WD Following Seagate Into 4TB 3.5-Inch HDD for NAS ($229) – Comment

By Corentin Béchade, redactor, StorageNewsletter.com

Western Digital Corporation‘s RED line, its 6Gb SATA HDDs dedicated for NAS, has been updated to include new capacities.

The RED series is tailored for NAS from 1 to 5 bays thanks to optimization concerning lower temperature, energy efficiency, and error detection.

In total WD introduced 3 new disks for NAS systems:

• WD40ERFX – 3.5 inches, 4TB, 6Gb SATA, up to 150Mb/s transfer rate and 64MB of cache

• WD10JFCX – 2.5 inches, 1TB, 6Gb SATA, up to 144Mb/s transfer rate and 14MB of cache

• WD7500BFCX – Same specs as the other 2.5-inch unit above but with 750GB

In 3.5-inch form-form factor, WD launched its RED line at 1TB and 3TB approximately a year ago.
On its side, Seagate presented its 4TB device dedicated to NAS last June.

The new line embarks the NASware 2.0 technology that helps diagnostic HDD issues. It’s one of the few differentiating factor against the Green HDD lines designed for desktop computers which is still number two when it comes to choosing HDDs for NAS. The two products are build on the same basis with minor improvement for durability in the RED line. There is no doubt that a 4TB Green is going to come out soon.

The 2.5-inch HDDs on the other hand are original designs for the company. There is not a lot of 2.5-inch NAS bay on the market but there was already announcements from companies including Synology, Elma, Addonics, Thecus, Buffalo, but the market is going to explode. They improve power consumption and noise compared to 3.5-inch line.

The three new WD products are available and backed by a three-year warranty.


MSRP prices:

• 750GB 2.5-inch is at $79,

• 1TB 2.5-inch is at $99, and

• 4TB 3.5-inch is at $229.