The one thing I can't get enough of is NAS HDDs; I have over 250TB of storage across three home servers, and while there's plenty of storage available at the moment, I'll eventually need more drives. Thankfully, Seagate is catering to that particular requirement with the introduction of 24TB IronWolf Pro drives. Like the rest of the series, the 24TB IronWolf drive is designed to be used 24/7 within a NAS enclosure, and it uses vibration sensors along with Seagate's custom AgileArray suite to ensure long-term reliability.
I used various configurations of IronWolf Pro drives over the years, and the current set of drives in use ticked over the 30,000-hour mark at the end of last year, and they're still going strong. The 24TB IronWolf Pro is based on the SATA 6Gb/s, and like the higher-end models in the series, it uses a helium-filled design that reduces drive friction over long-term use. The drive spins at 7,200rpm, goes up to 285MB/s during sustained transfers, and has a 512MB cache.
Seagate says it has a 300TB/year endurance rating, and an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of 2.5 million hours. You get a five-year standard warranty along with Seagate's data recovery services that are guaranteed up to three years.
All in all, the 24TB IronWolf Pro sounds like the ideal drive if you've got a lot of storage to back up, and while Seagate positions the drive as a business-focused option, I can see it doing just as well with enthusiasts that have high storage requirements (like me). The drive is now available for $649, and you can pick it up on Amazon.
That's a hefty increase over what existing IronWolf Pro models go for, with the 22TB model now selling at $399. I'd suggest getting the 22TB drive if you want to maximize value, but if you need more storage and don't mind shelling out a premium, the 24TB IronWolf Pro is the way to go.
The 24TB IronWolf Pro gives you more storage than any other NAS HDD at the moment. If you need a better value, you should get the 22TB IronWolf Pro instead.
