Western Digital has announced a new line of hard drives specifically for NASes.
The WD Red line of SATA drives are aimed at use in home and small biz systems with one to five drive bays. Compatibility-tested with top NAS box manufacturers and optimized for power and performance. The first members of the family are 3.5-inch drives 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB capacities.
Red drives have lower power consumption than WD’s Black and RE drives, but draw slightly more power than the company’s Green series. Like Green drives, Red products don’t carry an RPM spec, instead using its "Intellipower" system that debuted back in 2007.
Intellipower uses a combination of spin rate, caching algorithms and transfer rate to balance power consumption and performance. In simple terms, however, it means that the Red series drives spin at rates below 7200 RPM, typically somewhere in the 5,000 – 6,000 RPM range.
Also part of Red drives’ secret sauce is NASware, a combination of technologies and techniques aimed at improving reliability and compatibility, particularly in RAID applications.
WD said that stricter revision control and fewer drive variations (SKUs) are also in the mix, as are improved balance ("3D Active Balance Plus") and cooler operation. Red drives also include free premium 24×7 dedicated support and a three-year limited warranty.
WD Red hard drives are available now. MSRPs for the WD Red 1 TB drive (WD10EFRX) is $109, the 2 TB drive (WD20EFRX) is $139 and the 3 TB drive (WD30EFRX) is $189.