Seagate IronWolf 12TB
12TB
Model ST12000VN0008
- rpm
- 7,200
- MB cache
- 256
- TB/yr
- 180
- yr warranty
- 3
IronWolf range, also in 4 TB, 8 TB
Should you buy the IronWolf 12 TB?
Speed over silence, basically. At 7,200 rpm it's quicker than the 5,400 rpm crowd, and it'll suit a small box that lives out of earshot. CMR, thankfully. SMR and parity rebuilds don't get on.
Watch out for
If there's any chance you'll move to a bigger box later, a pro line saves buying drives twice. Warranty's three years and the workload rating is 180 TB a year. At 12 TB that's 15 full passes of the drive a year, and a monthly scrub uses twelve of them before you've written anything.
Backblaze doesn't run enough of these for a failure rate we'd publish. Four of them in SHR or RAID 5 give 36 TB usable, or 32.7 TB once Windows has done its binary maths on it.
Specifications
Each value links to the Seagate page or datasheet it came from, and "Not published" means the maker doesn't list it there.
| Capacity | 12 TB | source for Capacity (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
|---|---|---|
| Spindle speed | 7,200 rpm | source for Spindle speed (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Recording technology | CMR | source for Recording technology (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Cache | 256 MB | source for Cache (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Interface | SATA 6Gb/s | source for Interface (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Form factor | 3.5in | source for Form factor (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Workload rating | 180 TB/yr | source for Workload rating (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| MTBF / MTTF | 1,000,000 hours | source for MTBF / MTTF (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Rated for NAS bays (max) | 8 bays | source for Rated for NAS bays (max) (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
| Warranty | 3 years | source for Warranty (seagate.com, opens in new tab) |
Sources: seagate.com
Failure rate
Backblaze doesn't run this model, or not in big enough numbers. We only publish a rate with at least 60 drives and 50 drive-years behind it, because below that the error bars are too wide to tell you anything. The reliability page has every model that clears the bar.
Seagate IronWolf 12TBST12000VN0008