Western Digital Red 4TB HDD

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If you need more storage for your movies, music and data files, check out this review of Western Digital's Red 4TB HDD at Techware Labs today.

With the growing popularity of home and small office NAS devices, demand has been growing for a new kind of drive: one that can stand being run all day, every day, but won't break the bank with excessive power draw. Western Digital has developed a new line to fill that role, and today we'll be taking a look at their latest and greatest, the Red 4TB.
 
Sounds promising. Anyone know when these will be out?
If anything, they should put price pressure on the 3TB's.

Incidentally, it's a shame the WD Red have been getting a bunch of poor reviews (Newegg, etc.) caused by poor quality control with DOA drives being common. Not sure if I should let that put me off or not.
 
Incidentally, it's a shame the WD Red have been getting a bunch of poor reviews (Newegg, etc.) caused by poor quality control with DOA drives being common. Not sure if I should let that put me off or not.
This is weird since the Red drives are not that different from the others, it's mostly firmware tweaks.
 
Actually, I do sometimes wonder (pure speculation on my part) if there is a post-Thai-flood effect (e.g. due to hasty factory reconstruction efforts). But I have 3 WD Reds in use and they've been as good as any other drive for me. If people want to complain that's fine with me- hopefully it'll lead to lower prices. :)
 
I am not sure that there is much value in newegg reviews to gauge reliability. I mean I would expect that it would be more likely for users to complain when their drive arrived DOA than to write a positive review after having the drive for a year. Also remember that it would take 10s of thousands of drives to make a sample large enough to say anything scientific about reliability.
 
I run 4 of the 3TB flavor in my Synology 1512+ and so far they delivered the goods. NAS has been up for over 2 months and I still have not seen any errors.
Consistent 75~120MB/sec transfers up and down which is perfect for me.

Really quiet and cool drives, but Im still keeping my fingers crossed that they dont fail.
 
I've had good and bad experiences with these drives. I am running 4x 2TB drives in a OI/Napp-it NAS that is working great. Recently built another using 3TB Reds and the same HBA and was having all kinds of issues with them not being detected and causing the LSI HBA to lock up and not detect drives.
 
Well the "just below" capacity drives are often the best in GB/€. However we're in a particular situation caused by the floods, so 3TB drives are already in this situation even if 4TB drives are still rare, mainly because 2TB drives are expensive. Still the 4TBs won't hurt, and I'm eager to buy some...when the 5TBs are out !
 
Well the "just below" capacity drives are often the best in GB/€. However we're in a particular situation caused by the floods, so 3TB drives are already in this situation even if 4TB drives are still rare, mainly because 2TB drives are expensive. Still the 4TBs won't hurt, and I'm eager to buy some...when the 5TBs are out !

2TB are "expensive" because more people are buying them than 3TB+.

A handful of enthusiasts on a forum are but a microcosm of worldwide volume shipments, and for every 3TB or 4TB someone installs into a home server there's a Costco pallet of 2TB externals that just cleared out.

The flood is long over and basic supply/demand/volume is in effect as it always has been. The only lingering effect of the flood is a reboot to margins - and all three vendors are being careful not to race on another to the bottom again.
 
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I feel like there's probably some form of collusion going on in the HD market, similar to what happened with LCDs a few years back. It doesn't help that most companies making these drives have been brought under the umbrella of two major drive makers, so there's little competitive pressure to drive prices down again.
 
Looking forward to the 4 and 5TB drives... drastically drops the # of drives I'll need when upgrading from my 1TB drives :eek: 10x5TB... oh I can't wait :D
 
Incidentally, it's a shame the WD Red have been getting a bunch of poor reviews (Newegg, etc.) caused by poor quality control with DOA drives being common. Not sure if I should let that put me off or not.

Well as far as NewEgg is concerned, I stopped buying hard drives from them because of extremely poor packaging ... from what I understand they have not changed that practice and continue to poorly protect drives during shipping. So I tend to take NewEgg's drive reviews as more of a reflection of poor QA practices in NewEgg's shipping department rather than WD's QA practices.
 
Well as far as NewEgg is concerned, I stopped buying hard drives from them because of extremely poor packaging ... from what I understand they have not changed that practice and continue to poorly protect drives during shipping. So I tend to take NewEgg's drive reviews as more of a reflection of poor QA practices in NewEgg's shipping department rather than WD's QA practices.

Amazon too.

I`m not sure when tossing a bunch of air pockets in a box, and then the item was ever considered proper packaging... most items from amazon fragile or not come like this... gotta also love when Amazon ships comptuer parts with subscribe and save food items that weigh a lot (canned goods). :eek:

At least with amazon it takes a few minutes to get return info, and send it back... never had any hassle with amazon returns!
 
Quote:
With the growing popularity of home and small office NAS devices, demand has been growing for a new kind of drive: one that can stand being run all day, every day, but won't break the bank with excessive power draw. Western Digital has developed a new line to fill that role, and today we'll be taking a look at their latest and greatest, the Red 4TB.

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"Breaking the bank with excessive power draw." Worse case is about $6/year for power. The $25/SATA port seems to be much more important to me and even that is not an economic concern.

When the 4TB drives cost less per byte than 2TB drives, I will purchase them for keeping videos on and use the old video drives for backups of important data.

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Newegg packs drives well. They come in a shock absorbing plastic structure in a small box inside of bubble wrap.
 
I would assume these use 1TB platters due to the emphasis on temperature/power/noise, but does anyone know for sure?
 
Amazon too.

