What you need to know
- Seagate just launched a new 20TB IronWolf Pro hard drive for NAS.
- This is the largest NAS drive available, supporting transfer speeds of up to 285MB/s.
- The new 20TB IronWolf Pro will cost $650 and be available later in December.
Seagate isn't quite ready to sign off on SSD tech as the go-to for the best NAS for home and mass storage solutions. Hard drives are here to stay with the launch of a new 20TB option for Seagate's IronWolf Pro and Exos families. This is a huge leap for those who require as much free space as possible in such scenarios. This is a 2TB jump up from the existing flagship 18TB hard drives.
The new 20TB IronWolf Pro offers impressive capacity and performance for an HDD. You can expect to see transfer rates of up to 285MB/s, which is still a considerable drop from an SSD, but for limited network infrastructure, you'll not encounter any issues. To sweeten the deal further, Seagate throws in three years of Rescue Data Recovery Services and IronWolf Health Management for drive health monitoring on select NAS.
We recommend Seagate IronWolf drives alongside their Western Digital counterparts for all NAS enclosures, including them in our best storage drives for NAS collection. See below the current IronWolf Pro series of drives with the new 20TB models added in.
| Hard drive | Max bays | Speed | Workload | Warranty | Price | $ per GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 4TB | 24 | 214MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $140 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB | 24 | 214MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $280 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 10TB | 24 | 214MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $330 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB | 24 | 250MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $410 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB | 24 | 250MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $408 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB | 24 | 250MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $440 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB | 24 | 260MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $450 | $0.03 |
| Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB | 24 | 285MB/s | 300 TB/yr | 5 years | $650 | $0.03 |
The Exos family of hard drives from Seagate is for heavy workloads. If you write a lot (and I mean a lot) of data to the drives, you'll want to consider these with the impressive 550TB/yr workload rate, a full 250TB more than the IronWolf Pro series. I've added the new 20TB models to the chart below to showcase the Exos family in full.
| Hard drive | Max bays | Speed | Workload | Warranty | Price | $ per GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate Exos 7E2 1TB | ~ | 194MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $94 | $0.09 |
| Seagate Exos 7E2 2TB | ~ | 194MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $133 | $0.06 |
| Seagate Exos 7E8 4TB | ~ | 215MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $125 | $0.03 |
| Seagate Exos 7E8 6TB | ~ | 226MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $179 | $0.03 |
| Seagate Exos 7E8 8TB | ~ | 249MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $220 | $0.03 |
| Seagate Exos 7E8 10TB | ~ | 249MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $286 | $0.03 |
| Seagate Exos X16 12TB | ~ | 261MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $295 | $0.03 |
| Seagate Exos X16 14TB | ~ | 261MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $287 | $0.02 |
| Seagate Exos X16 16TB | ~ | 261MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $310 | $0.03 |
| Seagate Exos X18 18TB | ~ | 270MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $367 | $0.02 |
| Seagate Exos X20 20TB | ~ | 285MB/s | 550 TB/yr | 5 years | $670 | $0.03 |
The new 18TB IronWolf Pro and Exos drives will be available for purchase later in December for $650 and $670, respectively.
