Western Digital 3.5" 5 & 6 TB Red, 2 & 4 TB Red Pro HDDs released

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John2000

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Finally the Western Digital 5 and 6 TB Red hard drives have been released! They also released WD 2, 3 & 4 TB Red Pro drives.

See:

http://www.storagereview.com/wd_red_pro_and_expanded_capacities_of_wd_red_hdds_released
http://anandtech.com/show/8263/6-tb-nas-drives-wd-red-seagate-ec-hgst-he
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6535/western-digital-red-6tb-nas-consumer-hdd-review/index.html


WD Red 5 & 6 TB Features:
WD Red is designed for SOHO and Consumer NAS systems that require compatible and efficient storage
3.5 Inch, 1.2TB; 5-platter design (6TB)
Support 1-8 bay NAS systems with NASWare 3.0
Capacities offered: 5TB, 6TB
64MB buffer, 6Gb/sec, Intellipower
Low acoustics, low power
Advanced format technology
3-year limited warranty

WD Red Pro 2, 3 & 4 TB Features:
WD Red Pro is designed for medium to large-scale business NAS storage systems that require robust and highly reliable storage
3.5 Inch, 800GB; 5-platter design (4TB)
Supports up to 16 bay NAS systems with NASWare 3.0
Capacities offered: 2TB – 4TB capacities
64MB buffer, 6Gb/s, 7200 rpm
Supports up to 16 bay NAS systems
Extended thermal cycle burn-in testing
Hardware-based vibration compensation
Advanced format technology
5-year limited warranty

The following are the MSRPs:

WD Red 5TB (model #: WD50EFRX) $249.00
WD Red 6TB (model #: WD60EFRX) $299.00
WD Red Pro 2TB (model #: WD2001FFSX) $159.00
WD Red Pro 3TB (model #: WD3001FFSX) $199.00
WD Red Pro 4TB (model #: WD4001FFSX) $259.00
 
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Those are some hefty MSRP's for the Pro models, I wonder if it will be worth it :eek:
 
RyC said:
Those are some hefty MSRP's for the Pro models, I wonder if it will be worth it :eek:
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I pay more for enterprise drives. Although not sure exactly where these fit in between WDCs NAS drives and their enterprise drives.
 
Yeah, trying to figure out the value of the red pro vs the Re models. If the price difference is only 40 bucks (259 vs 299 for the 4tb), I'm going Re every time, because the URR improvement from 10^14 to 10^16 alone is worth that, not sure if there are any other significant differences.

edit: the Re isn't 10^15, it's 10^16
 
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That's more along the lines of what I meant, is it worth it to just spring for the RE models? We'll see when these get benchmarked!
 
Why is this new "Red Pro" edition needed? If I want a drive that's better than the Red, I'll buy the RE.
 
Don't know, WD probably thinks there is some tiny market segment there. I don't see it, red is good because it's cheap and reasonably reliable in an array, although it doesn't have the best data durability by spec. A slightly faster red with the same poor URE rate, that is only marginally less $$ than the much more enterprise level Re models with a 2 order of magnitude URE improvement, is of zero interest to me anyway.
 
dave99 said:
Yeah, trying to figure out the value of the red pro vs the Re models. If the price difference is only 40 bucks (259 vs 299 for the 4tb), I'm going Re every time, because the URR improvement from 10^14 to 10^16 alone is worth that, not sure if there are any other significant differences.

edit: the Re isn't 10^15, it's 10^16
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Nah, the Re is 10^15, but WD quotes it as "<10 in 10^16", which is just a fancy way of saying <1 in 10^15. But they're hoping people just glance at the specs and don't notice this little trick.

They do this with all their higher end drives. In fact, they quote the Red Pro at <10 in 10^15 and the Red at <1 in 10^14, which is identical. Pretty shitty move if you ask me.
 
JBark said:
Nah, the Re is 10^15, but WD quotes it as "<10 in 10^16", which is just a fancy way of saying <1 in 10^15. But they're hoping people just glance at the specs and don't notice this little trick.

They do this with all their higher end drives. In fact, they quote the Red Pro at <10 in 10^15 and the Red at <1 in 10^14, which is identical. Pretty shitty move if you ask me.
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noticed this a while back too, pretty shady on their part
 
That is pretty shady, I guess I should have zoomed in closer on the datasheet.
 
FM 3370 said:
Nice, on the 6TB drives. I wonder why they bothered with releasing 5TB drives.
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Generally, another price point to service. They can also take an assembled 6TB with a failed platter side/head and disable that particular surface (and whatever other logic changes they need to make) to make it a 5TB drive (Generally these drives are put into 1 year warranty external consumer drives where there aren't specific speed/platter statements made about the internal mechanisms and also for RMA replacements).
 
Damn I'd love to bite on the 6TBs, I'm glad to see them released, the $/TB isn't really that awful either when you think about how much physical space and power you're saving.

