WD Red Pro is designed to handle the increased workloads in your business. The hard drives have been extensively tested NAS for large enterprises With WD Red Pro hard drives for NAS systems with up to 16 drive bays, you can increase the efficiency and productivity of your business. WD Red Pro is equipped with NASware 3.0. This increases system compatibility and allows seamless integration into your existing network infrastructure. Enable your employees to quickly share their files and reliably back up their folders with WD Red Pro NAS hard drives in your NAS solution. Add value to your business. Exclusive NASware 3.0 technology Exclusive and advanced NASware 3.0 firmware technology ensures seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for busy NAS systems. Designed for optimal NAS compatibility Desktop hard drives are not designed for NAS use. But WDRed Pro hard drives with NASware are. Our exclusive technology makes choosing a drive a clear choice and ensures balanced performance and reliability in NAS and RAID environments. In short: WD Red Pro is the hard drive with the highest compatibility for medium to large NAS enclosures. This is also proven by numbers. WD Red Pro has the most extensive list of compatibility tests with NAS partners available on the market today.
WD Red Pro is designed to handle the increased workloads in your business. The hard drives have been extensively tested NAS for large enterprises With WD Red Pro hard drives for NAS systems with up to 16 drive bays, you can increase the efficiency and productivity of your business. WD Red Pro is equipped with NASware 3.0. This increases system compatibility and allows seamless integration into your existing network infrastructure. Enable your employees to quickly share their files and reliably back up their folders with WD Red Pro NAS hard drives in your NAS solution. Add value to your business. Exclusive NASware 3.0 technology Exclusive and advanced NASware 3.0 firmware technology ensures seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for busy NAS systems. Designed for optimal NAS compatibility Desktop hard drives are not designed for NAS use. But WDRed Pro hard drives with NASware are. Our exclusive technology makes choosing a drive a clear choice and ensures balanced performance and reliability in NAS and RAID environments. In short: WD Red Pro is the hard drive with the highest compatibility for medium to large NAS enclosures. This is also proven by numbers. WD Red Pro has the most extensive list of compatibility tests with NAS partners available on the market today.
WD Red Pro is designed to handle the increased workloads in your business. The hard drives have been extensively tested NAS for large enterprises With WD Red Pro hard drives for NAS systems with up to 16 drive bays, you can increase the efficiency and productivity of your business. WD Red Pro is equipped with NASware 3.0. This increases system compatibility and allows seamless integration into your existing network infrastructure. Enable your employees to quickly share their files and reliably back up their folders with WD Red Pro NAS hard drives in your NAS solution. Add value to your business. Exclusive NASware 3.0 technology Exclusive and advanced NASware 3.0 firmware technology ensures seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for busy NAS systems. Designed for optimal NAS compatibility Desktop hard drives are not designed for NAS use. But WDRed Pro hard drives with NASware are. Our exclusive technology makes choosing a drive a clear choice and ensures balanced performance and reliability in NAS and RAID environments. In short: WD Red Pro is the hard drive with the highest compatibility for medium to large NAS enclosures. This is also proven by numbers. WD Red Pro has the most extensive list of compatibility tests with NAS partners available on the market today.
WD Red Pro is designed to handle the increased workloads in your business. The hard drives have been extensively tested NAS for large enterprises With WD Red Pro hard drives for NAS systems with up to 16 drive bays, you can increase the efficiency and productivity of your business. WD Red Pro is equipped with NASware 3.0. This increases system compatibility and allows seamless integration into your existing network infrastructure. Enable your employees to quickly share their files and reliably back up their folders with WD Red Pro NAS hard drives in your NAS solution. Add value to your business. Exclusive NASware 3.0 technology Exclusive and advanced NASware 3.0 firmware technology ensures seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for busy NAS systems. Designed for optimal NAS compatibility Desktop hard drives are not designed for NAS use. But WDRed Pro hard drives with NASware are. Our exclusive technology makes choosing a drive a clear choice and ensures balanced performance and reliability in NAS and RAID environments. In short: WD Red Pro is the hard drive with the highest compatibility for medium to large NAS enclosures. This is also proven by numbers. WD Red Pro has the most extensive list of compatibility tests with NAS partners available on the market today.
