WD Red 8TB NAS Hard Disk Drive

Have you seen the Western Digital Red hard drives on Amazon and wondered what a NAS drive is and why they are only 5400 RPM?

"WD Reds" are a relatively new product line from Western Digital that is focused for NAS (Network Attached Storage) usage. They are designed to run 24/7 under high sustained usage and in RAID configurations.

They are not the fastest drive you can get, but in RAID configurations this is not always a concern. They also have a larger on-board cache (128MB) than most consumer drives to minimize the disk thrashing when used in a NAS environment.

While these are designed for NAS usage, Western Digital recommends only using them in 8 Bay NAS enclosures or smaller. While they should perform fine under larger enclosures (not typical for home use) they recommend their Enterprise Pro line.

If you are looking at building a NAS or filling one up, you can get these drives on Amazon from $63 - $321 depending if you want a 1TB or 10TB drive.

But I would recommend consider shucking a drive, which means buying their external "MyBook" line and removing the drive from them. The larger models use a WD Red drive and are typically much cheaper than buying the drive directly.

_{All images are from Amazon product pages}