The Seagate Ironwolf is a family of hard drives from a reputable brand that are specifically designed for use in a Network Attached Storage device. These drives are rated for continuous operation and come rocking some advanced features you can't find on desktop drives.
Who should buy this hard drive
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Those who are searching for a hard drive that was designed for use inside their Synology NAS (or any NAS for that matter). If you bought a diskless Synology DS218+ and need some drives to start transferring data, you'll be hard pressed finding a better storage solution than the Ironwolf series from Seagate.
Is it a good time to buy this drive?
Seagate supplies a wide range of hard drives and the product cycles are rather long. Even if an Ironwolf successor is around the corner, it's worth using these drives as they're among the top of the segment.
Best NAS storage for your Synology D218+
The Seagate IronWolf series is the company's solution for NAS setups, rivaling the Western Digital Red. Advanced drive technology named AgileArray is implemented to offer enhanced performance and reliability over desktop drives, and these units can be installed in boxes that support up to eight bays.
Most importantly, these drives can be run 24/7 without shutdown. The IronWolf family of NAS hard drives come in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, 7TB, 8TB and 10TB versions with 3-year warranties. Prices start at $60 for the 1TB capacity configuration. Do note that only configurations of 4TB and above sport rotational vibration sensors. The 6TB and above models also run at 7,200 RPM, which results in better performance.
If you need NAS hard drives, you need to look at Seagate Ironwolf.
IronWolf Pro is the next step up with slightly more expensive drives but increased supported bays, workload rates, and an extended limited warranty. Depending on what you're looking for, it's possible to get away with a NAS drive for as little as $60, although it can hit nearly $500 for larger Pro drives.
Throw two 8TB Seagate Ironwolf drives into the DS218+ and configure them into RAID 1 for redundancy and you'll have a massive amount of capacity to work with.
Alternatives to the Seagate Ironwolf
The other big player in the NAS hard drive business is Western Digital, which also has a dedicated range of drives for the NAS that work with a Synology DS218+.
Western Digital drives are known to be top quality and last a long time. The Red family aren't the fastest hard drive series on the market, but using them in a RAID formation can certainly make up for this unless you'd prefer to fork out more for the Red Pro drives.
Bottom line
It's a tough decision between Western Digital and Seagate. Both companies offer similarly priced drives with almost identical features but we've never had an issue with any Seagate drive, which are used for testing all NAS units we receive for review. While Western Digital drives are just as good (if not better in some cases), the fact you need to fork out more for 7,200 RPM models is a drawback.
