NAS hard drives
A written warranty and recovery service, or more cache at a lower price?
Both are 4 TB, CMR, 5400 rpm and SATA 6 Gb/s, for NAS units of up to eight bays, and neither states a workload rating. The Seagate IronWolf states 64 MB of cache, 180 MB/s, 1 million hours MTBF and a three-year warranty with three years of Rescue data recovery. The WD Red Plus states 128 MB of cache, NASware firmware, and names a warranty without its length.
| Compared on | IronWolf 4 TB (ST4000VN006) | Red Plus 4 TB (WD40EFZZ), 5400 rpm |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | 4 TB | 4 TB |
| Recording method | CMR | CMR |
| Stated workload rating | Not published | Not published |
| Rotational speed | 5400 rpm | 5400 rpm |
| Cache size | 64 MB | 128 MB |
| Interface | SATA at 6 Gb/s | SATA at 6 Gb/s |
| Warranty length | Three years | Not published |
| Stated MTBF | 1 million hours | Not published |
| Stated idle power | Not published | Not published |
| Stated acoustic figure | Not published | Not published |
| On Amazon.com, October 26, 2026 | $260 | $195 |
A tick means one listing published something the other did not, or published a better figure. It does not mean the product is better, and the column is not a score out of anything: a maker who says less loses lines here without losing a comparison. The two verdicts below are where the page is settled.
Take the IronWolf for the written terms: three years and a recovery service. It cost $260.00 on Amazon.com on October 26, 2026.
Take the Red Plus to save money on a CMR drive with twice the cache: $194.99 on October 26, 2026, $65.01 less. Ask the seller for the warranty term.
Not over gigabit: 180 MB/s from the IronWolf already exceeds what a gigabit network carries, about 118 MB/s.
A little, for bursts of small writes. Over a network the difference between 64 and 128 MB rarely shows.
Either: both are 4 TB CMR drives at 5400 rpm, stated for enclosures of up to eight bays. Buy two of the same model so the drives in the array match, and keep a copy of the data somewhere other than the NAS, since a mirror protects against a failed drive and not against a deletion.
Yes: both are standard 3.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s drives. They are tuned for continuous NAS duty, but a desktop reads and writes to them like any other hard drive.
4 TB · CMR · 5400 rpm · 64 MB cache · 180 MB/s · 1 million hours MTBF · three-year warranty with data recovery · up to 8 bays
A four-terabyte, 5400 rpm CMR drive that publishes its cache, a transfer rate, an MTBF and a three-year warranty with data recovery — and no workload rating.
Best for: A two- or four-bay home NAS where a stated warranty and a data recovery service matter more than the lowest price per terabyte.
≈ $260
4 TB · CMR · 5400 rpm · 128 MB cache · SATA 6 Gb/s · up to 8 bays · no MTBF, no warranty term
A four-terabyte, 5400 rpm CMR drive with 128 MB of cache, the cheapest drive on this shelf at $194.99 on Amazon.com on October 26, 2026, whose bullets name a warranty without giving its length.
Best for: A two- or four-bay home NAS where the lowest price for a CMR drive matters most.
≈ $195
Every price named in a summary was read on the date that review carries. What a shop asks today is shown beside the product, and it moves.
