Western Digital Red (WD60EFRX) 6 TB NAS Hard Disk Drive

The popularity of Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices is rapidly ramping up in both small businesses and homes, fueled by their usefulness and their increasing affordability. This surge in interest has led Western Digital to add a new family of hard disk drives - the WD Red family of NAS hard disk drives, even as Seagate drops production of 5,400 RPM desktop hard disk drives.

Of course, this begs the question - why choose a WD Red when the WD Green (formerly known as the WD Caviar Green) hard disk drive is also a low-powered, slower-spinning hard disk drive? It mainly lies in the WD NASware firmware, its comprehensive compatibility testing with common NAS systems and a dedicated WD Red 24x7 support line.

Today, we are going to take a look at the latest addition to Western Digital's family of Red drives - the WD60EFRX with 6 TB of storage capacity. Here are its key features :

• Exclusive NASware 3.0 Technology - WD's exclusive NASware 3.0 technology further optimizes the WD Red for the NAS environment, allowing the WD Red to support small NAS systems with up to 8 bays!

• NAS Compatibility - Advanced firmware technology built into every WD Red drive, enables seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for systems operating in NAS and RAID environments.

• 3D Active Balance Plus - This enhanced dual-plane balance control technology significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multidrive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.

• Enhanced Reliability - With a 35% MTBF improvement over standard desktop drives, the WD Red drive is designed and manufactured to be a more reliable and robust solution.

• Energy Efficient - Innovative technology reduces power consumption and lowers the operating temperature, resulting in a more reliable and affordable solution for always on 24x7 NAS environments.

• Premium Support - Exclusively for WD Red drive customers, a free dedicated 24/7 support line is available in English. Other regional support hours vary.

• Longer Warranty Coverage - The WD Red drive is backed by a 3-year limited warranty for greater peace of mind.

Now, let's take a closer look at this new big daddy of the WD Red family of hard disk drives!

For more details, read our Comprehensive Review!

To discuss about this review, head over to the forum thread!

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Review

• Comprehensive Review

Model

• WD60EFRX

Formatted Capacity

• 6,001,805 MB

Guaranteed Sectors

• NA

Bytes Per Sector

• 512 bytes (Emulated)

Platters

• 5 Platters (1.2 TB per platter)

Read/Write Heads

• 10 Read/Write Heads

Spindle Speed

• IntelliPower, fixed speed between 5,400 and 7,200 RPM

Cache

• 64 MB DDR2 SDRAM

Internal Data Transfer Rate

• 175 MB/s

Average Seek

• NA

Average Latency

• NA

Drive Ready Time

• NA

Interface

• Serial ATA 6 Gb/s

Supported SATA Data Transfer Mode

• 6.0 Gbits/s
• 3.0 Gbits/s
• 1.5 Gbits/s

SATA Hotplug Capability

• Yes

Native Command Queuing

• Yes

Advanced Format Technology

• Yes

Maximum Height

• 26.1 mm (1.028 inches)

Maximum Width

• 101.6 mm (4.00 inches)

Maximum Length

• 147.0 mm (5.787 inches)

Maximum Weight

• 750 g (1.65 lbs)

Power Requirements

• +12V DC ± 10 %
• +5V DC ± 5 %

Power Consumption

• 5.3 W (Read / Write)
• 3.4 W (Idle)
• 0.4 W (Standby / Sleep)

Ambient Temperature

• 0 °C to 65 °C (Operating)
• -40 °C to 70 °C (Non-Operating)

Maximum Shock

• 30 G @ 2 ms (Read / Write)
• 250 G @ 2 ms (Non-Operating)

Drive Acoustics

• 25 dBA average (Idle Mode)
• 28 dBA average (Quiet Seek Mode)

Non-Recoverable Read Errors

• 1 error per 10¹⁴ bits read

Load/Unload Cycles

• 600,000

MTBF

• 1 million hours

Warranty

• 3 Years Limited Warranty