Western Digital on Tuesday introduced the new line of WD Red NAS hard drives that are specifically designed for home and small office NAS systems with one to five drive bays. These drives are now shipping in 3.5-inch 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB variants, and are compatibility-tested and power/performance optimized for solutions provided by top NAS box manufacturers.
"Until now, customers had to choose between using desktop or high-end server drives for their home or small office NAS systems – neither of which were both cost effective for consumer solutions and fully NAS compatible," said Melyssa Banda, senior director of product marketing for WD. "WD saw this challenge as a perfect opportunity to design a better solution so we developed WD Red drives, an optimized product for this rapidly growing segment."
The new WD Red line features NASware technology that's designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime and to simplify the integration process. The new line also features 3D Active Balance Plus, add an enhanced balance control technology, which significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. Even more, WD is offering free premium 24x7 dedicated support and a three-year limited warranty.
The WD Red branding also signifies that the new NAS-oriented drives fall within the company's new "Power of Choice" client hard drive labeling. The WD Red naturally stands for home and small office NAS solutions, joining WD Blue (solid performance and reliability for everyday computing), WD Green (cool, quiet, eco-friendly), and WD Black (maximum performance for power computing).
On the technical front, all three drives connect via a SATA 6 Gb/s interface, and feature an RPM maintained by IntelliPower which is defined as "a fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance." This likely means the platters spin at around 5400 RPM (that's just a guess).
WD Red hard drives are available now at select resellers and distributors costing $109 USD for the 1 TB model (WD10EFRX), $139 USD for the 2 TB model (WD20EFRX), and $189 USD for the 3 TB model (WD30EFRX). More information about WD Red hard drives including terms of the limited warranty may be found on the company website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810.
WD Red NAS HDD launch partners include WD's own branded products, QNAP Systems, Inc., Synology Inc., and Thecus Tech., Corp.