WD announces Red hard drives, designed for 24/7 NAS usage

[thelostswede]

To date most consumer specific hard disk drives have not been designed for 24/7-365 operation, but that looks set to change with Western Digital's new Red series of drives. The company has announced three new SKUs that specifically targets home and SOHO NAS systems.

The trick here is what WD refers to as its NASware technology which is presumably some improved error recovery control technology, most like WD's own TLER (time-limited error recovery). The drives come with a three year warranty, albeit this is for always on usage and WD even offers "free premium 24/7 dedicated support" for the new drives.

All three SKUs come with 64MB of cache and features WD's IntelliPower technology which means that they spin at a variable speed and as such WD gets away from telling us how fast the platters are actually spinning. IntelliPower was first introduced on the Green line of drives from WD.

As for pricing, the MSRP is US$109 for the 1TB SKU, US$139 for the 2TB SKU and US$189 for the 3TB SKU. This places them on a price premium of US$10, 14 and 29 compared to the Green line of drives, although you do get a year's extra warranty and 32MB of extra cache for that price premium. These drives would of course be just as suitable in a desktop PC, especially for those users that never really turn their PC off.

Source: Western Digital

 

[Ezra]

Awesome, was just comparing HDDs for a NAS unit!

 

[thelostswede]

They're already up on Newegg and it looks like the 2 and 3TB SKUs are already below the MSRP.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... ageSize=20

 

[andrec]

how would red be different than the green series?

you still need two raided ones, to keep your data safe on a NAS or wherever.

 

[thelostswede]

The main difference is that they're guaranteed to operate 24/7-365, something the other consumer WD drives are not. In other words, WD has the right to decline a warranty replacement on a WD Green that you've been using 24/7-365 if it fails. If you actually bothered reading the news post, you'd also have noticed that it features improved error correction that prevents the drive from grinding to a halt when it kicks in. Oh and you get longer warranty and dedicated support.

 

[powerpcg5]

The NASware technology (TLER) will be a good thing for RAID5/RAID6 arrays. Will prevent multiple drives from being dropped, causing you to lose your entire array.

Don't know about their marketing fluff about designed for 24x7 operation. I still have old 500GB drives on my server array still running fine after several years.

 

[thelostswede]

It's not marketing fluff, it's simply a matter of them guaranteeing 24/7 operation, which they don't do on their regular consumer drives. I.e. they can tell you to get lost if you use a consumer drive like that and it fails.

 

[andrec]

so you're not supposed to run usual drives 24 hours? damn, that's why they fell like leaves.
and we're not supposed to stress the caviar black with video editing 24h because it's not designed for that?

i really don't know if this is not just a way to legitimize telling you to get lost on warranty.

 

[thelostswede]

No, you're not, you're supposed to buy specific drives for that, or at least that's the way the drive makers are reasoning.

The warranty on most consumer hard drives is crap these days anyhow, at one point everyone was going up and five years wasn't unheard of, now you barely get a year on some models...

Oddly enough, WD doesn't seem to offer a professional line of drives for those that are looking for some serious work stuff, unless you go down the SAS route...

WD doesn't even provide an MTBF figure for its consumer drives any more, which should tell you something.

 

[axedye]

No, you're not, you're supposed to buy specific drives for that, or at least that's the way the drive makers are reasoning.

The warranty on most consumer hard drives is crap these days anyhow, at one point everyone was going up and five years wasn't unheard of, now you barely get a year on some models...

Oddly enough, WD doesn't seem to offer a professional line of drives for those that are looking for some serious work stuff, unless you go down the SAS route...

WD doesn't even provide an MTBF figure for its consumer drives any more, which should tell you something.

I plan to use a Samsung SSD for my boot drive. Should I use this red drive instead of the black because I do leave my system on 24/7 maybe 300 days a year.is it varied speeds like a green drive or what's the RPM?