WD Red Pro Review: 4 TB Drives for NAS Systems Benchmarked
by Ganesh T S on August 8, 2014 9:00 AM ESTConcluding Remarks
Ten different 4 TB hard drives have been analyzed for NAS and DAS applications. Coming to the business end of the review, it is clear that there is no 'one size fits all' model in this area. The hard drives themselves were launched targeting different markets and their resulting performance varies accordingly. However, based on our test results we can arrive at the following conclusions:
The lowest power consumption numbers were recorded, as expected, with the 5400/5900 RPM drives: the WD Reds, Seagate NAS HDDs and the Seagate Terascale units. While the WD Red drew the least power in the resync test, the Terascale and the NAS HDD drew less power during our access sequence tests (though not by much). If power constraints are a primary factor any one of the three would be a good choice. However with that said, despite possessing the highest workload rating of the three the Terascale has the lowest MTBF, coming in at a rating of 800K hours versus 1M hours for the Western Digital and Seagate NAS drives. Consequently depending on the usage scenario the extra premium for the Terascale might not be worth it.
The best overall performance is recorded by the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4, thanks to its clear lead in the random access patterns segment of the multi-client evaluation. The drawback being that the part is quite difficult to come across for purchase and carries a premium wherever it becomes available.
Meanwhile the Toshiba drive is a strong value proposition as the cheapest enterprise hard drive in the scalable storage class of drives. Even though the MSRP and street price put it in the same category as that of the Seagate Terascale, we have seen occasional deals which give it only a slight premium over the non-enterprise WD Red and the Seagate NAS HDDs. Otherwise the Ultrastar 7K4000 SAS unit is also available for rock bottom prices from third-party sellers on Amazon, and is a good candidate for users running SAS-based storage servers. Though without a broader sample space it is difficult to recommend it further.
Finally we have the WD Red Pro, which aims to strike a balance between performance, power consumption and price. The attractive pricing (given the warranty) makes up for the fact that it doesn't impress in any particular category compared to the competition. If Seagate's Enterprise Capacity drive were to retail for the same price as that of the Red Pro, the choice would be a no-brainer in favour of the Seagate unit. But right now that is not the case, and Western Digital continues to present a unique value proposition with the Red Pro lineup.
All in all, there are plenty of options for NAS users looking to stock up their NAS units with high capacity drives. Though not at the bleeding edge of capacity, today's 4TB drives offer a good mix of pricing, performance, and capacity; and for the cautious buyer 4TB drives offer an alternative to the potential risk in going the new technology route with 6 TB drives. In the end, with the right data in hand it's easy enough to find the best fit by taking into consideration the expected workload and desired price points.
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NonSequitor - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Most of the storage stuff I work with is bigger than the one Linux box, so I haven't dug deeply in to the exact details of that implementation. I do know I was bit in the past by a RAID5 with a bad disk in it turning the entire thing to trash. Thankfully some experimentation was able to determine which disk was actually returning garbage.However I have not seen the stripe reconstruction count going up during monthly scrubs, so what I'm saying is that my experience is that actual URE counts are lower than the spec. The spec may be a worst case or something else like that.
isa - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Umm, Raid 5 and 6 require a minimum of 3 discs, so no thanks. And yes, I'm aware that any form of Raid does not eliminate the need for a backup - all the more reason for finding out the best (most reliable at reasonable cost) disc for a 2 disc Raid 1 config - no way will I spend all of my budget on a Raid 5 or 6 and be forced to abandon a backup.Peroxyde - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Hi,I have a 4TB non-NAS SATA drive (Seagate ST4000DM000). Is it OK to pair it with a 4TB NAS SATA drive in RAID1 in a home made NAS server?
jaden24 - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
While RAID1 is safe, I wouldn't advise it. The ST4000DM000 wasn't designed for RAID mode. I would just use FreeFileSync to automatically replicate the data from the ST4000DM000 to the NAS drive. This is what I do for my home NAS when using desktop drives.It will give you peace of mind with your data, and I doubt you will be able to tax the single drive enough with streaming unless you are simultaneously doing large file transfers, but you could do those during non-critical hours to avoid stuttering.
Peroxyde - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Hi Jaden24,Thank you for your advice. This is an interesting idea to sync the 2 drives asynchronously.
jaden24 - Monday, August 11, 2014 - link
No problem.shodanshok - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Interesting article :)It seems that Western Digital has some internal competition, as the Red Pro pretty much overlaps the WD Se series. Even the WD datasheets show very similar features (UREs above all) and, to tell the truth, the WD Red Pro is rated for much more load/unload cycles (300K vs 600K).
I think that we will see a WD Se refresh within some months...
SirGCal - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
I currently have two 8-drive Seagate 4TB drives (5900 RPM, first one that was publicly available) arrays in RAID6 and one in RAIDZ2 (same thing without the expensive raid card). I have no regrets. Had one drive fail and rebuilt the array in just a few hours. Performance is plenty for my home network and can saturate a dual 1G network setup easily. I do wish I had more drives at the time to choose from but if I was to do it now, 8TB!!! or maybe 6... I never have enough storage.bji - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
Can you explain what you do with all of that storage?On the other end of the spectrum, I have never used more than about 200 GB of any home computer. Unless you're producing huge quantities of your own content (recording HD video constantly or something), it's very hard to fill more persistent storage because each byte of stored data typically costs money (i.e. movie files, program files, music files, etc - usually these all cost money, so filling up large amounts of storage with them must mean spending large amounts of money).
So how exactly do you fill up 32 TB of storage?
piroroadkill - Friday, August 8, 2014 - link
If you pirate a lot, and keep full bluray images, or indeed rip full bluray images, or similar, AND you back it up, then that would be possible to blow through.