters (adding to a total usable storage space of 14901.98GB) spinning at up to 7200RPM and 256MB of DRAM cache. In terms of features both models incorporate Seagate's AgileArray technology (dual-plane balancing, RAID optimization and advanced power management), Rotational Vibration (RV) mitigation (several RV sensors help maintain high performance in multi-drive NAS enclosures), health management (drive monitoring), Secure (self-encryption) and Error Recovery Control. As for durability/reliability Seagate reports MTBF (mean time between failures) numbers of 1-1.2 million hours and 180-300TB/yr for the IronWolf/IronWolf Pro 16TB models (the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro 16TB models are covered by 3/5 year limited warranties - the IronWolf Pro model is also covered by a 2 year Rescue Data Recovery Plan).