Western Digital launches new Red branded Hard Disks

[Vice]

Western Digital has announced a new series of Hard Disks which join its current range of Green, Blue and Black Hard Disks. The new Red series are designed for Network Attached Storage appliances, Small Business Servers and Home Servers.

The new drives take the same energy considerations of the green series and combine that with enterprise level anti-vibration technology and time-limited error recovery (TLER) of the Black series.

These features make it the perfect citizen in any small to medium sized storage configuration. The TLER feature is especially important when the disk is used within a RAID Array as it allows the RAID Controller to handle disk-halting read errors which could otherwise cause the disk to stop communicating with the RAID controller resulting in array degradation and/or data loss.

The new Red series will arrive in three configurations, 1TB ($109), 2TB ($139) and 3TB ($189). All three disks feature 64MB of Cache and SATA 6Gb/s Interfaces.

Perhaps the most impressive part of these disks is their power consumption. All three drives are rated at no more than 4.6Watts during Read/Write operations and 0.6-Watt power consumption when in standby or sleep mode.

Read more @ Western Digital's Red Page

Original News Piece written by Vice

[RageOfFury]

PcPer has a detailled review of the drives here:

http://pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-3TB-SATA-SOHO-NAS-Drive-Full-Review

I so want to get these drives for my home server!

[Vice]

PcPer has a detailled review of the drives here:

http://pcper.com/rev...ive-Full-Review

I so want to get these drives for my home server!

Thanks for posting that review & me too! - I think I'll probably end up buying a few of the 3TB models for my server.

[UseLess]

Haha damn! I just got 2 Greens -.- Then again, being in Australia, we probably wont be able to get our mits on these for a few years yet =P

[Draconian Guppy]

Can someone explain to me what the difference would be in using this drive for a RAID arrange and using a "normal" 1TB oem drive?

[Vice]

Can someone explain to me what the difference would be in using this drive for a RAID arrange and using a "normal" 1TB oem drive?

If you read the article I wrote at the top it clearly explains that lol

To quote myself:

The TLER feature is especially important when the disk is used within a RAID Array as it allows the RAID Controller to handle disk-halting read errors which could otherwise cause the disk to stop communicating with the RAID controller resulting in array degradation and/or data loss.

Normal drives such as the Eco Green series by Western Digital do not support TLER and are not recommended for RAID use.

[Draconian Guppy]

yeah I got that from the OP :p but what would be the result in not using a disk with TLER? crash and burn?

[UseLess]

A "normal" drive can be many things, ranging from very suspect (Acer) to something quite solid (samsung).

This HDD, over a standard drive, will be more power efficient, more resistant to vibrations, and offer TLER (great, if you are actually running a raid... a non-issue otherwise). I think performance will be much of the same...but who really needs 100+ MBps from a network drive?

For an 'always on' solution, I think they're great - the good points of the Green AND improved life/durability! I wouldn't say go out and swap all your storage drives for these...but there is no reason to buy anything instead of these.

EDIT: If a raid gets stuck waiting on a member disk, it could all fall appart - but who really runs RAID-0 for a storage solution? If a member disk goes offline in any proper storage raid (1, 5, etc) then you reset the computer and it'll come back online if its jammed on a request)

[Vice]

yeah I got that from the OP :p but what would be the result in not using a disk with TLER? crash and burn?

Basically if one of the disks is unable to read something that the RAID controller has told it to, it can spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to locate that data. Hyperthetically lets say it spent 30-40 seconds trying to locate a 4KB sector. During this time the disk is not doing any other read/write for the RAID controller and its queue length is getting larger. The longer this goes on without the Hard Disk giving up and telling the RAID controller it simply can't find the data the higher the chance the RAID controller will think the Hard Disk has completely failed and drop it out of the array completely.

This is bad for a number of reasons. If you're using RAID0 you just lost all your data. If you're using RAID5 you just made your array vulnerable to a lengthy rebuild process which could cause another disk in your array to fail and then you've lost all your data.

[Draconian Guppy]

Basically if one of the disks is unable to read something that the RAID controller has told it to, it can spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to locate that data. Hyperthetically lets say it spent 30-40 seconds trying to locate a 4KB sector. During this time the disk is not doing any other read/write for the RAID controller and its queue length is getting larger. The longer this goes on without the Hard Disk giving up and telling the RAID controller it simply can't find the data the higher the chance the RAID controller will think the Hard Disk has completely failed and drop it out of the array completely.

