Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive Review [WD30EFRX]

[onethreehill]

It's an interesting decision - WD is expanding their low-power 3.5" hard drive offerings with a second line at the same time Seagate exits the "green" market, claiming low-power drives aren't really all that beneficial or quite frankly, special. The Western Digital Red family of hard drives is designed for the 1 to 6 bay SOHO NAS space, which is about as specialized as it gets. WD has several features that they're touting as critical for the NAS user including; NASware specialized firmware, Intellipower low power spindle, robust NAS compatibility list, three year warranty and a dedicated WD Red 24x7 customer support line (1-855-55-WDRED if you need them).

http://www.storagereview.com/western...eview_wd30efrx

[STaRGaZeR]

Where the hell are those 4TB drives?

[masterg]

egg has them in stock 109/129/179 how do they compare to blue/black/RE?

[highoctane]

Should be nice if they are reliable & reliable in raid, I'll wait and see others results before deciding whether or not to use them. It's about to for me to start replace before fail on some drives but I'm not too interested in being the test mule on new drives.

[Russian]

WD sent me four 3TBs late last week, will have a review soon.

[paulbagz]

Where the hell are those 4TB drives?

Only ones I've ever seen were Hitachi Deathstars

-PB

[Russian]

Only ones I've ever seen were Hitachi Deathstars

-PB

You're right. Currently, the only 4TB drives shipping are the Hitachis, however, there is a 4TB Seagate drive which Seagate is using in their 4TB External drive... which they have yet to sell as an Internal drive.

[zanzabar]

egg has them in stock 109/129/179 how do they compare to blue/black/RE?

they are supposed to be like the samsung f4eg was pre seagate buy out. they should be top quality platters (black quality?) but with a 5400rpm motor. they have had something like this every time the green are on a higher density than the blue/black, then they go way down in quality when they bring the 7200rpm drives onto that density. if thees stay with high quality platters like how samsung (pre seagate) this should be golden when paired with an SSD for games/apps/OS.

[CrimInalA]

WD was indeed lacking in this segment , so looks like a smart move to me .
I would like to see more 4tb drives though .

[bamtan2]

this is probably wd green with TLER switched off and a different label. unless you have proof of something else.

[cx-ray]

WD also state greater reliability when exposed to vibration. The platters may contain more servo wedges with extra logic and firmware for compensation. This would bring them closer to enterprise level drives.

[Bobsama]

I noticed these on Newegg a couple days ago. I thought "Red" was a typo or mistranslation as they didn't appear on WD's site at the time. Anyways, I wonder how these'll fare in WHS systems. $130 for 2TB isn't bad, assuming these things are more reliable than their Green 2TB drives. They certainly have a longer warranty.

[BHD]

The new Red line of WD's HDDs should already be available with MSRP set at US $109 for the 1TB, US $139 for 2TB and US $189 for the 3TB drive model

[NEOAethyr]

I saw them on newegg this morning.
I'm not sure what to think about them, They might be something like the AV-GP models.

I agree with what bamtan2 said.
It's probably a drive with tler disabled and maybe the idle3 timer was disabled too.
If not then what the heck... .

I was looking at the 2.5 and 3tb drives.
Looking to upgrade from the 2 tb's I got, I run out of space to much.
I was thinking 4x 2.5 tb's for a total of 10tb's, "probably" enough to store everything I have on them... maybe lol.

If these red's end up being good, I may get up to 4 of 'em.

[cx-ray]

Got 5 x 3TB for a NAS two days ago. Took ~36h to parity check a RAID 5 volume. No errors found on any of the drives. Total effective size ends up being 10.73TB

They run very silent and cool compared to for instance Hitachi 7K3000 Ultrastars. A whole lot cheaper too and plenty fast for a NAS. Sound is comparable to the WD Green with the head retraction disabled (no constant ticking). From what it looks like there's no head retract, unless the drives go to sleep.

I have no complaints provided they prove themselves reliable. They're well suited for their advertised task.

[NEOAethyr]

Got 5 x 3TB for a NAS two days ago. Took ~36h to parity check a RAID 5 volume. No errors found on any of the drives. Total effective size ends up being 10.73TB

They run very silent and cool compared to for instance Hitachi 7K3000 Ultrastars. A whole lot cheaper too and plenty fast for a NAS. Sound is comparable to the WD Green with the head retraction disabled (no constant ticking). From what it looks like there's no head retract, unless the drives go to sleep.

I have no complaints provided they prove themselves reliable. They're well suited for their advertised task.

So far so good, a good thing is that it isn't parking it's head every few secs.

[cx-ray]

So far so good, a good thing is that it isn't parking it's head every few secs.

Uptime 33 days and 18:26h. Performed a full array scrape of the Red drives yesterday. All is still good without any media errors.

[Darxide]

Didn't I read that these spin at 5900 instead of the greens 5400?
Anyway WD's timing is perfect as I've just finished my WHS build and was looking for 4 drives to attach to my RocketRaid 640 for RAID5.
I was planning to get greens but the TLER issue had me a little worried, well looks like these solve the problem and are actually listed cheaper than the greens! Go figure!
OCUK has 3Tb Green @ £179, and 3Tb Red @ £145. No brainer really.

[RADCOM]

Sorry to thrash an old thread but now that you've all had these drives for a considerable amount of time how are they bearing up?

[El Mano]

I too want to know it. After having a green that died in ten days I no longer trust WD.

[zalbard]

I bought a 3TB drive last year. Seems to run fine. Not the quietest of them all, perhaps, but I am happy with it so far.

Edit: 2094 power-on hours. 0 errors.

[cx-ray]

All 5 of mine are still running without errors. Power on hours according to SMART info is 8081.

[ajaidev]

Used single WD30EFRX with my Synology DS710+ for about an year before it died now shifted to dual WD20EFRX in a raid config main use is for DLNA and Samba.

[RADCOM]

There seems to be many reports of failures or does it just seem that way because they have been so popular
newegg
Amazon US
Amazon UK