Western digital red review in Spanish (full analysis)

Western Digital Red technical characteristics

Unboxing

If you have ever bought a hard drive you will know that its presentation is not exactly the best and unfortunately it extends to the most expensive models such as this Western Digital Red.

The basic packaging depends largely on the distributor, so in this case we have the unit placed in a sealed antistatic bag. In our case we have bought several, and PC Componentes has had the detail to place them in a cork mold built for multiple units. In case of buying one, it will surely be delivered to us in a covered inflated plastic package. Why not use a cardboard box of a lifetime if even the SSDs carry it? We should not underestimate the hardness of these units, because precisely those with various plates and large capacity are susceptible to failure due to sudden movements.

Encapsulation design

Today's is a somewhat more peculiar hard drive, to begin with because we have rarely done HDD analysis because it has practically no news in its development. But this time we have considered it interesting, due to its 10 TB of storage, its internal pressurization with helium and its being built for NAS environments, with a greater cache capacity and a greater capacity of TB of writing per year.

Well, the encapsulation of a mechanical hard drive like this Western Digital Red is no different than other units in the general consumer market. In this case we have a 3.5-inch format, with the measurements we see in the specifications table and a slightly higher weight than normal due to the presence of more internal plates, up to 7 we would have in the 14 TB units. In fact, its thickness is slightly higher than normal units (25.4 mm) precisely because it needs more space for its important capacity.

Focusing on the encapsulation, it is obviously airtight to ensure the correct pressurization of the dishes inside and incidentally the helium contained in this unit. This package is mainly made of aluminum, with the possibility of being installed vertically or horizontally with 4 screws. For its part, the PCB is installed with all the hardware isolated in the inner layer, to avoid the accumulation of dust and breakage of components. This is especially important in these units that are built for NAS environments.

We only have to see the well-known interface, consisting of a SATA connector for data and another for power supply on one of the side faces. Next we have several service pins that for the user will not be important. On the upper side we have the corresponding distinctive sticker of the model with information about the product.

Technical characteristics

After seeing a preview of what we have inside this Western Digital Network, we are going to get inside, because despite being an HDD we have enough news about it.

And we start with one of the most important, the main reason why units currently have such huge storage capacity. Western Digital is using helium as a gas in the disk chamber. The advantages of this gas over the air that until now had been used in units of up to 8 TB are quite a few. For starters, it is a lower-density gas, greatly reducing turbulence damage during turntable spin and readhead interaction. Being less dense also reduces energy consumption, since the resistance to rotation is reduced.

All this results in the possibility of putting more discs inside. Until now with air you could fit 5 plates, now increasing to 7 to reach capacities of up to 14 TB and 16 TB in some cases. In this case we surely have 5 dishes, each one with a capacity of 2 TB and consequently 10 reading heads. The internal temperatures are also improved by about 4ºC so practically all are advantages.

We say practically because having more plates will also suffer more fragility, and the units are more susceptible to breaking due to sudden movements. Let's think that the reading heads are much more and more together. Not long ago we already had such experience with a unit from another manufacturer that had been defective for the first time.

All manufacturer drives implement NASware 3.0 technology to offer maximum compatibility with all types of NAS and multi-level RAID configurations. They also include 3D Active Balance Plus, a proprietary technology for the control of balance of the plates in different positions and to be able to work 24/7.

This Western Digital Red is available in various storages, starting from 750 GB to 14 TB. And one of the most interesting aspects in terms of performance is that, being HDDs destined for NAS, its storage cache goes up to 256 MB in this 10 TB unit, while normal HDDs only reach 64 MB. However, they are also available in 64 MB and up to 512 MB for the 14 TB one.

The performance that we will obtain in the Western Digital Red of 10 TB is 210 MB / s, when working in all its versions at 5400 RPM. We can also opt for the Western Digital Red Pro, available in identical storages and that rotate at 7200 RPM to reach 260 MB / s.

Like other aspects of performance and reliability, we have a load and discharge cycle capacity of 600, 000, mean time between failures (MTBF) of 1, 000, 000 h, workload rate per year of 180 TB, this being the amount of data that we transfer to or from the HDD. The guarantee of these units is 3 years. In the case of the Red Pro version this figure rises to 300 TB / Year and its 5-year guarantee.

And since they are HDDs for NAS, it is worth attending to the consumption of these units. For the 10 TB Western Digital Red we have 5.7W read / write, 2.8W idle and 0.5W in standby mode, generating a noise of 29 dBA, which is no small feat.

Test equipment and benchmarks

We now turn to the battery of tests corresponding to this Western Digital RED. To do this, we have used the following test bench:

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel i9-9900K
Base plate:	Asus Maximus Formula XI
Memory:	16GB DDR4 T-Force
Heatsink	Corsair H100i Platinum SE
HDD	Western Digital RED 10 TB
Graphic card	Gigabyte RTX 2080 Super
Power supply	Cooler Master V850 Gold

The tests to which we have submitted this SSD are as follows:

Crystal Disk MarkAS SSD BenchmarkATTO Disk BenchmarkAnvil´s Storage

All these programs are in current versions, and we have also used our usual platform to know the performance data of the hard disk, which is really what interests us. Remember not to abuse these tests in your drives, since it affects the life time of the drive, especially in SSD.

CristalDiskMark as always is the most benevolent program with hard disks, giving results that conform to those specified by WD, that is, 210 MB / s in sequential reading and writing. The mechanic status makes the performance in random processes a real drama, and in either case we would never reach the maximum of the SATA interface as if SSDs do.

What interests us most about Anvil's and AS SSD are latencies and IOPS. In the first case we have very high values as in other HDDs, the smallest of 1.3 ms in 4K blocks and reaching 30 ms in writing. Remember that an HDD does not execute the instruction until it reaches the correct RPM and the spindle is in the correct sector. In this case we will have a slower boot because we have more disks, it is compensated by lower RPM. And with respect to the IOPS, since they are around 600-700 both in reading and random writing in the best cases.

Finally, Atto Disk shows a fairly stable sequential read / write rate on most block sizes, at 200MB / s read and write. The IOPS in this case are much higher because they are taken directly from the controller and the cache.

Final words and conclusion about Western Digital RED 10 TB

We come to the end of this little review with the Western Digital RED, a mechanical unit that is designed for use on NAS primarily in the home and small business setting. And it is that for higher performance environments we would recommend those of the RED Pro series, which are somewhat more expensive, but with a higher capacity of TB / year, 7, 200 rpm and a 5-year warranty.

We recommend our guide to the best SSDs of the moment.

In this case the performance is quite interesting considering that it is an HDD, with stable rates of 200 MB / s in writing and sequential reading and an energy consumption at the level of the SSD. Integrating helium instead of air in the chamber of plates is a success to increase the amount of space, which in these models can go up to 14 TB. Its cache has also been increased to 256 MB for us to analyze and 512 MB for the 14 TB one, while those for general consumption are 64 MB.

Finally we must talk about prices, and we will find this unit for a cost of 379 euros on the official website, and 351 euros on Amazon. In this way we would have to pay only 3.4 cents per GB of space, figures that one day we dream of the SSD arriving, which are currently around 11.7 cents / GB.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ OPTIMIZED FOR NAS	- SLOW, LIKE ALL DOMESTIC RANGE HDD NAS AND SMALL BUSINESSES
+ QUALITY / PRICE
+ HELIO PRESSURIZATION AND 256 MB CACHE
+ AVAILABLE UP TO 14TB
+ RECOMMENDED FOR DOMESTIC NAS