Western Digital introduces the WD Red Pro 20TB, one of the largest hard drives for NAS servers.
A capacity of 20TB is decent, but not a first. In late 2021, Western Digital launched two 20TB versions of the WD Gold and WD Ultrastar DC HC560. Both drives were designed for large enterprise users and data centers. The new WD Red Pro 20TB fills a different niche. The release is suitable for the NAS devices of SME businesses.
WD Red Pro 20TB
Nine 2.2TB platters add up to 20TB. The drive features conventional magnetic recording (CMR) technology to speed up data transfers. The model has a standard size of 3.5 inches and still runs on SATA.
Western Digital has been increasing the capacity of new drives with OptiNAND technology. The WD Red Pro 20TB includes an iNAND UFS flash drive (EFD) to support OptiNAND. There’s no official confirmation of the drive’s NAND flash capacity. Heise Medien, a German news site, claims that a Western Digital manager disclosed that the drive contains 64GB of NAND.
The top data transfer speed is 268 Mbps. Thereby, the WD Red Pro 20TB competes with corporate options. To illustrate: the WD Ultrastar DC HC560 was designed for data centers and is only one Mbps faster. The WD Red Pro 20TB is available starting today.
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