WD Red Pro 6 TB Review - High Performance NAS HDD Gets a Capacity Bump
by Ganesh T S on September 7, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Storage
- HDDs
- Western Digital
Specifications and Feature Set Comparison
Prior to getting into the performance evaluation, we will take a look at the specifications of the WD Red Pro 6 TB and see how it compares against the other NAS-specific hard drives that we have looked at before.
The WD Red Pro 6 TB sports a SATA III (6 Gbps) interface. As is customary for the high capacity drives in this market segment, it can only emulate 512-byte sectors (natively 4K). The interesting aspect is the presence of a 128 MB cache similar to the Seagate and HGST drives, and unlike the WD Red. The obvious selling point for its price target is the 7200 RPM speed, which should easily give it the lead in most benchmarks over the WD Red. The other aspects (such as the URE ratings, MTBF, warranty etc.) are as expected for a drive targeting SMBs and SMEs. The table below presents the data for the drive against the others in our evaluation database.
| Comparative HDD Specifications | ||
| Aspect | ||
| Model Number | WD6001FFWX | WD6001FFWX |
| Interface | SATA 6 Gbps | SATA 6 Gbps |
| Sector Size / AF | 512E | 512E |
| Rotational Speed | 7200 RPM | 7200 RPM |
| Cache | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Rated Load / Unload Cycles | 600 K | 600 K |
| Non-Recoverable Read Errors / Bits Read | < 1 in 1014 | < 1 in 1014 |
| MTBF | 1 M | 1 M |
| Rated Workload | ~ 180 TB/yr | ~ 180 TB/yr |
| Operating Temperature Range | 5 to 60 C | 5 to 60 C |
| Acoustics (Seek Average - dBA) | 34 dBA | 34 dBA |
| Physical Parameters | 14.7 x 10.16 x 2.61 cm; 750 g | 14.7 x 10.16 x 2.61 cm; 750 g |
| Warranty | 5 years | 5 years |
| Price (in USD, as-on-date) | $299 | $299 |
A high level overview of the various supported SATA features is provided by HD Tune Pro.
We get a better idea of the supported features using FinalWire's AIDA64 system report. The table below summarizes the extra information generated by AIDA64 (that is not already provided by HD Tune Pro).
| Comparative HDD Features | ||
| Aspect | ||
| DMA Setup Auto-Activate | Supported; Disabled | Supported; Disabled |
| Extended Power Conditions | Supported; Disabled | Supported; Disabled |
| Free-Fall Control | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| General Purpose Logging | Supported; Enabled | Supported; Enabled |
| In-Order Data Delivery | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| NCQ Priority Information | Supported | Supported |
| Phy Event Counters | Supported | Supported |
| Release Interrupt | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| Sense Data Reporting | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| Software Settings Preservation | Supported; Enabled | Supported; Enabled |
| Streaming | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| Tagged Command Queuing | Not Supported | Not Supported |
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Samus - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
At the current rate, it'll be only a few years before NAND hits parity with magnetic storage in capacity and price.3D (verticle) NAND and Intel's 3D X-Point are going to revolutionize storage as we know it.
X-Point will slowly make NAND a cheap commodity for the consumer sector (abandoned by the enterprise sector for X-Point) and NAND will be so cheap to produce by that point (it's 30 year old technology) that it'll be the common medium. It has already killed virtually every other form of portable storage (floppy disks, tapes, CD/DVD/Bluray, etc) with the only worthy exception being large capacity (2-4TB) 2.5" portable hard disks. It's only a matter of time before 4TB SSD's cost nearly the same as 4TB hard disks, and hard disk platter density is already hit some physical barriers, hence the need for shingled recording and other reliability/performance sacrifices.
But even then, soon,
Souka - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
SSDs aren't for NAS due to pricingIf you put a SSD in, many of the charts would be unreadable due to scaling issues.
Also, if the NAS is used for large number of writes, the SSD reliability would be a factor
melgross - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
Reliability would not be a factor. Large financial institutions are using them for transaction processing, and few things require more write reliability than that.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
The advantage of SSD is, according to legend at least, a more consistent life time: just retire them at x% of warranty, less infant mortality and random death (getting run over by a bus, in human terms).MrSpadge - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
The strong DAS performance bodes well for the new 6 TB Black model, which is probably physically similar but with different firmware settings.Wwhat - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
Why is the article listing the WD red pro with the addition 'star NAS'? Since when is WD using the 'star' term? I can't imagine them doing so, and especially see a company market something with 'red star' these days :)A quick web search shows only anadtech adds 'star' the the name.
Morawka - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
disappointing performance. basically every other nas drive on the market is faster than these. HGST and Seagate dominating.star-affinity - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
According to the benchmarks in this article – as a DAS drive the WD Red Pro seems nice – but it for some reason seems not as good when used as a NAS drive, agreed on that.Arbie - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
We want eight and we won't wait.Gigaplex - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
Colour me disappointed that there is no analysis of acoustic behaviour. My NAS is by far the loudest device in my room due to the 4 WD Red (non pro) drives in it, and they're supposed to be one of the quietest drives available.