Conclusion

The Western Digital Red family of NAS hard disk drives is quite an interesting enhancement of the Western Digital Green family of low-powered, slower-spinning hard disk drives (formerly known as the Western Digital Caviar Green family). It is basically an improved WD Green drive that is cooler, quieter and vibrates less, with a special firmware that Western Digital calls NASware.

When Western Digital announced the new Red family of NAS hard disk drives, there was some skepticism about the usefulness of its NASware firmware. It could be nothing more than a marketing gimmick - a combination of already existing features like TLER and Streaming ATA commands with some minor new features tacked on. However, our tests show that the NASware firmware does have a real effect on the drive's performance, and it's a significant effect.

Western Digital appeared to have optimized the WD Red drive for sequential accesses, sacrificing random access performance in the process. In our review of the 3 TB Western Digital Red (WD30EFRX), we showed that the WD Red was much slower in random reads, but much faster at sequential reads and writes.

The new 4 TB Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX) hard disk drive not only features additional storage capacity (courtesy of an additional platter), but also the improved NASware 2.0 firmware. From what we can tell, the 4 TB model trades some performance for lower power consumption, thermal output and vibration. While the reduced performance is tangible, it is not a really significant factor in a NAS system. Reliability and energy efficiency are more important.

On the other hand, Western Digital improved the 4 TB Red's random access performance, which was pretty abysmal in the 3 TB Red. This may not be important if you intend to use it in a NAS system, but desktop users who are interested in features like vibration control, lower noise and thermal output can consider using the 4 TB Red as a secondary drive.

If you are a NAS user, then the 4 TB Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX) would be an ideal drive to populate your NAS unit. But you should heed Western Digital's recommendation for using only up to five WD Red drives in a single NAS unit. While it is possible to load your larger NAS units with more than five WD Red drives, the lack of more advanced vibration control may result in lower reliability. For NAS units that use more than 5 drives, Western Digital recommends using their new enterprise-grade Western Digital Re drives instead.

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

Support Tech ARP!

If you like our work, you can help support out work by visiting our sponsors, participate in the Tech ARP Forums, or even donate to our fund. Any help you can render is greatly appreciated!

Questions & Comments

Please feel free to post your questions or comments here!