Western Digital Red Drive 2TB Hard Drive

Conclusion

Western Digital has an interesting product here. It falls right in between their consumer line of drives and their enterprise line. This makes it perfect for small businesses that can’t afford a SAN, but can afford a NAS. The feature set rivals that of the RE enterprise drives, but with a thermal and power footprint similar to the Green Drives. At time of writing the 2TB Red Drive is selling for $130, which more expensive than the Green Drive, cheaper than the Black drives, and far cheaper than a RE drive. The performance of the drive is also exceptional. If your NAS doesn’t have teamed NICs, then it’s not fully utilizing these drives. I think that WD has a real hit on their hands here. My only gripe is that it comes with a 3 year warranty. Gone seem to be the halcyon days of the standard 5 year warranty for hard drives. The Red Drive fills a nice niche in the SOHO storage market.

Pros

• Designed for use in NAS and RAID arrays
• Solid performance
• Cooler thermal profile than other drives

Cons

• Only a 3 year warranty

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