Western Digital Red: NAS-Specific SATA 6Gb/s Drives, Reviewed

By Manuel Masiero, Achim Roos
published

Western Digital just launched its new Red family of mechanical hard drives, optimized specifically for home and small office/home office (SOHO) network-attached storage devices. The company sent its 2 and 3 TB models for us to benchmark and review.

Benchmark Results: Read/Write Access Time And I/O Performance

The Western Digital Red drives bring up the rear when it comes to access time measurements. They’ve clearly been optimized for quiet operation and avoiding load actuator movements at the cost of this metric, which would probably be more important on the desktop.

The Red series isn’t a good choice for high I/O NAS environments.

Manuel Masiero
64 Comments Comment from the forums
  • f-14
    the reviews say these drives aren't very good, they are prone to high failure rates similar to the 1TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache caviar black drives they make. i thought maybe it was just me, but the reviews say other wise.
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    10445415 said:
    the reviews say these drives aren't very good, they are prone to high failure rates similar to the 1TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache caviar black drives they make. i thought maybe it was just me, but the reviews say other wise.

    Where did you read that? I just finished reading Tom's review and found out that these are excellent in terms of power, temperature and price for SOHO NAS use. Not sure about the reliability just yet though since they are pretty new on the market.
    Reply
  • JeTJL
    Read some reviews with people experiencing their drives catching on fire.

    Such a shame though I would of wanted some for my new FreeNAS server. Till then I'll be using some 2.5 drives pulled from some laptops.
    Reply
  • enewmen
    I think this class of drives are needed. I hope to read more about these and some long-term tests.
    I personally only read good things about the Red drives - the low heat, low noise, low vibration, and low power consumption, low idle power consumption, and of course reliability are more important to me than maximum performance in its intended environment (even if some faster spinning drives have slightly more performance per watt).
    Now I can't wait to put these drives in a Synology DS413 when they are released.
    Reply
  • mocchan
    I definitely need to pick up a few of these drives, they're looking pretty sweet to be honest.
    Reply
  • epsiloneri
    Thanks for the review, these kind of articles are the reason I keep check in on Tom's now and then (I'm not interested in buyer's guides, hardware is what interests me). These kind of drives have really been missing from the market, the enterprise ones are just too expensive for home users.
    10445417 said:
    Read some reviews with people experiencing their drives catching on fire.
    Eh, can you provide a source for that spectacular claim, or are you just trolling?
    Reply
  • EDVINASM
    epsiloneriThanks for the review, these kind of articles are the reason I keep check in on Tom's now and then (I'm not interested in buyer's guides, hardware is what interests me). These kind of drives have really been missing from the market, the enterprise ones are just too expensive for home users. Eh, can you provide a source for that spectacular claim, or are you just trolling?
    I second that. Nothing on Google regarding WD Red issues or fire hazards. I have ordered 2 of these and I am going to enjoy them, never mind few trolls around - I have hater blocking glasses :)
    Reply
  • rantoc
    Caviar Green's in raid 5 or 6 depending on how much fault tolerance you need for a home nas - ftw!
    Reply
  • vipervoid1
    f-14the reviews say these drives aren't very good, they are prone to high failure rates similar to the 1TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache caviar black drives they make. i thought maybe it was just me, but the reviews say other wise.
    my Black 1TB 7200rpm 32MB cache
    Used for about 4 years long ~
    nvr gt any problem ~
    Reply
  • ZakTheEvil
    rantocCaviar Green's in raid 5 or 6 depending on how much fault tolerance you need for a home nas - ftw!
    Except that most RAID manufacturers specifically warn against using Caviar Green drives in RAID arrays due to IntelliPower technology causing problems with RAID due to their firmware not being optimized for RAID.
    Reply