WD Red 14TB NAS Hard Drive Review

TweakTown's Rating: 93%

The Bottom Line

With its 14TB capacity solution now on the market, consumers get more choice and the WD Red is certainly worth a look for those needing high capacity NAS drives.

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It has been quite a while since we last had a WD Red platform solution in the lab. In this time, WD has launched a 12TB model and today's 14TB solution.

WD launched an entire market segment years ago with a full portfolio of "Red" solutions dedicated to consumer and prosumer NAS platforms. Initially, these solutions were supported in 1-5 bay appliances, but with the increase in features related to NASware 3.0, the latest iterations of the WD Red offer support up to 8 bays. These new NASware features include additional hardware for vibration compensation along with error recovery controls and power efficiency.

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Hardware specifications for the 14TB offer a SATA 6Gb/s interface and 3.5" drive form factor. Native command queuing along with Advanced Format is included with an interface transfer rate of 210 MB/s read and write. The 14TB model is supported by 512M of cache, the largest to date.

The reliability of the drive is documented with 600K Load/Unload cycles with an MTBF of 1M hours. Workload rating is equal to 180TB/year, and the drive comes with a three-year warranty. Power management shows just under a watt of power in standby with 3 watts at idle. Under load, the drive reaches 6.5 watts.

MSRP of the WD Red in the 14TB capacity comes in at $499.99 with a three-year warranty.

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Our drives came directly from WD with simple static bag packaging. The drive offers the Red colorway designating its class. Capacity is listed to the left with regulatory info below.

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The SATA power and data connection are seen above, placed correctly for backplanes found on NAS and DAS platforms.

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With the 14TB solution being a third-generation helium-filled solution, it offers a more boxed-in design. The PCB is much larger than you will find on 8TB and smaller solutions.

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The PCB offers a large interface to the right to connect the internal drive components. Marvell controller in the center and cache to the left.

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Starting testing of the 14TB Red, we run through CDM and get 227 MB/s read and 239 MB/s write.

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ATTO showed solid performance for the Red 8K through 64M.

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Starting workload testing, the 14TB model enjoys a significant boost in performance over the 10TB last tested. At QD1, we start at 250 IOPS and end at 550 IOPS QD16 and 32.

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File Server started just above 200 IOPS and moving through the scale, we see 310 IOPS at QD2 and 490 IOPS at QD4. QD8 through 32 performs nearly the same at 600 IOPS.

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Email Server has an aggressive start pushing to 475 IOPS at QD4.

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Web Server scales quite evenly through each step. We start just under 200 IOPS at QD1 and land at QD8 and 500 IOPS. QD16 and 32 both take one step up, ending our workload testing at 700 IOPS.

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Workstation performance for the 14TB moves quickly to 400 IOPS at QD4. At QD16, we see a touch over 500 IOPS and ends at 500 IOPS QD32.

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Power consumption for the WD Red has scaled with each new drive. The 4TB and 6TB share a similar run through each workload seen above. The 8TB model, due to the extra platters, has the highest consumption, while the move to helium with the 10TB lowered consumption once again. The 14TB uses nearly identical power to the 12TB model not seen in our charts but in Red above.

While the capacity wars have cooled for the time being, WD is reluctant to get too far behind Seagate. Releasing the WD Red in this new 14TB capacity offers consumers a second option when looking for high capacity drives for NAS platforms. Reliability has always been number one for WD with its portfolio of drive solutions, and adding NASware 3.0 to this latest solution offers the controls needed for the drive to handle demanding 24/7 environments.

Performance has increased a good amount since we last had a Red HDD model in house to where we see a solid 220 MB/s read and write 8K through larger file sizes like 64M. In workload testing, the Red performed the best with Web Server with File Server right behind. Workstation and Database returned similar results between 500-550 IOPs.

Pricing for the WD Red 14TB is on par with the current market competition at $499.99. For those needing a drive capable of appliances eight bays and up, you can pick up the Red Pro in its 14TB capacity for $569.99 with a five-year warranty.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)