Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review

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Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive comes with enhanced reliability with 3D Active Balance Plus technology and error recovery controls with NASware 3.0 technology. Supports up to 300 TB/yr workload rate Workload Rate is defined as the amount of user data transferred to or from the hard drive. Workload Rate is annualized (TB transferred ✕ (8760 / recorded power-on hours)). Find details in Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review.

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Pros & Cons – Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive

FOR

  • Excellent price point for this capacity
  • High mixed sequential workload performance
  • Low heat
  • Low noise

AGAINST

  • Weak random performance

Specifications – Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive

Capacity: 10 TB
Cache Size: 256 MB
Disk Speed (RPM): 7200rpm
Interface: SATA
Transfer Rate: up to 265MB/s
Compatibility: Designed with CMR technology for medium or large-sized businesses in RAID-optimized NAS systems with up to 24 bays. Perfect for archiving, sharing and handling high-intensity workloads.

Recording Technology: CMR
Dimensions (L x W x H): 5.79″ x 4″ x 1.03″

Pricing

At the time of writing, this drive can be bought for £292 in the UK and $324 in the US if sourced from Amazon. That equates to about 34GB per UK pound and 31GB per US dollar, about 10% cheaper than the Seagate IronWolf 10TB and almost the same price as the WD Gold 10TB.

It undercuts the IronWolf Pro 10TB and WD Red Pro 10TB by around 20-25%. We’d mention other brands, but at this time only Western Digital and Seagate make drives of this capacity. And Seagate also offers a 12TB model for those with a serious capacity addiction.

If you want a massive array built with the minimum number of drives the choice is Western Digital or Seagate, and at this time the 10TB Red is the most affordable option.

Compare Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive vs Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal Hard DriveWestern Digital 6TB WD Red NAS Internal Hard Drive HDDSeagate IronWolf 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD
Cache Memory Installed Size256.00256256
Digital Storage Capacity10 TB6 TB8 TB
Hard Disk Rotational Speed7200.0 rpm5400 rpm7200 rpm
Hard Disk Form Factor3.50 inches3.50 inches3.50 inches
Hardware InterfaceSATA 6.0 Gb/sSATA 6.0 Gb/sSATA 6.0 Gb/s
Item Dimensions5.79 x 4 x 1.03 inches1.03 x 5.79 x 4 inches
Item Weight1.43 lbs1.76 ounces
Size10TB6TB8TB

You might have noticed that the RED HDD option included above only provides a 5400RPM class drive. As noted above, a 5400RPM drive may work just fine in most use cases. But, for power users or for larger businesses, sometimes you just need a little more kick from your storage solution. This is why WD released the Pro version of the RED drive. This hard drive offers the same stability for always-on environments as the standard RED HDD, but the Pro version includes the 7200RPM class option. The RED Pro is also designed to work in larger NAS devices (up to 24-bay systems). These hard drives are engineered to handle increased workloads from businesses and home-offices alike. Just like the standard RED NAS hard drive, the RED Pro, offers users the advanced technology from NASware 3.0.

What is good in Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive?

NASware 3.0 Technology

With advanced firmware technology built into this WD Red Pro drive, NASware 3.0 enables seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for systems operating in the demanding NAS environment.


Professional Solutions

Designed specifically with SMB customers in mind the WD Red family has expanded with the addition of WD Red Pro, which is available for the 8 to 16 bay medium to large-scale NAS environments. With a 10TB storage capacity, this WD Red Pro drive carries a 5-year limited warranty and was engineered to handle the increased workloads from your business.

Enhanced Accuracy for NAS

For overall enhanced accuracy for NAS, WD Red Pro is also equipped with dual actuator technology which improves positional accuracy over the data tracks and head positioning. StableTrac technology then secures the motor shaft at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize the drive platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations. Both technologies are important for larger 8 to 16 bay NAS environments.

Vibration Protection

In combination with 3D Active Balance Plus, WD Red Pro also features hardware vibration compensation technology which monitors the drive to correct both linear and rotational vibration in real time, further increasing drive reliability.

Error Recovery Prevention

Built specifically for RAID and NAS environments, WD Red Pro drives come equipped with error recovery controls as part of NASware 3.0, which prevents the drive from fallout in RAID applications.

8 to 16 Bay Shock Protection

WD Red Pro is equipped with a multi-axis shock sensor that automatically detects subtle shock events and dynamic fly height technology which adjusts each read-write function to compensate and protect the data. This combination of technology further protects the drives in large 8 to 16 bay NAS environments and increases drive reliability.

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review

Design

it is a 3.5″ 7200rpm hard drive with 10TB capacity and that is intended for NAS operation in RAID arrays.

Inside

The Red Pro NAS series hard drives are also helium filled for smoother disk operation, include NASware 3.0 and can run on NAS boxes with up to 16 drive bays. Compare this to the non-Pro drives that are intended for smaller NAS systems. Like the new Red 10TB NAS drives the Pro’s offer seven platters and ups the speed to 7200 RPM.

Exterior

Let us take a look at these new Red Pro NAS hard drives from Western Digital. Our sample units came in a bare/ OEM configuration. A close look at the drive label shows information about the hard drive. We spot manufacture date, part numbers and these drives come with 256MB Cache. We also spot the “Pro” description on the bottom red bar.

