Introduction and Internals
Enterprise storage takes the next capacity step!
Introduction:
The Western Digital RAID Edition line of hard drives has been around for some time now, and has largely impressed us with each subsequent release. Since the launches of the RE4-GP and later, the faster spinning RE4, WD's enterprise line had been capped at the 2TB mark. Now that has changed with the introduction of a new line: simply named the RE Series:
Yup, that's right. 4 TeraBytes! With the Green and Red series capped at 3TB, this new RE is the largest capacity drive available from Western Digital. The catch is that, since it's tailored and built for enterprise use, it comes at a rather hefty price premium.
Internals:
I won't be firing up the clean room today, so here's some shots of what we can access without potentially destroying the drives:
WD Red (left) and RE (right) have largely different PCB designs, mostly due to the additional features present on the RE.
A close up of the RE's PCB, showing the additional pressure sensor and accelerometers (left).
It’s RAID edition review
It’s RAID edition review without RAID benchmarks, right? Did I miss something or maybe you are not provided enough drives for RAID testing?
All of these drive tend to
All of these drive tend to scale similarly when in a RAID, depending more on the RAID controller than the drive itself. WD had a very limited number of samples for the new RE.
Me gusta! :3
Me gusta! :3
To answer the first fellow’s
To answer the first fellow’s question. That is simply the name of the drive not what the review entails. RE is short for Raid Edition.
I have always wanted a
I have always wanted a SSD….Now i want 4 terabyte of hard drive space….
I am curious, do you think
I am curious, do you think the 2TB and 3TB would perform the same as the 4TB version? Will the lower amount of platters and heads cost some performance to the lower capactiy drives?
What I also wonder about is the new line of specific SAS models. Aou can plug a SATA drive in a SAS controller without any problems, so why the specific SAS line?
Thanks!
You can plug a SAS device
You can plug a SAS device into a SATA controller but NOT a SATA device into a SAS controller.
You’re backwards on that :).
You're backwards on that :). Most SAS RAID controllers can handle SATA.
In fact, it’s exactly the
In fact, it’s exactly the other way around.