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Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD Review: Your NAS’ Best Friend

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The Seagate IronWolf 110 is a standard SATA solid-state drive (SSD), yet it’s pretty different from all other SSDs I’ve used. It’s the first SSD explicitly designed for network-attached storage (NAS) servers.

Since servers generally work 24/7, the new SSD’s biggest trick is its longevity. It’s an enterprise-grade SSD with extremely high endurance—the amount of data you can write to it before you can’t anymore.

In return, the drive is not the most affordable among consumer-grade SSDs, costing between 23 cents and 33 cents per gigabyte across its five capacities of 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB, and 3.84TB. So, it’s not for everyone.

But if you want to get the most out of your NAS server, the new Seagate IronWolf 110 is worth the investment.

Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD
The Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD is designed specifically for NAS servers.

Seagate IronWolf 110: Standard design, high endurance

The IronWolf 110 looks like a typical SATA SSD—it’s a 2.5-inch standard internal drive that’s 7mm thick that will fit in any application where a regular hard disk resides.

You need a 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch converter or a caddy to install it in a regular NAS server, like the Synology DS1019+.

On the inside, the IronWolf 110 has exceptionally high endurance. On average, for each gigabyte, you can write more than 1.8TB to it. So, for example, if you use the 480GB version, you can write up to 875TB to the drive before it becomes unreliable. To put it in perspective, if you write 100GB of data to it per day and every day, you’ll need 25 years to wear out the drive.

Seagate Ironwolf 110 Port
The Seagate IronWolf 110 is a standard SATA SSD.

This type of endurance is an entirely new class compared to other standard SSDs I’ve reviewed. Take the venerable Samsung 860 Evo, for example; its 500GB version can only handle 300TB, almost three times less than the 480GB version of the IronWolf 110.

Seagate IronWolf 110: Hardware specifications

3.84TB1.92TB960GB480GB240GB
ModelZA3840NM10001ZA1920NM10001ZA960NM10001ZA480NM10001ZA240NM10001
InterfaceSATA 6GbpsSATA 6GbpsSATA 6GbpsSATA 6GbpsSATA 6Gbps
NAND Flash Type3D TLC3D TLC3D TLC3D TLC3D TLC
Form Factor2.5 in × 7mm2.5 in × 7mm2.5 in × 7mm2.5 in × 7mm2.5 in × 7mm
Sequential Read560 MB/s560 MB/s560 MB/s560 MB/s560 MB/s
Sequential Write (MB/s) Sustained, 128KB QD321535 MB/s535 MB/s535 MB/s535 MB/s345 MB/s
Random Read Sustained, 4KB QD3285,000 IOPS90,000 IOPS90,000 IOPS75,000 IOPS55,000 IOPS
Random Write Sustained, 4KB QD3245,000 IOPS50,000 IOPS55,000 IOPS50,000 IOPS30,000 IOPS
Endurance (Total Bytes Written)7,000 TBW3,500 TBW1,750 TBW875 TBW435 TBW
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours)2,000,0002,000,0002,000,0002,000,0002,000,000
Power Consumption (Active)3.5W3.4W3.2W2.7W2.3W
Power Consumption (Idle)1.2W1.2W1.2W1.2W1.2W
Weight0.169lb (77.0g)0.169lb (77.0g)0.169lb (77.0g)0.169lb (77.0g)0.169lb (77.0g)
Warranty5 Years5 Years5 Years5 Years5 Years
Seagate IronWolf 110’s specifications.

Seagate DuraWrite

The IronWolf 110 SSD owes its endurance to Seagate’s DuraWrite technology. It’s a lossless data reduction technique that compresses data as it passes through the drive’s Seagate home-grown SSD controller.

DuraWrite is unique to Seagate SSDs. It reduces the amount of data written to (and stored on) the flash memory, increasing the memory cells’ longevity. On top of that, DuraWrite also cuts down the SSD’s power consumption. For specific numbers, check out the charts below.

Synology DS411slim
The Seagate IronWolf 110 gives my 8-year-old Synology DS411slim a new life.

Seagate IronWolf 110: Fast performance

I wanted to test out the IronWolf 110’s endurance, but unfortunately, I ran out of time. So, you’ll have to take Seagate’s word for it—the company does offer a solid 5-year warranty, which includes two years of Data Recovery Services. If something happens in those two years, Seagate will put forth the effort to get your data back for you.

But I was able to test the Ironwolf 110’s performance, and the drive proved to be a formidable contender. In the sequential (copy) test, the SSD had sustained speeds of some 410 MB/s and 525 MB/s for writing and reading, respectively. Most impressively, when doing both at the same time, it now still averaged almost 250 MB/s.

Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD Copy Performance

In the random access tests, the new NAS SSD also did well, especially in writing.

Since this is a NAS-specific SSD, I tried a couple of units with a few Synology NAS servers, and they made a huge difference, even when used as cache. The server’s overall performance improved a great deal.  When used as the primary storage, the SSDs almost doubled the speed of my aging DS411slim. They also turned the NAS server into a completely silent machine.

Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD Random Access Performance

By the way, the SSD ran a bit hot in my testing during a lengthy operation. The drive wasn’t hot enough to cook an egg on it, but you might not want to rest your finger on the surface for longer than a few seconds. During my whole week of testing it, though, the drive never got hot enough to cause serious concerns.

It’s important to note that the IronWolf 110 doesn’t work exclusively with NAS servers. You can use it with any computer with a SATA connection, just like any other SSDs. So, if you need a lasting SSD for heavy tasks, like 4K video editing, consider this drive as your scratch disk. You won’t be disappointed.

Seagate IronWolf 110's Rating

8.3 out of 10
Seagate Ironwolf 110 Port
Performance
8.5 out of 10
Features
8.5 out of 10
Value
8 out of 10

Pros

Extremely high endurance

Fast performance

Long warranty and easy to use

Cons

A bit expensive

Runs hot

No M.2 or NVMe version

Conclusion

Hard drives made for NAS servers—like the Seagate IronWolf or the WD RED—are generally known as long-lasting but slow-performing storage devices. The Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD bucks that trend. This little drive delivers maximum longevity yet manages to be one of the fastest standard SATA SSDs on the market.

While a NAS server’s copy speed generally caps at a Gigabit connection, there’s more to a server these days than throughput performance. Having SSDs as cache, or better yet as primary storage, means better application performance, including when running virtual machines or other heavy tasks.

That said, if you’re really into network-attached storage, the Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD is an easy recommendation. And even if you’re not, the fact it works with any computer still makes it a pretty safe choice.

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3 thoughts on “Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD Review: Your NAS’ Best Friend”

  1. Power-loss protection is not really about losing data, it’s about synchronous I/O performance (e.g. SQL), that’s why it matter a whole lot how much cache are covered by power-loos. If it’s e.g. 10kb it doesn’t really have no value other than beinig a marketing gimmick targeting the novice users. That’s why it’s so important to get this property! BUT as is turn out Seagate will not disclose this property…you can make your own guess why?

    Reply
  2. 1.2W idle is rather high for a flash drive doing nothing.
    This drive also have power-loss-protecting, but what how much cache is actually protected by this power-loss?

    Reply
    • That applies to the data being transferred so there’s no need to worry about the actual amount, as long as the data is safe, in case of a sudden power loss, Cal.

      Reply

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