Western Digital Red 4TB NAS HDD Consumer Review

Introduction

Back in June, we had the chance to review the Seagate NAS 4TB HDD, and at that time I said to expect WD to respond and release their very own 4TB NAS drive in the coming months. Now three months later, that has come to fruition with WD rounding out their portfolio of purpose-built NAS solutions with the WD Red in the 4TB capacity.

The WD Red line-up has been the defacto drive for one to five bay NAS appliances since its release in July of 2012. Building on the reliability and market success of the 1 - 3TB capacities, WD chose to increase and offer 33% more capacity in the 4TB model.

The WD Red ships with many features to enhance the reliability, one of which is 3D Active Balance Plus, a dual plane balancing technology pioneered by WD.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The WD Red in the 4TB capacity comes in the standard 3.5" form factor using Advanced Format technology. Utilizing the SATA III or 6 Gb/s specification, the drive is capable of 150 MB/s sustained read/write. The spindle speed of the WD Red is listed as "IntelliPower" and is widely assumed to spin between 5400 and 5900 RPM.

All capacities of the Red feature a generous 64MB cache, along with a class leading 600,000 Load/Unload cycles. Non-Recoverable read errors per bits read is listed at