Last updated at 04/29/2025 12:11:04
originally posted on westerndigital.com
Bought 4 additional 18TB drives which were delivered quickly by UPS. All the drives worked with no issues. These drives were added to a ZFS raidz2 pool no issues and during the scrub and smart tests they were all in great working condition. Fast reads and writes of the data on the server. I Would recommend these for NAS!I did a large amount of research online before purchasing these for my NAS server. These drives are recommended for NAS in large arrays which was a key selling point.
originally posted on westerndigital.com
I would like to start by saying that i have always found WD products to be top quality. I have decided that I need a personal cloud service and started by purchasing a small NAS enclosure with some drives. My first two WD drives came from a retailer online. I had a not so good experience with them and decided to cut out the middle man and go to the manufacturer site. This afforded me the pleasure of lower cost. The WD drives i purchased perform just as they should and that is a positive. The sigular negative that i have is the shipping time. I was anxious to have the drives here quickly so i payed for two day delivery, 10 days later they arrived. Thia does not sour me with buying from the WD store in the future, it is just annoying.
originally posted on westerndigital.com
I bought this drive to use on a standalone SATA Seagate Thunderbolt stand. It made a horrendous amount of racket, never mounted on my Mac. Tech support told me to call Seagate for support on my old TB drive mount. They said that these drives are forNAT only but SATA is SATA and my other WD drive with ^GB spec has worked fine for years in the same slot. They were unable to answer my question about why a SATA drive like this is any different from another. I was able to return the drive but not get a replacement.
| Type Characteristics of the device | HDD |
| Storage drive buffer size | 256 MB |
| HDD interface transfer rate | 6 Gbit/s |
| Storage relative humidity (HH) | 5 - 90% |
| Drive Form Factor | 3.5" |
Bought 4 additional 18TB drives which were delivered quickly by UPS. All the drives worked with no issues. These drives were added to a ZFS raidz2 pool no issues and during the scrub and smart tests they were all in great working condition. Fast reads and writes of the data on the server. I Would recommend these for NAS!I did a large amount of research online before purchasing these for my NAS server. These drives are recommended for NAS in large arrays which was a key selling point.
I would like to start by saying that i have always found WD products to be top quality. I have decided that I need a personal cloud service and started by purchasing a small NAS enclosure with some drives. My first two WD drives came from a retailer online. I had a not so good experience with them and decided to cut out the middle man and go to the manufacturer site. This afforded me the pleasure of lower cost. The WD drives i purchased perform just as they should and that is a positive. The sigular negative that i have is the shipping time. I was anxious to have the drives here quickly so i payed for two day delivery, 10 days later they arrived. Thia does not sour me with buying from the WD store in the future, it is just annoying.
I bought this drive to use on a standalone SATA Seagate Thunderbolt stand. It made a horrendous amount of racket, never mounted on my Mac. Tech support told me to call Seagate for support on my old TB drive mount. They said that these drives are forNAT only but SATA is SATA and my other WD drive with ^GB spec has worked fine for years in the same slot. They were unable to answer my question about why a SATA drive like this is any different from another. I was able to return the drive but not get a replacement.