Flipping the drive over and looking at the back side, we see the back is fairly clean looking with the PCB supported with blue foam to help dampen vibrations.

We finish off with a close up on the SATA and power connections at the edge of the hard drive.

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive performance review

For our review, we only had two WD Red Pro 10TB hard drives available. Although the NAS we are using (the Synology DS916+ is a 4-Bay NAS), using two hard drives does limit which RAID types that we can use. We are including Synology SHR, JBOD, and RAID 0 data sets.

Intel NAS Performance Toolkit

The Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (Intel NASPT) is a file system exerciser and analysis tool designed to enable performance comparisons between network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS SHR
Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS Raid 0
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS JBOD

You can see in all RAID types tested the new WD Red 10TB Pro NAS Hard Drives outperform the others tested. All though the difference is not large they still hold a performance edge.

Let us re-run the benchmarks with encrypted folders.

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS SHR Encrypted
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS Raid 0 Encrypted
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS JBOD Encrypted

With encrypted tests complete, we find the WD Red 10TB Pro NAS Hard Drives hold the performance edge.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives and SSDs.

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS CrystalDiskMark

Running CrystalDiskMark with empty drives shows 260.5 MB/s sequential read and 261.1 write performance.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark measures performance in hard drives and SSDs, RAID arrays as well as the host connection to attached storage.

Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive review
WD Red 10TB Pro NAS ATTO

With ATTO we see standard performance numbers with the WD Red 10TB NAS Pro hard drives, capping out at 265 MB/s transfer rates. The WD Red 10TB Pro NAS hard drives ramp up quickly and show solid numbers.

AIDA64 Disk Benchmark

With AIDA64 Disk Benchmark module, we can measure the performance of the PC’s storage devices, including (S)ATA or SCSI hard disk drives, RAID arrays, optical drives, solid-state drives (SSD), USB drives and memory cards.

For this benchmark, we only run the Read Test Suite since NAS units are primarily write once, read many scenarios. Here, the WD Red Pro 10TB drive performed extremely well. The implication of such a fast drive is that it is consistently able to saturate 1 or 2 1GbE links. That means that we see the WD Red Pro more suited to 10GbE NAS once higher-level RAID arrays are used.

What are the types of Western Digital NAS Internal hard drive?

  • BLACK Performance Desktop Hard Drive: Designed for desktop PC and power users. Good for gamers and creative media developers. 7200RPM. Capacity up to 6TB.
  • BLUE PC Desktop Hard Drive: Designed for desktop and all-in-one PCs. Standard storage use. 5400RPM, 7200RPM. Capacity up to 6TB.
  • PURPLE Surveillance Drive: Built for 24/7, always-on, high-definition security systems. 5400RPM, 7200RPM. Capacity up to 12TB.
  • RED NAS Hard Drive: Designed for the always-on environment of a NAS or RAID system and built with NASware 3.0 technology. 5400RPM. Capacity up to 10TB.

Alternate of Western Digital 10TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal hard drive

Seagate IronWolf

The Seagate IronWolf series is the company’s solution for NAS setups, rivaling the Western Digital Red, but with faster speeds and larger storage capacities available. Like AgileArray, similar technology is implemented to offer enhanced performance and reliability over desktop drives, and these units can be installed in boxes that support up to eight bays. IronWolf Pro is the next step up with slightly more expensive drives but increased supported bays, workload rates, and a limited warranty.

Most importantly, these drives can be run 24/7 without shutdown. The IronWolf family of NAS hard drives come in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 10TB, 12TB, 14TB, and 16TB versions and with three-year warranties. Do note that only configurations of 4TB and above sport rotational vibration sensors. The 6TB and above models run at 7,200 RPM.

If you want the best of what Seagate has to offer in terms of NAS storage, have a look at the IronWolf Pro series. All the Pro drives spin at 7,200 RPM and can handle 250MB/s of sustained data transfer, with bursts of around 6Gb/s. There’s also an extended 5-year warranty and a 300TB per year workload limit. The Pro line of Seagate IronWolf drives also supports up to 24 bays.

Pros:

  • Great value
  • Reliable
  • 6TB and up run at 7,200 RPM

Cons:

  • 5,400 RPM at smaller sizes
  • Up to 8 bays

Desktop Drives Vs. WD Red Pro

Do right by your NAS and choose the drive purpose-built for NAS with an array of features to help preserve your data and maintain optimum performance. Take the following into consideration when choosing a hard drive for your NAS:

• Compatibility: Unlike desktop drives, these drives are specifically tested for compatibility with NAS systems for optimum performance.
• Reliability: The always-on environment of a NAS or RAID is a hot one, and desktop drives aren’t typically designed and tested under those conditions like WD Red Pro drives are.
• Error Recovery Controls: WD Red Pro NAS hard drives are specifically designed with RAID error recovery control to help reduce failures within the NAS system.
• Noise and Vibration Protection: Designed to operate solo, desktop drives typically offer little or no protection from the noise and vibration present in a multi-drive system. WD Red Pro drives are designed to thrive in multi-bay NAS system environments.

Editor’s recommendations

Abu Saleh Rizvee
Abu Saleh Rizvee

I love to write content and contribute for my society. I invest my days in creating content for products those I love and brands who need online presence

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