- Seagate making SSDs for NAS devices!
- How its tested???
- AS SSD Benchmark
- AS SSD Benchmark
- ATTO Benchmark
- CrystalDisk Mark Benchmark
- Futuremark Benchmarks
- IO Testing
- Access Test
- Conclusion
- Online Purchase Links
Disclosure: The Ironwolf 110 is loaned by Seagate.
About Ironwolf SSDs…
The Seagate Ironwolf 110 SSD is made for small to SOHO NAS arrays. While NAS bays do provide cages with both 3.5″/ 2.5″ drives, there are some really small form factor NAS specifically made for 2.5″ SATA drives for mechanical and solid-state. There are also 3.5″/2.5″ hybrid NAS that uses SSDs as additional caching for the primary storage array. Naturally, this would make a market for NAS specific SSDs. This is the Seagate Ironwolf variant. The Ironwolf 110SSD comes with a set of its marketed features- AgileArray firmware and DuraWrite are two of these firmware specific implementations. These NAS SSDs do that have a 5-year warranty with an included 2-year data recovery support. Though the provision for this data recovery support varies between countries.
NAS SSDs has two purposes- either for storage or for NAS Cache in hybrid NAS units. While its highly unlikely one would use much higher capacity NAS SSDs for caching a SOHO NAS units, that’s where units like the 240GB come in.
Specifications
Specifications
Capacity 240GB Standard Model ZA240NM10001 Features
Interface SATA 6 Gb/s NAND Flash Type 3D TLC Form Factor 2.5 in × 7mm Performance
Sequential Read (MB/s) Sustained, 128 KB QD32 560 Sequential Write (MB/s) Sustained, 128 KB QD32 230 Random Read (IOPS) Sustained, 4 KB QD32 55000 Random Write (IOPS) Sustained, 4 KB QD32 8,000 Endurance/Reliability
Total Bytes Written (TB) 435 Non-recoverable Read Errors per Bits Read 1 per 10E17 Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours) 2000000 Warranty, Limited (years) 5 Power Management
Power Supply 5V 2 +5/+12V Active Max Average Power (W) 2.3 Average Idling Power (W) 1.1 Environmental
Temperature, Operating Internal (°C) 0 to 70 Temperature, Non-operating (°C) –40 to 85 Temperature Change Rate/Hr, Max (°C) 20 Shock, 0.5 ms (Gs) 1,000 Physical
Height (in/mm, max) 7.00 mm/0.276 in Width (in/mm, max) 70.10 mm/2.760 in Depth (in/mm, max) 100.25 mm/3.947 in Weight (lb/g) 75 g/0.165 lb 
The Seagate Ironwolf has multiple storage variants starting with the 240GB, continuing with the 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB and the 3.84TB. Seagate is using the E3 TLC NAND providing a sequential read and write of 560MB/S and 535MB/s. The endurance writes for the Ironwolf 110 is rated up to 7,000 TB. This storage variant gives me 223GB usable space.
Closer Look
The Ironwolf SSD’s casing is metal and has 7nm z-axis height. Nothing new apart from the way its plate is sealed. But when you do open it, you’ll notice something you’ll not see every day.
Seagate uses a generous amount of thermal paste for its main controllers. I have not seen anyone use thermal paste before. This is the first. While the heat output from SATA SSDs wouldn’t be as high as first-gen NVMe PCIe 4.0 controllers or a CPU/GPU, traditionally SSDs use thermal pads. I did ask Seagate about for choosing thermal paste over the pads, the response was not very insightful
“While Seagate cannot provide specific details on drive development, we do evaluate many individual technologies for our products. We strive for improvements for each generation and our goal is to produce the best quality product in the industry.”
While some would question the lifespan of a thermal paste over a thermal pad, the heat output of an SSD controller is not as much as a desktop CPU. I feel this is more important to emphasize now due to its application on the Ironwolf 110. These are made for NAS which are stacked very close to each other. Its extremely even in a stacked environment this would be a problem as its operational temperatures are up to 70 degrees Celsius. The following is the testing
Internal Overview
This drive uses the 8x Toshiba TH558TFG9V23BA4C 64-layer TLC BiCS3 NAND chips. These have two DRAM DDR3 chips from Micron. The higher capacity SSDs have more DRAM chips. As you can guess from the PCB, the higher capacity drives would have its NAND and DRAM chips behind the PCB. There is an additional thermal paste on the controller’s soldering points.
Seagate is using its in-house controller labelled ‘ST1NB8500BA‘ which resembles a desktop chipset. (having the IHS above the substrate).