Although these drive are labeled NASware 3.0 I found out after I received the drives that they use SMR technology. I intended to use the drives to increase the storage on my ReadyNAS. but in speaking to a Netgear representative he recommended against using SMR technology because they had found them troublesome for writing large files or many files continuously, and especially on RAID sync, scrub, and balance. I researched the drives further and found this was indeed the case. By this time I had already hot swapped one of the drives I'd purchased in anticipation of increasing the storage and upgrading the OS. As part of the upgrade the raid did a resync. The resync took 5 days to complete. This is exactly one of the situations I'd been cautioned about and had seen ... MoreAlthough these drive are labeled NASware 3.0 I found out after I received the drives that they use SMR technology. I intended to use the drives to increase the storage on my ReadyNAS. but in speaking to a Netgear representative he recommended against using SMR technology because they had found them troublesome for writing large files or many files continuously, and especially on RAID sync, scrub, and balance. I researched the drives further and found this was indeed the case. By this time I had already hot swapped one of the drives I'd purchased in anticipation of increasing the storage and upgrading the OS. As part of the upgrade the raid did a resync. The resync took 5 days to complete. This is exactly one of the situations I'd been cautioned about and had seen reported on the internet. In the past my resyncs have completed overnight so I find 5 days unacceptable. In short I don't have confidence in the reliability of SMR drives for my NAS. I requested an RMA be generated to exchange the drives I purchased for the CMR drives I thought I was getting but it's been 2 weeks and I'm still waiting.
I got these because they should be the best possible drive for My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra, it came with two 4TB Red drives at 5400 RPM, absolutely silent but not the fastest. So based on the capacity, speed, and CRM vs SRM I was sold and these were on sale for 200 or so. Got the drives and removed one of the 4TB drives and rebuilt the RAID1 mirror. I quickly noticed how much louder the pro drive was than the regular and that it had almost a rythmic thud, made me think click of death. Kept moving forward hoping it was something about the RAID build process. Replaced the other 4tb with the second 12tb, expanded the drive and I had a 12tb mirror just like I wanted. Extreemly fast in comparison with the 4TB WD Red drives but was hot and extremely loud, across the ... MoreI got these because they should be the best possible drive for My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra, it came with two 4TB Red drives at 5400 RPM, absolutely silent but not the fastest. So based on the capacity, speed, and CRM vs SRM I was sold and these were on sale for 200 or so. Got the drives and removed one of the 4TB drives and rebuilt the RAID1 mirror. I quickly noticed how much louder the pro drive was than the regular and that it had almost a rythmic thud, made me think click of death. Kept moving forward hoping it was something about the RAID build process. Replaced the other 4tb with the second 12tb, expanded the drive and I had a 12tb mirror just like I wanted. Extreemly fast in comparison with the 4TB WD Red drives but was hot and extremely loud, across the room loud. Lived with it for a week and decided that I deserver better for what I pay. Initiated a return and picked up two 12tb Red Plus drives, these are almost as good but dead slient in my NAS. They are not as responsive or do not move as much data but the are certainly an upgrade from the 4tb WD Red that the NAS came with and to be honest they were not bad either, just lower capacity and a bit slower. Disappointed as I really wanted to Red Pro drives but simply could not deal with the noise they made nor the risk to may data.
I used these three WD Red Plus 14TB drives to replace three WD Red 4TB drives in my home QNAP 4-bay NAS that were just about full. Both are in a RAID 5 configuration. The process to replace these drives went fine and I lost no data and now I have a bunch more space. The new drives are faster and have more cache. About 2-weeks in and I have had no problems. A few months ago, I saw the 10TB drives on sale, but was unable to complete and order on the web site, but this time the order went just fine. Shipping across country took about a week.
Over my 20+ year IT career I can say this has been the worst drive for reliability, specifically the WD Red Pro 8TB model (WD8003FFBX). I configured 8 of these behind a hardware RAID card under RedHat Linux, and they periodically eject themselves from the RAID as "missing". Re-scanning brings them back, but only temporarily. I have done several RMAs on these with no improvements, one RMA arriving with bad sector geometry (not sure how this would get past QA).I have tried a total of 3 separate hardware RAID cards (however, each Adaptec). I have tried them with the quasi-mobo RAID, and Linux software RAID. All eventually failing during load-testing (speed, however, is great).Testing them outside of a RAID, as individual drives, they work great. So there's ... MoreOver my 20+ year IT career I can say this has been the worst drive for reliability, specifically the WD Red Pro 8TB model (WD8003FFBX). I configured 8 of these behind a hardware RAID card under RedHat Linux, and they periodically eject themselves from the RAID as "missing". Re-scanning brings them back, but only temporarily. I have done several RMAs on these with no improvements, one RMA arriving with bad sector geometry (not sure how this would get past QA).I have tried a total of 3 separate hardware RAID cards (however, each Adaptec). I have tried them with the quasi-mobo RAID, and Linux software RAID. All eventually failing during load-testing (speed, however, is great).Testing them outside of a RAID, as individual drives, they work great. So there's something odd with them in a RAID in my experience. Beware of this product line if this is your use case (RAID under Linux).
