Western Digital Red: optimized for the NAS disks

After the Green, Blue and Black, Western Digital discovers a new color and turns red.

Disk tray storage giant announced a new range in its already quite thick catalogue. If one knew the Western Digital "Green" at low speed of rotation and consuming less energy, the "Blue" midrange disk that can meet any needs and the "Black" for performance, going to have to get used to the "Red".

Western Digital therefore opens a new line this time dedicated to type NAS storage servers. To argue this launch, Western Digital relies on problems of reliability for hard disks of other lines that are normally not expected to operate 24/7.

On the menu of this range, optimizations around power consumption while offering specific tools to disks RAID mode operation. For example, with its NASware technology, the data after error recovery is directly integrated to avoid to discus in default too quickly in a RAID cluster. There are also compatible with the ATA Streaming, become essential for storage applications audio and video such as Windows Media Center that relies on this technique.

These hard drives are built around 64 MB cache SATA III bus and offer three sizes of 1 To 3 TB storage. The speed of rotation of the plateaus is variable according to the IntelliPower and the flow can go up to 150 MB/s sequential read. The public price of the 1 TB version is €99,90 (WD10EFRX), the 2TB is €129,90 (WD20EFRX) and finally the 3 To €189,90 (WD30EFRX), all being accompanied by a 3 year warranty. We hope that this new range is not only a change of color on a label for a little more expensive sell these hard drives, and that differences with the Green discs will be well notable for use in a home NAS.

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Learn on the hard disks in this video

The engineering marvel that is your hard disk.

Today we can be all about flash memory solid state for our storage needs, but there is a high chance that the majority of our data still resides on magnetic on disks.

In fact, we have relied on hard drives and magnetic genius to store our data for decades. Without storage, our computing experience would be meaningless, as unable to traverse to remember what you had a second life there.

Bill hammock, "engineerguy", has created a new video series on YouTube, and it explains simply how hard drives work. They are quite surprising pieces of engineering, even in today's world where the SSD is bleeding new advanced storage medium.

Check it out below:

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+ 800 MB/s for Thunderbolt disks

LaCie introduced his Little Big Disk consisting of two SSD in RAID 0 using the Thunderbolt connections. It is the first time that a builder shows the performance of its devices. Flows have reached more than 820 MB/s read and more than 350 MB/s write. SlashGear has published a video of the presentation, says the company to have reached 870 MB/s. In comparison, an identical configuration using FireWire 800 enclosures offers 80 MB/s read and 75 MB/s write.

The tests turned on a MacBook Pro Core i7 which also could turn three videos 1080p simultaneously without any slowdown. The computer was connected to two Little Big Disk, external housings of each two SSD in RAID 0. They were chained together and the last of the media was linked to a 24 inch screen.

In addition to showing an impressive level of performance than what is achieved with some Fibre Channel solutions, LaCie has attempted to clarify the public targeted by the first goods Thunderbolt. As shown in the video, the representative of the manufacturer spoke primarily mobile post-production. Instead of working on a desktop computer, it is possible to make the Professional Edition of video and editing of film directly to the scene of the shooting.

First Thunderbolt devices should be expensive. As we discovered on the site of Apple, the Pegasus R4 of Promise is expected to cost 1 €100. It is expensive for an individual and it remains expensive for a professional, especially cables are not included, but can much more easily justify the investment. While enthusiasts still dream of having better performance, little really need more than 800 MB/s read throughput. It is very likely that over time, prices will be drawn down and will be sufficiently interesting to start to be accessible to large audiences.

The Thunderbolt is presented by Apple and Intel bus that uses a Mini Display Port port. It provides a flow of 10 GB/s and power of 10 W devices (see "Thunderbolt: 10 gigabits/s, 10 W, Light Peak").

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