[section_title title=”Introduction & Closer Look”]

Introduction & Closer Look

Brand: Western Digital (WD)

Model: WD 6TB Red (NAS) – (WD60EFRX)

UK Price: £201.95 @ Amazon UK (At time of review)

US Price: $248.00 @ Amazon US (At time of review)

Storage is a big deal for some and in realistic terms, you couldn’t run a PC or system without at least some form of it. Traditional mechanical hard drives have been rightly replaced by NAND technology found in today’s solid state drives, or SSD’s as they are more widely known as. One thing that remains true however, you do get a much higher £/$ per GB with mechanical than SSD and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon.

When 128/256/480/512GB is enough and the budget is available, it’s a battle the SSD will win all day long in terms of performance and overall snappiness, but for those requiring much more storage such as 2/3/4/6TB etc., mechanical is the only cost effective option available.

One of the leading companies in storage technology and most certainly popular among consumers is Western Digital or WD as they tend to be referred to in this decade. With many varieties of consumer HDD and with a very easy colour coding system, WD has a mechanical HDD for virtually any scenario, with some interesting models to say the least. Today however, we will be taking a look at a few drives from their NAS range; known more widely as WD Reds. We have 4 x 6TB Reds which we are grateful to Western Digital for providing for us today, but how much performance can a single 6TB hard drive provide in comparison to 2, 3 or 4 in a RAID 0 array? We are here to find out, so you don’t have to…

I would be surprised if you didn’t know what a mechanical hard drive looked like, but assuming you are new to the concept because perhaps you have only just got into computers and can only relate to an SSD. So as you can see below, the WD Red 6TB hard drive can be clearly distinguished from other brands or flavours of WD drives with its bright, but stylish white and red label. This contains information such as the serial number, storage size, model number and even US patent codes; something WD is very proud to display on each drive they sell.

In terms of mounting holes and screw placement, you can click here to see the mounting holes specifications guide WD themselves put together – http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2579-771970.pdf

Let’s see how these specialist NAS drives perform in singular form and also in RAID 0 with up to 4 drives…