Conclusion

When Western Digital first launched their Red family of NAS hard disk drives, it was seen as an improved WD Green drive that runs cooler and quieter, with a special firmware that Western Digital calls NASware. It quickly replaced WD Green drives then populating NAS systems. But it was not good enough for larger NAS systems, where 8 or more hard disk drives spinning together would generate far more vibration than regular Red drives can handle.

Enter the new Western Digital Red Pro family of NAS drives, designed specifically to tackle the challenge of ensuring reliable performance in a large NAS system. To top it off, Western Digital gave the Red Pro a speed boost with a spindle speed of 7200 RPM. In other words, the Red Pro is the NAS version of the Western Digital Black drive.

This was confirmed when we took a look at its components. The 4 TB Western Digital Red Pro (WD4001FFSX) is the mechanically and electronically identical to the 4 TB Western Digital Black Gen. 2 (WD4003FZEX). The only difference really is its NASware 3.0 firmware and reliability features like dual-plane balance control and dynamic fly height adjustment.

Therefore, it's no surprise to see the Red Pro drive perform very similarly to its Black brother. It delivered top-of-the-range performance in every test we performed. It was also significantly faster than the 4 TB Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX), delivering about 30% faster random reads, 40% faster random writes, as well as 15% faster sequential reads and 25% faster sequential writes.

The Red Pro, however, also inherited the Black drive's penchant of running a little "hot". In fact, it ran hotter at full load than the Black drive. Western Digital obviously knew this because they uprated the Red Pro's maximum ambient temperature limit from 55°C to 60°C. They were also more aggressive with its power consumption when it idles, which noticeably reduces its thermal output. In fact, it was significantly cooler than the Black drive while idling. Since NAS systems idle their drives more aggressively than desktop systems, this should result in a lower thermal output in the real world than was apparent in our stress tests.

Western Digital is positioning the Red Pro as a niche product, targeted at the SMB market where NAS systems tend to be large - with 8 to 16 drives. That's why it commands a 40% price premium over the "regular" Red drive. For NAS systems with fewer drives, Western Digital recommends just sticking to the Red drives.

That said, if you need greater reliability and performance from your NAS drives, there is nothing wrong using the Red Pro drives in your smaller NAS system. In fact, we would recommend doing so if you are using your NAS to store precious data and you can afford the price premium.

For the lowest current prices on Western Digital Red Pro hard disk drives, click here!

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