Seagate Intros NAS-targeted Hard Drives, 4TB Flavors Offered

When we took a look at WD’s new enterprise Se hard drive a couple of weeks ago, we mentioned that it helped fill the void for NAS users who want a suitable drive for their purposes, but require 4TB models. It seems a bit strange that WD up to this point hasn’t released a 4TB Red model, but it seemed inevitable that either it would eventually, or its competitor would. Today, we get our answer, with Seagate’s new “NAS HDD”.

Like WD’s Red drives, Seagate’s NAS HDDs are designed for 24/7 operation and for use in 1 – 5 bay NAS devices. In addition to the offering of a 4TB model, Seagate also touts improved performance; 180MB/s for its 3 and 4TB models (versus 145MB/s for WD’s 3TB), and 159MB/s for its 2TB (also 145MB/s on the WD side). Neither manufacturer gives an approximate access time rating, so that’s something we’ll have to test for ourselves once we get ahold of Seagate’s drive.

With its NASWorks technology built-in, Seagate offers error recovery controls, power management and vibration tolerance to its NAS HDDs, which couple nicely with all of the other hard drive features we’ve come to expect nowadays.

As of the time of writing, no pricing information has been revealed, but models are expected to ship almost immediately. We’ll have a review of one of these NAS HDDs in the near-future, so stay tuned.