WD "Red" drives? At Newegg.

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236342

 

[hclarkjr]

http://www.techpowerup.com/168842/W...s-First-Hard-Drives-For-SOHO-NAS-Systems.html

The WD Red line features NASware technology, designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime and to simplify the integration process. This new product line addresses the unique environment of NAS and the growing demand for affordable, reliable and compatible storage that reduces customer total cost of ownership. WD Red hard drives also feature 3D Active Balance Plus, an enhanced balance control technology, which significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. In an exclusive for WD Red customers, WD is offering free premium 24x7 dedicated support and a three-year limited warranty.

 

[hclarkjr]

there is also a 2TB listed on newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236343
and 3TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236344

 

[Gigantopithecus]

1TB:
Green: $90, 5400rpm, 2 year warranty
Blue: $100, 7200rpm, 2 year warranty
Red: $110, "Intellipower*", 3 year warranty (* "fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM.")
Black: $120, 7200rpm, 5 year warranty
RE4: $150, 7200rpm, 5 year warranty

I'm glad Western Digital released these drives. Looks like they'll be a bit more reliable and likely work better with RAID arrays than the Green line at a slight cost premium. It'll be nice to have better storage drives than the Greens without dropping the extra $$$ for Blacks or RE4s.

 

[Binky]

Sounds like a green drive, maybe with reworked firmware to avoid all the head parking.

 

[jwilliams4200]

Judging from the speeds (145MB/s) I guess they have 1TB platters, which is nice if they are reliable. Unlike these WD Reds, Seagate's 1TB platter HDDs look terrible for reliability since they are said to be not rated for 24/7 operation.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I like the 3-year warranty, and if these drives have TLER, then they will be a bargain compared to the RE4 drives.

 

[Subyman]

The 1TB RE4 is only 10 dollars more (on new egg). I'd say it is well worth it to pay the extra for an enterprise quality HDD. As for the 2TB edition, the red starts to look like an option.

 

[Wuzup101]

Very interesting. I'll be interested in 5-6 3TB or 4TB drives in a few months for a Raid 5 home server project. I'm hoping the 3TB prices will come down a bit by then in general. These look like a good balance; however, I'll still wait to see 3TB for ~130-150 or so.

 

[ronbo613]

I just bought three RE4 drives for my workstation but am interested in the 2-3G longer warranty drives for NAS and external storage. Any WD Black or enterprise drive over 1TB is cost prohibitive. Reds might be the ticket.

 

[capeconsultant]

I am very interested in these drives. Seems like a well thought out variation. Engineered for reliability and 24/7 NAS use. Nice one WD!

 

[Binky]

I am very interested in these drives. Seems like a well thought out variation. Engineered for reliability and 24/7 NAS use. Nice one WD!

Or...they slapped a red sticker on a green drive.

 

[Zxian]

Or...they slapped a red sticker on a green drive.

Or... they verified proper functionality in NAS devices - something that green drives are generally terrible for.

If I can get TLER on a drive with 24/7 support for three years, I'm buying eight of the 3TB models for my server.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Or...they slapped a red sticker on a green drive.

If it sells it sells. Profit.

 

[dma0991]

Or...they slapped a red sticker on a green drive.

Anything that is slapped on with a red sticker or any variant of methods that involves the color red will be generally perceived as better. :twisted:

 

[PhoenixEnigma]

Anything that is slapped on with a red sticker or any variant of methods that involves the color red will be generally perceived as better. :twisted:

I don't know about that, there's no way I'd ever buy Redshirt Drives.

That said, TLER at a decent price? Sign me up. It sounds like WD clued in that hard drives are increasingly being used for mass storage and not as OS/program drives, and this is a pretty good way to address that - better than Green drives for people with large media collections.

 

[Engineer]

Review at Storagereview.com:

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review_wd30efrx

Seems quite a bit faster in sequential transfers than other "GREEN" drives out there from the results and about the same (maybe just a little lower) on random transfers. Better on power consumption.

Looks like a winner for a backup or RAID solution. Now if we can get prices to drop!

 

[beginner99]

TLER is IMHO almost irrelevant for consumer level NAS. Prebuilt NAS and freenas use software raid which doesn't care about tler (or similar features).

Then the speed seem irrelevant too as on the NAS you will be limited by the network. Only when you do back-ups you might profit from the better speed assuming fast usb3 drive.

Also 1 Tb green drive makes no sense anyway (get the blue ones) as the 2 TB ones are like only $ 20 more (and cheaper than 1 Tb blacks). Head parking can be turned off in green drives.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Tell me why again, MS is cancelling WHS because supposedly the market is too small, but yet that linked article in this thread said that the market for NAS was supposed to grow 86% over the next few years, and WD believes this enough to even release a new HD model line.

 

[KingFatty]

Isn't NAS (i.e., less than a full-blown computer) what's taking over for dedicated computers that would be running WHS? If you buy a NAS, why would you need WHS?

 

[sygyzy]

I wonder if these work with the (original) Windows Home Server (WHS)?

 

[ShintaiDK]

I wonder if these work with the (original) Windows Home Server (WHS)?

Why wouldnt they?

All HDs are basicly the same to the OS. Green, Blue, Black or Red.

 

[Binky]

WHS V1 doesn't work properly with advanced format drives. The WD drives work fine when they are jumpered. I'd assume these red drives have the same jumper system.

 

[lsv]

I think they're just green drives with a fancy firmware. I'll stick to green drives and a script that stops them head parking.

 

[Mark R]

I like the 3-year warranty, and if these drives have TLER, then they will be a bargain compared to the RE4 drives.

Word so far is that the red drives do have TLER, and it is switched on out-of-the-box.

Essentially, the Red drives feature all the RAID enhancements of the RE4 drives (notably TLER and gyroscopic vibration compensation), but they have the low spin-speed and therefore reduced power consumption and noise of the green drives.

So, it appears that the WD have targetted the NAS niche, by ensuring optimal RAID compatibility, but using the lower-cost, lower-performing, slower spin speed that had traditionally been used for bottom-end storage (green drives).