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WD unleashes bigger, badder, Black and revved, rapido Red Pro

Staple desktop and NAS drives get to 6TB level

WD has upped its 3.5-inch Black and Red Pro drives to the 6TB capacity level, adding 5TB and 6TB variants to the existing product ranges, which previously topped out at 4TB.

The Black drive is a 3.5-inch drive for desktop, workstation and gaming use. The 5 and 6TB capacity products get doubled cache at 128MB and can be up to 29 per cent faster than the prior generation in maximum data rate throughput, while also being 10 per cent faster in PCMark Vantage terms.

We think they could have 4 platters at 1.5TB/platter, but WD isn’t revealing either the areal density or the platter count.

Charting the weight of the different capacity models inside their standard enclosure gives us this picture:

WD_BLack_Weights

WD Black drive weights (lb) versus capacity

There’s certainly a step up at the 2TB level, suggestive of a platter addition, but after that the weight increase is pretty even, with no sudden step changes to indicate a platter + head pair addition. Why the 6TB is lighter than the 5TB product baffles us.

These Black drives have a 5-year limited warranty.

WD’s NAS storage range starts with the Red drive for personal and small/home office use with a 750GB-6TB capacity range, a 3-year warranty, and 1-8 bay NAS box usage. Its spin rate is not provided, being described as Intellipower, which we reckon is in the 5,400-5,900rpm area.

The 7,200rpm Red Pro is for SMBs with a 1-16-bay NAS box requirement. It now has a 2-6TB capacity range, the 5TB and 6TB models having just been announced, along with a 5-year warranty and a 128MB cache for the 5TB and 6TB Reds. The others have a 16-64MB cache.

The top-end NAS drive is the 7,200rpm WD Red, which is for data centre use with rackmount NAS shelves. Like the Red and Red Pro, it supports the 6Gbit/s SATA interface but adds a 6Gbit/s SAS version. This drive has a 5-year warranty and a 250GB-6TB capacity range.

The new Black and Red Pro models are available and shipping. The Red Pro’s MSRPs are $269 for 5TB and $299 for 6TB. MSRPs for the new Blacks are $264 for 5TB and $294 for 6TB. ®

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