Western Digital has introduced its highest-capacity hard disk drive for network-attached storage (NAS) systems—the WD Red Pro 26TB—and several direct-attached storage (DAS) systems aimed at creative professionals. These DAS offer capacities of up to 208TB and employ one to eight hard drives.
Western Digital's WD Red Pro 26TB hard drive (WD260KFGX) is based on the company's latest 11-platter helium-sealed platform with a 7200 RPM spindle speed and the OptiNAND technology. The drive leverages Western Digital's 2nd Generation energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR 2) platform and uses conventional magnetic recording (CMR) for predictable performance in all workloads. Speaking of performance, the WD Red Pro 26TB can boast a 272 MB/s transfer rate.
The WD Red Pro is designed for high-performance and enterprise-grade NAS, so it is equipped to work in vibrating multi-user environments 24/7 and is rated for a 550TB workload per year. In particular, the hard drive comes equipped with rotation vibration sensors that foresee and automatically counteract turbulences caused by increased vibration and multi-axis shock sensors to detect shock events and proactively compensate them with the fly height technology.
The WD Red Pro 26TB has a five-year warranty and an MSRP of $569.99.
In addition to introducing a new NAS HDD, Western Digital expanded its DAS and NAS lineups. Interestingly, instead of using its WD Red Pro 26TB hard drives, the company uses its Ultrastar DC HD590 26TB HDDs, which rely on a similar platform.
Western Digital's most basic DAS is the G-Drive, which now offers a capacity of up to 26TB for $649.99. The unit has a 10 Gb/s USB Type-C interface and offers read speeds of up to 260 MB/s and write speeds of up to 270 MB/s. As the product is aimed at creative professionals, it comes in a stackable, anodized aluminum chassis with anchor points for secure attachment to DIT (digital imaging technician) production carts, mounting plates, or other gear.
For those who need something more advanced, Western Digital has G-Drive Project, which now offers up to 26TB of HDD storage, a SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE SSD Mag slot for an SSD installation, and two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports for connectivity. This one cost $999.99.
For those who need a lot of storage space on their desktop, Western Digital offers the G-RAID Project 2, with two 3.5-inch bays and a maximum capacity of 52TB, for $1,699.99.
Western Digital also expanded the G-RAID Shuttle 4, with four 3.5-inch bays and a maximum capacity of 104TB, for $4,499.99, and the G-RAID Shuttle 8, with eight 3.5-inch bays and a maximum capacity of 208TB, for $8,299.99. These devices support RAID modes for performance and redundancy and have two Thunderbolt 3 ports. They are set to the default RAID 5 with the higher-end devices delivering transfer speeds up to 1700 MB/s for reading and 1500 MB/s for writing.
