INTRODUCTION

   Looking at all the hard disk drives to arrive in our lab lately i still can't believe that at one time we thought that we'd never need a drive with a capacity of over 500MB. Things changed since then in many ways so today we need 500MB of storage space just to store our graphics card drivers. Competition is almost always a good thing cause it makes companies strive to become even better in order to surpass their rivals and so slightly over a year since Seagate, WD, HGST and Toshiba introduced their first 10TB 3.5 inch hard disk drives already the first 12TB models have made their appearance in the market with 14TB ones announced with projected availability before the end of the year. Once again Seagate was kind enough to send over their new 12TB models at launch and so we'll start reviewing their 12TB line with the IronWolf 12TB NAS Hard Disk Drive.

   Founded in 1979, Seagate is the leading provider of hard drives and storage solutions. From the videos, music and documents we share with friends and family on social networks, to servers that form the backbone of enterprise data centers and cloud-based computing, to desktop and notebook computers that fuel our personal productivity, Seagate products help more people store, share and protect their valuable digital content. Seagate offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of hard disk drives, solid-state drives and solid-state hybrid drives. In addition, the company offers an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses, along with data-recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type. Seagate employs more than 50,000 people around the world.

   With the new 12TB model the IronWolf line of HDDs by Seagate is now currently available in 1/2/3/4/6/8/10/12TB capacities and is optimized for use with up to 8 bay network attached storage devices, desktop servers and private cloud storage. Just like the 10TB variant the brand new 12TB model also features Seagate's AgileArray technology (includes 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) and Error Recovery Control. The IronWolf 12TB drive also features a total of 8 platters (1.5TB each), spins at 7200RPM (1/2/3/4TB models spin at 5900RPM while 6/8/10/12TB models spin at 7200RPM), has a total of 256MB cache (1/2/3/4TB models have 64MB while the 6TB model has 128MB and the 8/10/12TB models have 256MB) and comes with the typical SATA 6Gb/s interface. Just like the 10TB model the 12TB one is rated for up to 180TB per year (multi-user technology), has an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1 million hours and is covered by a 3 year limited warranty.