Western Digital Launched 10TB WD Red and Red Pro NAS 3.5-Inch Helium-Based HDDs

Western Digital Corp. announced the expansion of its WD Red and WD Red Pro NAS HDDs lineup with the introduction of 10TB capacity models optimized for use in personal, home and SMB NAS systems.

The company has shipped more than 15 million helium-based high capacity drives into multiple applications, including for NAS, to date and is continuing to support customers with higher capacities and reliability. The WD Red line of NAS HDDs allow customers to scale up or down to meet their changing NAS storage needs.

“In July 2012, we introduced the WD Red line to address the unique performance, compatibility and scalability challenges facing home and small business NAS customers,” said Brendan Collins, VP, devices business unit, Western Digital. “Five years and over 16 million WD Red family HDDs later, we continue to advance the platform, bringing our innovative HelioSeal platform and other advanced technologies that allow customers to meet their evolving private cloud needs.“

WD Red 10TB NAS HDD
Introduced in 2012, WD Red HDDs address the environment of NAS and the growing demand for affordable, reliable and compatible storage that reduces customer TCO.

Designed with the firm’s HelioSeal helium-technology, the WD Red 10TB HDD provides higher capacity and performance to meet the increasing storage needs of always-on, single-to-8-bay NAS systems.

The helium-based design enables a 25% capacity increase from the Red 8TB NAS storage drive.

With support for up to 16 bays in tower- and rack-based systems, the Red Pro 10TB HDD delivers the same high performance, reliability and capacity to systems operating in up to 16-bay NAS.

WD Red/WD Red Pro 10TB features and specs:

HelioSeal: Bringing the company’s fourth generation, HelioSeal technology in 10TB capacity to the NAS market
3D Active Balance Plus, an enhanced balance control technology that improves overall drive performance and reliability
Integration with the firm’s My Cloud Pro Series NAS and My Cloud Expert Series NAS systems designed for the creative community to enable transfer of content between devices in any location, whether users are shooting remotely or editing at home
NASware 3.0, an enhanced version of company’s original NASware technology, designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime and to simplify the integration process
Optimized performance class – 5,400rpm class for SOHO environments, 7,200rpm class for up to 16-bay NAS systems
The WD Red and Red Pro 10TB drives are finalizing compatibility testing with a number of NAS system providers. The company provides a compatibility list of Red-qualified products and manufacturers that is available on his website.

Availability:

The WD Red and WD Red Pro 10TB HDDs are available at select U.S. retailers and distributors.

The WD Red 10TB NAS HDDs feature a three-year limited warranty and a $494 MSRP (model #: WD100EFAX).
The WD Red Pro 10TB drives feature a five-year limited warranty and a $533 MSRP (model #: WD101KFBX).

“The WD Red and WD Red Pro 10TB HDDs are well-suited for addressing the growing storage needs of our home and SMB customer-base. High-definition videos and photos are driving up capacity demands as our customers want to store engaging content and multimedia so it can always be accessible. The WD Red line of HDDs provide the type of reliability, performance and capacity needed to power a private cloud, so home and SMB users can create a highly economical and secure archive,” said Shawn Shu, president, Asustor Inc.

“Over the past five years, Western Digital NAS HDDs have demonstrated reliability and high performance to make them well suited for 24/7, data-intense NAS operating environments. With the addition of 10TB capacity, the new helium-based WD Red and WD Red Pro NAS HDDs offer an ideal pairing with QNAP Turbo NAS products for use in a variety of SMB and enterprise NAS applications,” said Meiji Chang, GM, Qnap Systems, Inc.

“Synology is excited for the introduction of the helium-based 10TB WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs. Whether it’s sharing high-definition multimedia content around the house, backing up photos at the studio, or managing distributed file syncing and DR at the office, our users require dependable storage when creating their private cloud with Synology NAS. These drives will equip users with a wider range of reliable, high-performance HDD options to best fit their current and next-generation NAS system needs,” said Alex Wang, CEO, Synology America Corp.

“The WD Red 10TB drives bring a much-needed capacity increase for SOHO and SMB users managing their personal and private clouds. These drives, along with our Thecus NAS units, will provide high-powered, comprehensive solutions to the storage industry, and we are pleased to expand our work with Western Digital to provide high-performance, reliable, and cost-effective NAS solutions for our SOHO and SMB customers,” said Florence Shih, president, Thecus Technology Corp.