The problem for me though is imho to have a decently redundant set you really need 4 drives (at least 2 parity ie raid6/raidz2, rebuilt time on 6TB can't be quick)... and I'm not about to drop $1200 for 12TB of storage, when 8 2TB drives (raid6) can still do it for less money (yes more power/physical space and everything else of course, but those were bought a while ago). I could just do 2 in raid 1, but thats a lot of money for 6TB usable. Being realistic my next array will probably be on 4TB drives, here's hoping they continue to fall in price.
 
Any review mentioning the noise level on the 5 & 6 TB Red yet? Since it's 5 platter, I'd like to know.
 
John2000 said:
Any review mentioning the noise level on the 5 & 6 TB Red yet? Since it's 5 platter, I'd like to know.
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Same. Heat and noise are my big deals for NAS drives. I don't want to pick up a dozen 5TB disks only to discover they're going to make my NAS sound like a vacuum cleaner!
 
Interesting.
WD just released a SE 1TB running a 1TB platter so enterprise might not jump to 1.25 due to density and tracking just yet.
Theoretically we could see a 5TB SE/RE but 6 probably not.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Same. Heat and noise are my big deals for NAS drives. I don't want to pick up a dozen 5TB disks only to discover they're going to make my NAS sound like a vacuum cleaner!
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Isn't the whole point of a NAS to be able to put it anywhere on the network and not by your workspace so it can be as noisy and obnoxious as it needs to be (ie a network closet, the basement, or otherwise out of sight)?
 
tazeat said:
Isn't the whole point of a NAS to be able to put it anywhere on the network and not by your workspace so it can be as noisy and obnoxious as it needs to be (ie a network closet, the basement, or otherwise out of sight)?
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Married man in a small house. My "network" fits under the desk in the office. So if I want to watch something in the living room, noise doesn't matter. If my wife wants to watch something in the living room while I'm working in the office, it matters a great deal.
 
I was actually in the process of making hardware purchases for my NAS on Monday, ordered some 4 TB Reds, then saw the 6 TB announcement the next morning. So I cancelled the 4 TB and now have 4x 6 TB Reds on the way from Amazon. I won't have them until next week, but I'll do a build log eventually.
 
Booyaah said:
I was actually in the process of making hardware purchases for my NAS on Monday, ordered some 4 TB Reds, then saw the 6 TB announcement the next morning. So I cancelled the 4 TB and now have 4x 6 TB Reds on the way from Amazon. I won't have them until next week, but I'll do a build log eventually.
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Great! Please share your experiences on the forum once you get them.
 
It seems WD tries to sell more 7200rpm drives by using the good repution of the Red drives.
I don't see what the significant difference to the Se drives is.
From what I see they will just kill off the Se brand again unless the Red Pro is significantly more expensive, as the performance of the Red Pro is a bit better.
 
TGK said:
Red pro looks like rebranded black? Any differences?
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That's a very good question. The Blacks are basically consumer versions of the standard 7200 RPM RE drives, and I can't see the Red Pro having significantly different performance in terms of data access patterns, since it's aimed at the NAS market.

The only thing I can think of is that the high capacity (i.e. 4TB) Black drives didn't actually sell very well, so perhaps they were indeed rebranded as being intended for NAS systems.
 
Booyaah said:
I was actually in the process of making hardware purchases for my NAS on Monday, ordered some 4 TB Reds, then saw the 6 TB announcement the next morning. So I cancelled the 4 TB and now have 4x 6 TB Reds on the way from Amazon. I won't have them until next week, but I'll do a build log eventually.
Click to expand...

I'm just wondering if you've received the Western Digital 6 TB Red HDDs you ordered from Amazon yet? In that case, if you could share some first impressions that would be great!
 
Anybody that's got one of the WD 6 TB Red drives yet and case to share some experiences and opinions?
 
Review of the WD 6 TB Red by Silent PC Review now published:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/WD_Red_6TB_1TB

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1404-page5.html

"There's very little to dislike about the WD Red 6TB. It generated excellent results in most of our performance tests, especially compared to other sub-7200 RPM models. It's a fairly fast drive, both as a bulk storage repository and as an O/S drive. Its energy efficiency is exceptional; it uses about the same amount of power as some 4TB models. As for acoustics, idle noise is superb, but seeks are louder than we're used to seeing from the Red line, though this is easily forgivable when you take its capacity into consideration. "

Impressive that energy consumption and idle noise is more or less the same as for the 4 TB Red!
 
John2000 said:
Review of the WD 6 TB Red by Silent PC Review now published:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/WD_Red_6TB_1TB

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1404-page5.html

"...but seeks are louder than we're used to seeing from the Red line..."
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Having tried 2 drives from different batches, I'm disappointed with the seek noise of the 6TB Reds, it is far too loud for me. Perhaps I have been spoilt by the very quiet 3TB Reds which I was trying to replace.

Has anyone compared the seek noise of the 4TB and 5TB with the 6TB? Since the 5TB has the same number of platters as the 6TB, I suppose it is unlikely to be quieter? A shame WD don't support AAM any more.
 
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