Western Digital has announced that it will add three new NAS drives to its WD Red product line with the aim of delivering improved performance, durability, capacity and accessibility for small businesses and home offices which rely on NAS drives for their storage needs.
These new drives include the first-ever WD Red SSDs that enhance performance and caching abilities in a hybrid NAS environment as well as a 14TB storage option for both its WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs.
As virtualization has seen increased adoption, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and higher connectivity speeds are quickly becoming an essential feature set in modern NAS systems which is why Western Digital has developed the first WD Red SSDs to help minimize performance bottlenecks.
The WD Red SA500 helps to boost performance when utilized as a caching solution in a NAS system while the new higher capacity WD Red and WD Red Pro HDDs are able to offer more storage space in the same NAS device.
Revamped NAS drives
The WD Red SA500 SSD comes in both a 2.5-inch and M.2 form factor to offer greater comparability with a wider variety of systems and use cases. The 2.5-inch version of the WD Red SSD has a capacity of 500GB up to 4TB while the M.2 version has a capacity of 500GB up to 2TB. Prices for the 2.5-inch form factor of WD Red SA500 SSD range from $75 to $600 while the M.2 variant ranges in price from $72 to $297.
Meanwhile the WD Red NAS HDD in 14TB capacity is priced at $600 while the WD Red NAS Pro HDD in 14TB capacity is priced at $700. These 14TB HDDs as well as the new WD Red SSDs will be available globally beginning in November.
Senior director of client computing segment marketing at Western Digital, Ziv Paz explained how its new NAS drives can benefit creators, saying:
“A boost in performance for NAS systems can translate to more content in less time, so creators or small businesses can work more efficiently to increase output and, as a result, potential income. Our higher capacities coupled with optimized endurance in the WD Red portfolio are making room for larger files and reducing storage bandwidth-induced stress. For creators working on large projects over time, the latest WD Red SSD solution enables a hybrid NAS environment where the SSD can serve as a caching mechanism for both large and frequently accessed files.”