I can't put in words how great these Red Pro drives are. This is my second Red Pro drive adding to my Alienware R8. I have been building my home library for streaming. My friends were all saying to get a Synology NAS system but I had a perfectly good R8 that I wasn't using for gaming or anything so I thought why not use it. The area I live in (near Chattanooga, TN) is where the EPB Electrical Utility has the GIG Fiber available to all of it's customers. I know my i9 processor might be overkill but these drives are awesome. The Plex software has not had 1 glitch in retrieving anything on my library. I have put this thing to the test with multiple streams and the drives have been flawless!
I purchased the Red 6TB drive as a replacement drive for by 5-bay Drobo connected to our home Mac server, and used for storing Time Machine backups for our 5 computers. The Drobo has only WD Red drives purchased over the past years, gradually swapping in larger Red drives as old ones fail or I needed increased storage space. This is probably at least the 10th Red drive I have swapped in to our Drobo. As soon as I swapped in this drive I noticed it wasn't as usual. The Drobo would unmount and re-mount repeatedly during the RAID rebuild phase. When it was done rebuilding I tested it out by running a Time Machine backup, which should do an incremental change to a sparse bundle file. I noticed that the entire sparsebundle file (1.7TB) was reduced to zero bytes and the ... MoreI purchased the Red 6TB drive as a replacement drive for by 5-bay Drobo connected to our home Mac server, and used for storing Time Machine backups for our 5 computers. The Drobo has only WD Red drives purchased over the past years, gradually swapping in larger Red drives as old ones fail or I needed increased storage space. This is probably at least the 10th Red drive I have swapped in to our Drobo. As soon as I swapped in this drive I noticed it wasn't as usual. The Drobo would unmount and re-mount repeatedly during the RAID rebuild phase. When it was done rebuilding I tested it out by running a Time Machine backup, which should do an incremental change to a sparse bundle file. I noticed that the entire sparsebundle file (1.7TB) was reduced to zero bytes and the backup software prompted to perform a "first backup", i.e. the historical changes were lost. I then noticed that this was the case also for all backup sets for the four other computers in our home. I now realize that the Red drive I purchased uses SMR instead of CMR and that these new Red drives don't appear to be suitable at all for our purpose. I can see that this information is on the website but how can WD make such a significant change to a product line and keep its name? Apparently, the Red is now named Red Plus but that was not obvious at all. I cannot believe how the good people at WD could allow this to happen. This is probably a decent standalone drive but it should not have been allowed to drag the Red (NAS/RAID) product line in the dirt. I am devastated, sad and angry with myself for trusting the product name so deeply that I didn't do research. And I am angry with WD for betraying that trust.
I love WD's higher end drives like the Blacks, Reds, and Purples (Greens and Blues are garbage). I pretty much use WD exclusively, except for SSD which I prefer Samsung Evo's . I have 2 Synology NAS' with WD Reds in Raid 5 arrays (4 drives each). one drive starts to die approximately every 3 years (IO errors with a few bad sectors). I just configured a new Synology RS820+ in raid 10 w/(4) 4tb WD Red pro drives. No problems at all. The drives were shipped in OEM boxes, within a bigger box. All nice and tidy. I then ordered another drive, as a spare, which was also nicely packaged. I went with red pro over regular red for the higher cache.
| Type Characteristics of the device | HDD |
| Storage drive buffer size | 256 MB |
| HDD interface transfer rate | 6 Gbit/s |
| Storage relative humidity (HH) | 5 - 90% |
| Drive Form Factor | 3.5" |
