Logically, a 20 TB HDD is not news as such, since we are talking about a capacity that is present in the market, including that of NAS. What makes this HDD different is precisely the technology OptiNANDwhich is more than peculiar.
WD Red Pro 20TB: the best HDD for NAS?
Well, possibly it is according to knowing its final reliability, but credentials show without a doubt. Based on the fact that WD’s Red Pro line is the best of the best for these devices, and therefore the data shown and its performance and reliability have earned a good reputation, it is to be expected that this hard drive will dominate the market at least in 2022.
And what makes it so special? Starting with the inclusion of ePMR technology (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) WD has managed to carry it out in no less than 9 dishes that each integrate 2.2 TB of capacity, so it is a milestone practically if we take into account that all of them rotate with a motor to 7,200 RPM.
However, it will continue to be a SATA 6 Gb/s HDD, basically because there is still room for improvement in the bus, since it reaches a speed of 268MB/s, not bad if we look back just a few years ago. Only the 18 TB version exceeds it by the minimum (272 MB/s). In return, it is the quietest with only 32 dBA. Finally, the entire series integrates from 512 MB Cache up to 64 MBthen, what are those 64 GB that we have named?
The only HDD with iNAND on the market
This hard drive is the only one in its range that has an SSD inside, as it integrates a high-quality NAND Flash chip. 64GB by way of OptiNAND where the quirk within the quirk is that this chip has no DRAM at all. But why does WD integrate a NAND Flash chip as a 64 GB SSD inside?
It is WD’s option to not use more cache DRAM or NOR Flash, at a lower price and with better options. What the company wants to do with this 64 GB NAND Flash is to protect the data. Let’s imagine that we have a power outage while the HDD is writing data in quantity, since OptiNAND will take advantage of the rotational power generated by the platters to feed the internal capacitors until the data stored in the cache is transferred to it, which is of a non-volatile type, keeping it waiting for the supply to be restored and it can pass it to the dishes.
In other words, OptiNAND uses a NAND Flash chip as a backup SSD in the event that the disk fails and could lose the cached data, diverting it to it and saving it in its 64 GB. In addition and as reported by WD, if we enable write caching in Windows we can benefit from better performance in some specific scenarios with this drive.
East WD Red Pro 20TB is already on sale at a price of €499.
