Western Digital just lately unveiled their first energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) HDDs for the retail channel. Today, the corporate is benefiting from the identical {hardware} platform with some tweaks within the firmware options to introduce the 16TB and 18TB WD Red Pro for SMB network-attached storage (NAS) models.
Like the WD Gold 16TB and 18TB fashions, the brand new Red Pro drives are additionally primarily based on standard magnetic recording (CMR), with a 7200 RPM spindle velocity, and really helpful to be used in NAS techniques with as much as 24 bays. Having learnt from the WD Red SMR fiasco, the corporate explicitly factors out the suitability of the brand new drives to be used in NAS techniques adopting ZFS and different such fashionable file-systems, whereas additionally supporting hectic RAID array rebuilds and expansions.
WD continues to tout the NASware 3.zero firmware options and multi-axis shock sensors with dynamic fly-height adjustment of the heads for added reliability. Pricing is slated to be introduced when the drives hit retail subsequent month. Given the sub-$600 road pricing of the WD Gold and the Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB, we anticipate the 18TB WD Red Pro to be priced within the $580 – $600 vary.
