Seagate 8TB Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD 7200RPM SATA 6Gbps 256 MB Cache Internal Bare Drive (ST8000NM0055)

Dependable drives with lots of bang for the buck
As of spring 2018, the Seagate Exos 7E8 ST8000NM0055 8TB drives are the best bang for the buck in terms of $/TB and features though the 10TB version is not far behind on the price front. I compared this enterprise grade drive to both Seagate’s consumer line equivalents (Barracuda Pro/Ironwolf/Ironwolf Pro) and similar offerings from rival brands (HGST and WD) and this drive is compelling in many ways:1) It has the largest cache at 256MB while many competitors offer only 128MB cache on similar drives2) Unlike consumer NAS drives, it is rated at 7200rpm instead of the slower 5400rpm which means it’s noticeably faster than the Seagate ST4000VN000 NAS drives that I run in my QNAP3) It actually surpasses consumer grade NAS drives in terms of both annual write load (~500TB vs. ~300TB) and MTF (~ 2million vs. ~1million)4) Since it is an enterprise grade drive it is designed for always-on workloads and is suited for high-vibration environments such as in server racks5) Unlike many consumer grade drives, these drives actually come with a full 5 year warranty (more on that later).However there are also a few (not many) cons:1) This drive is a bit noisy. All my drives have the SN04 firmware which resolves many of the noise complaints reported on here about clicking sounds, etc present on the same drives with earlier firmware. But this drive is still louder than many consumer grade drives, especially the ones rated for lower rpms. It can seem a bit alarming, but none of my drive diagnostics turn up any problems and it’s not drastically louder to be annoying next to my desk.2) These drives seem to run a bit hot. I suspect that they are specced to run a bit hot anyway since they are designed for enterprise data center environments but I’d still advise beefier cooling solutions. I replaced stock fans on my enclosures with higher grade Noctua fans and they seem happy so far.Overall, I am very happy with these drives and have 8 of them running on 2 separate arrays with no problems. They are fast, reliable (so far), and seem to be very robust.Finally, regarding warranties, there are reports on Amazon of some third party sellers selling OEM drives that may have been pulled from actual server units and thus do not come with valid warranties from Seagate. While it is true that these drives are usually OEM drives, Seagate does sell OEM drives that come with valid end-user warranties serviced directly through Seagate so just because they are OEM doesn’t mean they won’t come with a warranty. It all depends on the seller and where they sourced their products. I got all 8 of my drives through SabrePC and they told me all their new drives are under warranty. The drives’ S/N all checked out on Seagate’s website as having valid 5 year warranties when I got them. As a plus, SabrePC is usually the cheapest price anyway. So no complaints from me on that front. Their customer service is also very responsive if you call them with questions.

Failed after six hours
I got two of the 8TB Seagate Enterprise Capacity Drives (ST8000NM0055) a year ago to upgrade a NAS drive. Now it’s a year later and I finally got around to getting a new NAS enclosure and installing the drives. About six hours into copying files to the new NAS, one of the drives failed. S.M.A.R.T status says BAD and the drive no longer shows up in the RAID. I checked the factory warranty and discovered that it expired about six months ago. Looks like I only had about a six-month warranty left on the drive that failed on the day I bought it. To me, it was still brand new so it’s really disappointing that I only got six hours of use out of such a high-capacity drive. I had to shell out another $150 to buy another one so I could match it up with its mate in the NAS enclosure. That’s like paying $300 for an 8TB hard drive.

It works and is brand new – that’s all that matters!
I got this when my year old Ironwolf drive unexpectedly failed, and it dropped right in and works perfectly as expected. Also nice to see from the internal hardware stats that is really is a new drive too. I’ve had good luck with most of the Seagate 8TB drives I’ve had, better than with 10TB or even 4TB sometimes. Highly recommended!

Les + :+ Un prix étonnamment moins cher que les autres 8To équivalents pour NAS (y compris IronWolf de la même marque qui sont la gamme en dessous)+ Une garantie WD de 5 ans réputées pour son efficacité, contrairement à certaines marques avec lesquelles il faut impérativement passer par le vendeur (et les IronWolf sont garantis 3 ans)+ Un MTBF et un débit en théorie au dessus des autresLes – :- Pas d’offre de récupération de données contrairement à l’IronWolf Pro (mais pour un NAS en RAID je préfère une garantie 5 ans si le disque a un soucis puisque le RAID sécurise relativement les données)- Chauffe un peu, 41° dans un NAS très aéré et ventilé- Bruit en fonctionnement assez notable (pas le moteur qui est silencieux, mais lors de l’accès aux données)- Vibrations notables en fonctionnement, pouvant générer des bruits parasitesJe disposais d’un RAID matériel équipé de 2 WD NAS Red 6To et ai découvert que l’un des deux disques rendait l’âme depuis un moment (secteurs défectueux partout alors que l’autre n’a aucun soucis… probablement le “master” du RAID qui était davantage sollicité). J’ai remplacé mon RAID par un NAS en RAID et ai opté pour 2 disques de 8To : le choix des Exos a été motivé par le prix imbattable (assez étrange d’ailleurs par rapport aux autres disques) et la garantie 5 ans (car un disque, par expérience, ça vieillit parfois mal).A noter que sur les 2 disques (achetés à quelques jours d’écart), l’un venait d’Espagne et l’autre d’Allemagne (tant mieux pour éviter des n° de série proches). Emballage correct sans plus : enroulé dans un papier à bulles et glissé dans un carton… ce n’est pas hyper protégé mais pas de soucis à signaler. Sur un NAS, pas la peine de fantasmer sur le débit du disque : on est limité en pratique par le Gigabit du réseau LAN (40 à 50Mo/s en pratique avec un Synology).Difficile de parler de la longévité puisque que je viens d’installer, mais en modifierai mon avis en cas de soucis ultérieurement… donc en attendant c’est que tout va bien ! Après, il y a un facteur chance sans doute : les WD NAS Red sont réputés fiables et j’en ai un qui a flanché, j’espère donc avoir davantage de chance avec les Exos.

I’m using this drive exclusively for Hyper Backup incremental backups on an HDD dock connected to my Synology NAS, and it is working great so far. I feel confident in putting my trust in it.The drive is a lot heavier than other drives and it runs very hot during the backup process (like a hot cup of coffee, not enough to burn you but enough to alarm you that a piece of hardware can get this hot), so some sort of fan is recommended while running standalone on a dock, which reduces the temperature to lukewarm. This is probably normal as I am not using this drive for its intended purposes inside an actual server with actual ventilation.

Good Backup. Most of the time this hard disk is not powered up.