Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 5400 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage with 3-Years Data Recovery Services (ST4000VN006)

I bought this drive because NAS optimized drives are better quality/ more durable than regular desktop class HDDs and WD Red is much more expensive. Have used the product for a week and transferred around 3 TB so far, loving it till now, will update if anything changes. I use it in a mini-ITX Z87 build as a regular HDD. The space that you actually get is 3.63 TB. Sequential read is 183 MB/s while Sequential write is 209 MB/s. The drive runs at 5900 RPM. Reduced rotational speed lowers temperature and noise as well. This drive runs 3 degrees cooler than my 1 TB 7200 RPM drive. This drive has four platters of 1 TB each running at 5900 RPM. 4 platters also make this drive quite heavy.Now, for NAS features, Seagate has some RAID optimization thing (AgileArray), which I haven't checked since I don't use drives in RAID. Other than that, it has a Rotational Vibration sensor, which helps to reduce read and write errors when drive is used in an environment prone to harsh vibrations like multiple drives side by side in an 6 or 8 bay NAS. The drive is rated upto 180 TB per year with MTBF of 1 million hours which is very good.As for packaging, its terrible. The drive is packed in a folded cardboard sheet held together by duct tape. No bubble wrap at all. I have ordered 4 HDDs over past 3 year from Amazon and they all came in same manner. Please improve HDD packaging Amazon. Do check SMART attributes of drive in some free program like CrystalDiskInfo upon receiving to confirm whether its a new unit or not. The Power On Hours should be 0.Closing the review, I feel its a good product. The most important thing for HDDs is reliability. Personally, I feel spending 10% extra for a better quality HDD than regular desktop ones is a good choice. Warranty is 3 years although it is meaningless. You get a refurbished HDD back in warranty, which you can't trust with your important data so you will have to buy a new one anyway. But 3 years warranty over 2 years on normal desktop HDDs shows Seagate's confidence over these drives based on better quality/ durability which is more important to me than the actual warranty itself

I was very sceptical about the drives being properly working after reading all these recent reviews. However, I still proceeded with purchasing 2 8TB drives from them.Upon receiving the items, my fears become true. Two drives were wrapped in a plastic and then placed in a flimsy plastic box. There were no bubble wrap around them and they don't even have their own cardboard packaging box. Both drives were placed inside the bottom of the huge amazon box on top of each other and then a crumbled brown paper was placed to fill the gap. Obviously when I received the box, the drives already came out of their plastic shell.I waited for couple of days to get the NAS delivered and when I inserted then drives, one of them was not detected. I contacted Amazon for support. They responded there will be an internal investigation. I wasn't sure what investigation they were going to do but again I feared they were simply going to deny my claim and that's what they finally did.All the recent reviews were true and I also fell victim to this Amazon scam. If you have a working drive then find otherwise prepare to face all these issues while placing an order for this drive. Thinking this wouldn't happen to me is a mistake.If I go to seagate service centre for warranty they will replace this drive with a refurbished one. So I am effectively paying full price for a refurbished item.

Pros: This is a large capacity, 4 TB SATA 6.0 Gb/s mechanical hard drive.The features that distinguish it from the competition are the optimizations for NAS performance: AgileArray, IronWolf Health Management, Rotational Vibration sensors, and one million hours mean time between failures.It has a 7200 RPM rotational speed and a 256MB cache, making it a fast performer for a mechanical hard drive.It comes with a 3-year limited warranty.No issues noted in installation and use -- everything worked as predicted straight out of the box.Cons: No cons noted so far. Over the past years, Seagate has had serious reliability problems with many of its mechanical drives. Hopefully they have now addressed these issues.Other Thoughts: The drive is a good value at its price point. Do be aware that Seagate has had reliability problems in the past and plan accordingly -- important data kept on this drive should be backed up frequently.As to whether I would recommend this drive -- the answer is conditional. If the drive is still operating normally and without any issues after it has been in use for a year, then I would feel more confident in recommending it. I've seen enough Seagate drives fail to need to have several good experiences before I could whole-heartedly recommend them.1 year later - December 2020 update:Had no issues with the 4tb HDD on my Synology NAS. Using 24x7 connected to my IP cameras. No crashes or data losses so far.

It didnt work the day it arrived. It should be a complain against Amazon delivery practice, but I over all dont want people to buy HDDs from online platforms. as this is the 2nd or 3rd HDD that I have received this way.The replace process was easy and that got delivered by Blue Dart in very good packaging and worked perfectly.

Drive has held over the last 3 years and performance is as good as can be expected from a 5900 RPM drive.