Western Digital 3TB, Red WD30EFRX, SATA3, 64MB, IntelliPower

Desktop hard drive are designed for optimum performance and reliability in a desktop personal computer. Although they are an affordable alternative to enterprise-class drives, desktop drives have a higher level of risk for potential data loss and failure in an always-on RAID configured NAS system. Specific issues that you may experience using desktop drives in a NAS or RAID environment include:

• Compatibility: Desktop hard drives are not always tested for compatibility in NAS and can present problems during integration. 
  
  
• Reliability: Most desktop drives are not designed for the high operating temperatures or for 24x7 operating environments making them less reliable when used in a NAS system. 
  
  
• Error recovery controls: Desktop drives are not traditionally designed for RAID environments and have controls that prevent the RAID controller from assisting in the event of an error which can cause the hard drive to drop off the RAID after a period of time.  Rebuilding a RAID often requires several hours and can have a significant impact on downtime and productivity. 
  
  
• Noise and vibration: Typically designed for single drive applications, average desktop drives are not optimized for multi-drive systems which have higher noise and vibration levels. When these drives are added to a NAS, the additional vibration can reduce the reliability and life span of the drive.

Beyond desktop with NASware

WD Red drives include WD's exclusive NASware technology that addresses many of the challenges a traditional desktop hard drive has in a NAS system.  WD works directly with our partners to test compatibility and reduce our customer's guess work as to which drive is right for their NAS system.  Designed to deliver a better customer experience in small NAS systems, this innovative firmware finely balances the most important attributes of performance, power, and reliability in multiple drive environments. The unique algorithms in NASware optimize power and performance without compromising on the attributes that NAS-system owners value.

Important Features for System Integrators

In addition to features that make WD Red drives perfect for populating or upgrading NAS systems, NASware brings features that system integrators need when building specialized NAS systems.

• Streaming support - NASware provides built-in compatibility with the ATA Streaming Feature Set which is important for AV storage applications such as Windows Media Center.
  
  
• SMART Command Transport (SCT) support - NASware allows monitoring and measuring of drive performance via the SMART command set. SMART can return data like thermal profiles, drive access statistics and more. NASware also delivers temperature accuracy within 1°C. 
  
  
• Power management support - Enables optimized power usage within the NAS system.
  
  
• BIC Performance - Optimized seek to provide BIC performance while reducing the power and acoustics.

Save power and money

NASware optimizes power use resulting in significant power savings and lower hard drive operating temperatures. This improves the overall reliability and performance of the drive and reduces the NAS cost of ownership.

Intelligent error recovery

With built in intelligent error recovery controls, NASware also prevents hard drives from being dropped off the RAID due to extended error recovery.  This provides more availability and less down time rebuilding the RAID. 

Command completion

To further improve reliability, NASware minimizes the data corruption or loss in the event of an unexpected power loss by completing the command in process before shutting down.