I`m not sure when tossing a bunch of air pockets in a box, and then the item was ever considered proper packaging... most items from amazon fragile or not come like this... gotta also love when Amazon ships comptuer parts with subscribe and save food items that weigh a lot (canned goods). :eek:

At least with amazon it takes a few minutes to get return info, and send it back... never had any hassle with amazon returns!

When I compare the reviews of the 2TB drive on both Amazon and NewEgg, NewEgg's reviews seem to be more critical. 4.5% on Amazon gave the drive 1-star (I presume if you are rating a drive 3+ stars its a good drive, big assumption I know) ... on NewEgg 16% gave it 1-star and another 5% gave it a 2-star rating. Might be a different story with 1TB or 3TB drives though.

That said, with any new line or new technology I try to hold off on buying it. Let everyone else find out if the product is crap or not.
 
I feel like there's probably some form of collusion going on in the HD market, similar to what happened with LCDs a few years back. It doesn't help that most companies making these drives have been brought under the umbrella of two major drive makers, so there's little competitive pressure to drive prices down again.

That's exactly what's happening, but its an unspoken kind of soft-collusion so its hard to prove.
 
Well as far as NewEgg is concerned, I stopped buying hard drives from them because of extremely poor packaging ... from what I understand they have not changed that practice and continue to poorly protect drives during shipping. So I tend to take NewEgg's drive reviews as more of a reflection of poor QA practices in NewEgg's shipping department rather than WD's QA practices.

It depends on how many you buy. If you buy like 5 or more at a time like I do they come on sleds that protect the top and bottom and the sides.
 
Actually, I do sometimes wonder (pure speculation on my part) if there is a post-Thai-flood effect (e.g. due to hasty factory reconstruction efforts). But I have 3 WD Reds in use and they've been as good as any other drive for me. If people want to complain that's fine with me- hopefully it'll lead to lower prices. :)

I have the same thought. Looking at picking up a 2TB green and the last pages of review are terrible. Lots of DOA or dying very quickly.
 
I have8 wd reds 2TB and they are flawless been running 24/7 for 3 weeks now. Got them from Amazon. Maybe newegg just beats the shit out of the drives in the warehouse or something.,
 
Is it just me or did no one notice the picture of the drive they tested was a 2.0 TB drive? One would think they would have a picture of the actual drive they tested.
 
2TB are "expensive" because more people are buying them than 3TB+.

3TB are the best value now, go for $129. A portable 1TB-$99; thus $300-3TB. I'd put a portable in the safe deposit box, and run away with the 3TB in case of fire.

check B and H for prices.
or go to:

j and r

western-digital/pe/WD_BAAU0030HBK/
 
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Wow, 4TB already so soon.

I'll be waiting for the green version.
 
I have 30+ of the 3 TB version now. A few DOA, but no more than average. The rest have been working well so far.
 
I don't really understand the low access times from the review (~13 ms). The 2TB and 3TB ones I've ever seen had HDTune figures at around 20 ms.
 
I really think that this is a review of a Western Digital RE4 4000GB, SATA 6Gb/s (WD4000FYYZ) and not a RED which are EFRX.
Besides I have 15 3tb REDs and all are working very fast, dead silent, cool, the most energy efficient and without a single error (so far). Only time will tell how about the reliability but for now, they are the best HDDs I ever had.
 
Hilarious. I was looking right at "FYYZ" in the pics knowing full that it should be EFRX, but it still didn't set off any alarms. I guess I never thought anyone could publish a review for one thing and have it actually be for something else.
 
Yee gods that's sloppy. Not to mention deceptive. Techwarelabs is yet another review site to cross off the list.

For sure, the only WD 4TB drives currently available (or announced) are the enterprise RE (WD4000FYYZ) and the less expensive Black (WD4001FAEX) (both 7200 rpm; the Reds are 5xxx rpm).
 
First of: don't use these WD RED's or RE's with a desktop controller or a NAS or raid controller that dose not have support for TLER

These RED's (and the RE's) are mend for dedicated NAS systems or professional raid controllers, using them on a desktop increases the likelihood of HDD errors, as they depend on the controller as part of there error correction.

"Yeah but i have 4 reds in my PC and have no problems at all"​

Yeah, so what, my grandma smoked a carton of cigarettes a week, and died last year of a brain stroke, age 92, dose not mean that she was with a higher risk of early dead caused by smoking, same go's for data corruption with these RED's and RE's, if they are not used with the correct controller!

Incidentally, it's a shame the WD Red have been getting a bunch of poor reviews (Newegg, etc.) caused by poor quality control with DOA drives being common. Not sure if I should let that put me off or not.
That properly is mainly because of the poor packaging Newegg dose, what i am reading on the net.

Taping a bunch of drive together, and the bubble rap them, specially RED's that are being sold in bigger batches have properly a bigger problem with it.

Ware Newegg had almost only complains of DOE drives, Amazon had just one DOE in the remarks of the drive.
 
caused by smoking, same go's for data corruption with these RED's and RE's, if they are not used with the correct controller!
I've seen threads debating the relevance of leaving TLER limiting (which is 7 seconds) enabled or not in a desktop environment; opinions differ, but it's moot since it can be adjusted or disabled with smartctl (it doesn't survive power-cycling, but it's very easy to schedule a startup task to do it).
 
but it's moot since it can be adjusted or disabled with smartctl (it doesn't survive power-cycling, but it's very easy to schedule a startup task to do it).
No its not a moot point, as +95% of buyers don't even ever heard of TLER, second how many people actually know how to schedule a startup task.

Actually you can change the time out to the standard 30sec, with the WD HDD/firmware editor/tool, still i would not recommend these drive for general usage, as most people will not even know how to use the tool!
 
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