IronWolf Pro 125 Review

IronWolf 125 Final Score: 91 out 100

The Seagate IronWolf 125 1TB solid state drive offers pretty much everything we look for when thinking about either making a high-performance SSD only NAS storage array, or when wanting to boost a NAS appliance’s overall performance. Its combination of a good controller, good firmware, excellent NAND and a very… very good asking price is a winning one. It really is tailor-made for the entry level NAS marketplace and we can see a lot of QNAP/Synology/ASTOR/etc. NAS appliances rocking at least one of these in the future.
The same is actually true of the typical home user wanting to add some SATA SSD storage to their existing computer system. Here the custom firmware with DuraWrite is fan-freakin-tastic. You will get levels of performance consistency you will not find in typical SATA SSDs and will be as close to MLC drives as you will find in the TLC+SATA arena. So much so it really is the SSD equivalent of Seagate’s IronWolf Hard disk drives. That is to say an excellent value with a ton of performance and a ton of features… some of which you may not care about. Put simply, it is an excellent update to its predecessor the IronWolf 110 and worthy of the home users time, money, and respect.

Turning attention to, our favorite, the IronWolf 125 Pro we are reminded of a quote from a movie that went “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary… is that little bit extra.” We mean this in a non-ironic, non-sarcastic way; rather, we are completely serious. Silicon Motion in conjunction with Seagate’s firmware tweaking team have taken a good controller architecture… and given it that little ‘extra’. That little extra that makes all the difference and turns a good NAS solid state drive into an extraordinary one.

While yes, the paper specifications of the 125 Pro line are less than that of standard 125, the fact is that paper specifications can sometimes share only a passing resemblance with reality. It really will come down to what you prioritize and how hard you hit your NAS with I/O requests. For those who prioritize data security over sheer speed the onboard super-capacitors, in conjunction with SMI data saving firmware, will give you a peace of mind you are unlikely to find anywhere else this side of enterprise grade drives.

The extra over-provisioning will also net extraordinary performance consistency when the NAS is used for extended periods of time… and will last extraordinarily longer than the typical SATA SSD – even a good one meant for NAS duties like the standard IronWolf 125 series. These are all the ‘little’ extra things that Seagate has baked into their IronWolf Pro 125 model and what makes it our new favorite SATA SSD for NAS caching duties.

The other side of the coin is not everyone can justify the extra cost of the Pro variant…as these extra features may not be used often enough to matter. Most Network Attached Storage devices in home user environment are not going to be hammered enough to see the differences in potential performance made reality. For that matter, few SMB file servers are ever going to get hit this drive hard enough to make a noticeable difference over the less expensive standard 125 model… as while the consistency it offers is scary stable, it is not like the regular IronWolf 125 series is a slacker either.

As such, the IronWolf 125 Pro may be overkill for your needs and the noticeably lower asking price of the standard model may make it a better overall value. Of course, peace of mind is priceless, so if you can afford one (or more) of these bad boys the IronWolf Pro 960GB model should be on your short, short list. We foresee it becoming a cult classic in experienced homebrew circles. Just as we foresee the standard doing the same for the NAS Appliance and PC storage market. Rest assured, no matter which model you choose you can be confident that they will not be the bottleneck in your NAS device and certainly are worth their asking price… and then some.