Western Digital has announced WD Red, a new range of hard disks aimed squarely at the burgeoning network-attached storage (NAS) market. Read Storage reviews.
WD Red 3TB
In particular, the WD Red addresses the growing need for more home and SOHO storage, applications that see the need for two- to four-bay NAS devices.
Until now, WD was offering the Caviar Blue for standard desktop PCs, Caviar Black for performance systems, and Caviar Green as a lower power consumption drive for desktop and network storage applications.
WD Range Renamed
These drives will now be renamed to simply Blue, Black and Green respectively.
The WD Red is more of a blend of the Caviar Green drive and the company’s enterprise storage such as the WD RE4.
The Red has been designed and tested for compatibility in a range of popular NAS solutions from vendors such as QNAP, Synology and Thecus. It has 24x7 availablity and lists mean time before failure (MTBF) of 1,000,000 hours.
Read NAS drive reviews in the Storage section
Like the Caviar Green, it uses lower (undisclosed) spindle speed technology that WD calls Intellipower. WD recommends up to five WD Red disks to be used in one NAS enclosure.
NASware technology aims to improve reliability and performance and the WD Red drives also include 3D Active Balance Plus, to reduce frame vibration and thereby reduce chances of disks being knocked out of a RAID setup.
The storage specialist is offering free dedicated 24x7 support and a three-year limited warranty.
Available in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB capacities, the WD Red is expected to retail for £69.99, £89.99 and £129.99.
