Western Digital has just launched a new entry in their Datacenter Capacity HDD lineup:
The Re+ is based on the Re series of enterprise 3.5" HDDs (first revision reviewed here), but this one reduces the spin speed down from 7200 RPM to 5760 RPM. The HGST Ultrastar He6 is a great power efficient and Helium filled drive, but while that unit spins at 7200 RPM, it's max data rate is only 177 MB/sec. The 6TB WD RE spins at the same speed with a much higher rate of 225 MB/sec, but also draws more power than an He6. By reducing the platter speed, WD was able to bring power consumption into the 4.6-6.2W range with peak transfer rates of 175 MB/sec. The competing He6 draws 5.0-7.0W.
While dialing back the RPM was a simple way to achieve this very low power consumption, the He6 would still have the advantage in seek times (a faster spinning disk means less time waiting for the data to come around to the read head). The seek time argument may be moot given the purpose of these HDDs leans towards cold/warm/archival data storage that is very infrequently and sporadically accessed. Still, it is an interesting point that WD's platter density was so much higher that they could simply slow the RPM and yet maintain throughputs competitive with a faster spinning unit.
In combination with this announcement is the fact that the Re and Se lines (formerly limited to 4TB) are now available in 5TB and 6TB capacities. With the Se moving up to 6TB, we may see a Red Pro in the same capacity in the near future (depending on demand).
More to follow on these at a future date. Full press blast after the break.
WD® DELIVERS WORLD’S MOST POWER-EFFICIENT HIGH-CAPACITY
3.5-INCH HDD FOR MODERN DATACENTERS
New WD Re+ Hard Drive Offers 6 TB While Consuming Only 6 Watts
and Is Key Component of Company’s Expanding Capacity Storage Portfolio
Irvine, Calif., – Mar. 10, 2015 – WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and world leader in storage today introduced new datacenter hard drives that deliver to today’s modern datacenter architects the lowest power consumption of any high-capacity 3.5-inch hard drive available today. The WD Re+™ hard drive family is the newest component of WD’s full, tiered portfolio of high-capacity datacenter storage devices. Further expanding that portfolio will be 6 terabyte (TB) capacities for WD’s popular WD Re™ and WD Se™ datacenter product lines, providing customers a spectrum of capabilities, tiered to their varied demands of application intensity, power optimization and cost efficiency.
In the modern datacenter, the total cost of ownership (TCO) formula is comprised of capacity, price, power consumption and the relationships between these variables. The WD Re+ drive provides the most power efficient and high-intensity high-capacity platform available today.
With power consumption a primary consideration in today’s large web-scale cloud infrastructures, and the WD Re+ drive consuming only 6 watts for 6 TB, customers’ TCOs increase and savings for large deployments could be millions of dollars per year.
“Dollars and watts are the finite currencies in the modern datacenter,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president of storage technology at WD. “With a leading watt-per-gigabyte ratio and the long-trusted reliability of the WD Re hard drive platform, WD Re+offers our customers having limited power budgets a WD Re-class choice for tier-2, high-intensity storage applications. Massive, scale-out deployments must deliver tremendous value to customers across a range of applications, while providing a healthy return to the infrastructure owner. WD is focused on offering that value across its portfolio.”
The SATA 6 Gb/s WD Re+ hard drive family features a dense five-platter platform, which renders an optimal mix of low power consumption, high capacity, 24 x 7 x 365-reliability and affordability. Vibration tolerance and Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) are also key considerations in these applications. WD Re+ hard drives deliver 1.2m hours MTTF, enhanced RAFF technology to increase vibration tolerance and a high-intensity workload and reliability rating of 550 TB-per-year workload, the highest workload capabilities of any WD 3.5-inch hard drive. The new WD Re+ and stalwart WD Re share a platform to simplify large-scale deployments and provide the reliability and performance customers have come to expect from WD’s datacenter products.
WD’s award-winning WD Re platform now offers up to 6 TB for demanding datacenter and cloud storage needs. WD Re hard drives also are designed to handle up to 550 TB per year in high-intensity datacenter applications. They offer SATA interface with up to 6 Gb/s transfer rates and sustained sequential data rates of up to 225 MB/s, delivering performance and reliability needed in any datacenter.
Other datacenter-class features with the WD Re and WD Re+ products include:
Vibration protection – Enhanced RAFF™ technology monitors the drive and corrects both linear and rotational vibration in real time. The result is a significant performance improvement in high-vibration environments over the previous generation of drives.
Dual actuator technology – A head-positioning system with two actuators improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.
StableTrac™ – The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.
Multi-axis shock sensor – Automatically detects the subtlest shock events and compensates to protect the data.
RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER) – Prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.
NoTouch™ ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.
Thermal extended burn-in test – Each drive is put through extended burn-in testing with thermal cycling to ensure reliable operation.
Dynamic fly height technology – Each read-write head’s fly height is adjusted in real time for optimum reliability.
Dual processor – Twice the processing power to maximize performance.
3D Active Balance™ Plus – Our enhanced dual-plane balance control technology significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multi-drive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.
The WD Se line of datacenter hard drives provide a blend of performance, reliability and capacity specifically designed for SMB to high-end NAS and large-scale datacenter replication environments running 24x7x365. Capacities range up to 6 TB.
Availability
Shipping immediately to customers for qualification WD Re+ drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty. WD Re and WD Se 6 TB hard drives will be available for qualification next quarter. More information about WD’s datacenter hard drives can be found on the company website at http://www.wdc.com/en/
About WD
WD, a Western Digital company, is a long-time innovator and storage industry leader. As a storage technology pacesetter, the company produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD’s leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.wd.com.
Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its companies design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