This is bad for a number of reasons. If you're using RAID0 you just lost all your data. If you're using RAID5 you just made your array vulnerable to a lengthy rebuild process which could cause another disk in your array to fail and then you've lost all your data.

Interesting! Thanks

I'm asking because in the next couple of months i'm thinking of upgrading my 6 yeard old build and was thinking of more reliable solutions than just plugging in an external hard drive for back up and I don't know much about RAID and what types of HDD's to use and whatnot, anyhow, thanks :)

[UseLess]

Depending on the size of your storage, simply plugging in an extra hdd(internal or external) is a great and simple way to go about backups =) RAIDs are complex beasts, and are prone to going wonky (other people will tell you otherwise =P). For a simple storage solution you very rarely need the performance improvement that RAID1 offers.

If you have 8TB of storage, duplicating this volume is expensive...so going for something like RAID5 would be your best, albeit complex, bet.

[astrokat]

So I guess with the launching of new products ... factories in Asia must be caught up with production and now they can lower prices .... :crazy:

[Draconian Guppy]

Depending on the size of your storage, simply plugging in an extra hdd(internal or external) is a great and simple way to go about backups =) RAIDs are complex beasts, and are prone to going wonky (other people will tell you otherwise =P). For a simple storage solution you very rarely need the performance improvement that RAID1 offers.

If you have 8TB of storage, duplicating this volume is expensive...so going for something like RAID5 would be your best, albeit complex, bet.

naw I barely have around 300gb or more of photos and music, the thing is, I've already had an external WD fail, I sent it back for RMA ( still under warranty) Luckily I had the in computer back up, but it was that disk failure that got me thinkin, i've got 10+ years of photos in my PC that are worth saving and not losing. Yeah I keep reading RAID is too much of a hassle for backup, I really don't care about performance but, just being safe, anyho, no more thread hijacking :p

[Glassed Silver]

So I guess with the launching of new products ... factories in Asia must be caught up with production and now they can lower prices .... :crazy:

BLASPHEMY!!!

NEVER! :o

Glassed Silver:mac

[Raa]

Awww man... I didn't want to buy new hard drives..... >_<

[I am Not PCyr]

i wonder if it will be handicapped like a green drive ?

also can't the tLR tool be used ? (WDTLER)

i know the Wdidle.exe tool worked great for my Green drive.

I used it as soon as i took it out of the static bag to improve head parking

i'm suspicious when they claim low power consumption.. there must be a reason for that ;)

[Glassed Silver]

[...]

i'm suspicious when they claim low power consumption.. there must be a reason for that ;)

Probably it's got to do with higher data density = less rpm needed for the same speed.

Glassed Silver:mac

[Dilligaf2008]

Haha damn! I just got 2 Greens -.- Then again, being in Australia, we probably wont be able to get our mits on these for a few years yet =P

They're already available at a lot of Aussie computer stores - PCCaseGear and CentreCom just to name a couple ;)

[Vice]

i wonder if it will be handicapped like a green drive ?

also can't the tLR tool be used ? (WDTLER)

i know the Wdidle.exe tool worked great for my Green drive.

I used it as soon as i took it out of the static bag to improve head parking

i'm suspicious when they claim low power consumption.. there must be a reason for that ;)

In their newer green drives the TLER tool doesn't work. They have gone out of their way to cripple their own products so that they don't compete with their other products.

[ANON86364]

In their newer green drives the TLER tool doesn't work. They have gone out of their way to cripple their own products so that they don't compete with their other products.

Indeed, I was lucky enough to get four green drives before this policy was implemented, one failed, got a replacement under warranty but it wouldn't allow me to change the TLER :(

[threetonesun]

i'm suspicious when they claim low power consumption.. there must be a reason for that ;)

5400 RPM, which is fine for a backup drive.

[SirEvan]

PcPer has a detailled review of the drives here:

http://pcper.com/rev...ive-Full-Review

I so want to get these drives for my home server!

Meh. You don't need TLER/RED/BLACK/ENTERPRISE drives for a home server. I'm using 8 Samsung HD204UI 2TB drives with a dell PERC 6/I controller in a case at home. The box has been going for over a year and a half 24x7, only going down for windows updates, or cleaning dust out. I have not had one single problem with any of the drives yet. These are commercial "Green" samsung 5400 RPM drives, and I got them for 69$ each. RAID5 reads/Writes 500MB/sec +, 0 errors, serving as a Web/Exchange/Hyper-V/fileserver/torrent box

This is overkill.