Seagate 4TB NAS HDD

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
The crew over at Tech Report have just published a review of the Seagate 4TB NAS hard drive. If you need a drive or two to use in your network attached storage device, you'll want to read this review.

Seagate's NAS HDD 4TB is optimized for network-attached storage and desktop RAID implementations. It promises better reliability than typical desktop drives, too. We take a closer look to see how the NAS HDD compares to its WD Red counterpart.
 
These drives need to drop in price before I'll buy again. It has been months since I saw them last at $140
 
Any thoughts on this vs what WD has to offer?

Here's some thoughts: based on recent history, Seagate and WD are equally crappy. I wouldn't expect longevity or trouble free operation from either WD Red or Seagate NAS series drives.

Unfortunately, Seagate and WD are pretty much the only game in town at reasonable price points. It would be nice if Hitachi GST still existed as a separate entity with their commitment to quality and aggressive pricing. But you could fairly argue that the profitless outcome of those very same corporate traits is why they had to sell out...

Bottom line: when choosing WD Red vs Seagate NAS series drives you pretty much buy on price. There is no realistic advantage to either one. Ok - maybe a slight performance advantage to WD - but in a multi-drive Raid-5/6 NAS you probably won't be able to notice because your network performance will be the ultimate limiting factor.
 
Last edited:
Here's some thoughts: based on recent history, Seagate and WD are equally crappy. I wouldn't expect longevity or trouble free operation from either WD Red or Seagate NAS series drives.

FWIW, I have had excellent luck with my collection of Seagate 2tb and 4tb drives in HP and SuperMicro rack enclosures in 8 and 12 configs. Also, their 1tb 2.5" drives in ProLiant DL360G6s have been good for me. I have had maybe 2 failures in 24/7 use over the past 2 or 3 years. None were "RAID" drives and most bought on sale at Best Buy or similar.

I haven't used the WD Reds after my horrific experience with the WD 2tb Greens. My 320gb Blue and 500gb RE3 is still going strong so who knows.
 
I had wd green and seagate drives die like mayflies in the time after the flood. Unfortunately there were no other options available here for a long time.

My experience with wd red is so far much better, with the exception of DOA rates.
 
These drives need to drop in price before I'll buy again. It has been months since I saw them last at $140

I'm not sure I've ever seen the ST4000VN000 for $140. I know you can commonly find the desktop version, ST4000DM000, for the $139 - 169 range.

As for the "NAS" ST4000VN000 and the WD Red WD40EFRX NAS drive, I have seem them both frequently on sale in the range of $189 - $200 on both newegg and amazon.

I have a single ST4000DM000 (the cheaper, non-nas version), which has actually been rock solid since I picked up several months ago. I also picked up 6 of the WD40EFRX's and have had great luck with them so far as well. No DOAs, no smart errors, etc. ... but it's really too soon to tell for sure at this point.
 
I have 2 ST4000DM000-1F21 drives in a Thecus NAS and have had no issues so far in spite of the fact that the Thecus does not spin down the HD's when idle (promised in a future firmware upgrade).
 
I'm not sure I've ever seen the ST4000VN000 for $140. I know you can commonly find the desktop version, ST4000DM000, for the $139 - 169 range.

As for the "NAS" ST4000VN000 and the WD Red WD40EFRX NAS drive, I have seem them both frequently on sale in the range of $189 - $200 on both newegg and amazon.

I know for sure he's talking about ST4000DM000 (at $140) not ST4000VN000.
I actually bought 10 ST4000DM000 drives at $130/each from Amazon about half year ago. They're still working fine in my home server now, FYI.
Unless ST4000VN000 drive drops below $150, trust me, ST4000DM000 drive still does the job well in your NAS.
 
While it's not sub $150, I saw that the WD Red WD40EFRX 4TB is on sale for $179 today on newegg. So the "NAS drives are slowly but surely becoming more affordable.
 
I'm not sure they are really much different. Probably different mode page configurations and a red label :)
 
I also have 10 ST4000DM000s. None were DOA and no errors yet. I did buy 5 squaretrade warranties in case Seagate enforces the 2400 hour power on time warranty.

Anyone know if the three year warranty on the NAS version is still limited in hours like the desktop versions?
 
Seagate could sell boxes of poop labeled as HD's and people would still buy them. Most people don't really give a damn about a companies rep or how they will be treated when they encounter an after sale problem. Seagate knows this. A small number of people can squawk till the cows come home and it will make no difference. They're not called sheeple for nothing.
 
Back
Top