WD SE vs WD Red Pro Specifications Comparison – Enterprise Class NAS

The HDDs or the Hard Disk drives are slowly moving into oblivion with the advancements in SSD technology and reliability factors enhanced by various optimizations in the technology. Even then, the typical HDDs still rule the hearts of most of the budget systems as of today. Western Digital, known to the tech world as WD, has been one of the capable players in producing spindle-based HDDs for computer systems globally. They have a host of HDDs available under different specifications. We will compare the two most popular HDDs from Western Digital (WD SE vs WD Red Pro) in today’s post.

The WD SE: An Overview

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The WD Se HDD is one of the latest offerings from Western Digital and offers enterprise-level performance. The Hard Drive is available in capacities up to 4 TB and has a 7200 rpm spin performance.

The company follows the previous generations of enterprise HDDs, i.e., WD Re and WD Xe, the WD Se. Of course, the WD SE is not designed to be a direct competitor to the high-level requirements of the industry but aimed at customer-centric affordability that couples well with a good level of performance. In essence, the new HDD has been designed to strike the right balance between pricing and performance. However, it will support the moderate workload applications and provide a maximum transfer speed of up to 171 MB per sec.

One of the advantages that the WD SE has is the inclusion of a dual-core processor. This will go a long way in improving enhancing the processing power of the storage controller. RAFF or Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward has been upped so that you will be able to monitor the linear and rotational vibrations in real-time. It also offers you a dual actuator technology to ensure better head positional accuracy.

Here are a few specifications that the HDD comes with the following:

• The Hard drive capacity – 2 TB, 3 TB, and 4 TB
• Rotational Speed – 7200 rpm
• The Interface – SATA 6 GB per sec
• The maximum Transfer Speeds – 171 MB per sec for 4 TB, 168 MB per sec for 3 TB, and 164 MB per sec for 2 TB
• Cache – 64 MB
• Endurance limits – An MTBF of 800000 hours
• Five years limited warranty
• Power Requirements –
• Sequential Read – 9.5 W
• Sequential Write – 9.1 W
• Random Read or Write – 9.5 W
• Idle – 8.1 W
• Physical Dimensions – 1.028″ (26.1mm) x 5.787″ (147mm) x 4.00″ (101.6mm)
• Weight – 0.75 Kg

The WD Red Pro

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The WD Red Pro is a series launched explicitly for the NAS market. They have the same spin capabilities at 7200 rpm as the WD Se we just discussed but differ significantly in other aspects. They come in capacities ranging up to 4 TB and are explicitly offered for the larger installments like tower or rackmount installations.

These hard drives are faster and have gone through a higher level of thermal burn-in testing. Specially designed and developed for NAS systems, the hard drive comes with a more extended warranty. The main differentiating factor between the WD SE and WD Red Pro should lie that the WD Se is designed for the desktop requirements, while the Red Pro has been configured for the NAS systems. Of course, desktop hard drives can be a good option regarding reliability. Still, they may not be sustainable in an environment of NAS, which is in an always-on configuration with RAID configured. It can even cause data loss issues with traditional HDDs.

The WD Red Pro tackles this issue as they have been built with the NASware 3.0 technology and thus ensure improved reliability and performance. Moreover, they come with optimized power functionality.  This ensures that the power saving is achieved to a significant level in addition to controlling the temperatures.

The specifications for the drive are:

• The Hard drive capacity – 2 TB, 3 TB, and 4 TB
• Rotational Speed – 7200 rpm
• The Interface – SATA 6 GB per sec
• The maximum Transfer Speeds – 171 MB per sec for 4 TB, 168 MB per sec for 3 TB, and 164 MB per sec for 2 TB
• Cache – 64 MB
• Endurance limits – An MTBF of 1000000 hours
• Five years limited warranty
• Power Requirements –
• Read/Write – 8.6 W ( for 2 TB capacity, 6.5 W)
• Idle – 6.5 W (for 2 TB capacity, 4.9 W)
• Physical Dimensions – 1.028″ (26.1mm) x 5.787″ (147mm) x 4.00″ (101.6mm)
• Weight – 0.75 Kg

WD SE vs WD Red Pro – The Differences

From that specification, you will come to know that the WD Red Pro is almost based on the same technology and other aspects with a few minor changes to make them suitable for the NAS systems.

It would be best if you used the WD Se in place of WD Red Pro for the smaller NAS environments. There are a few differences in terms of reliability that may prevent it from being used for all instances of a NAS environment that may have higher endurance limits.

A few differences regarding reliability specifications include –

The Parting Thoughts

Well, that was all we have for now regarding a comparison between the two capable Hard Disk Drives from Western Digital. As we can find from the comparison list above, both of them offer almost similar features and functionalities, the only difference being the NAS optimization n the WD Red Pro.

The WD Se had been the only HDD that could fit in a NAS environment. With the launch of WD Red Pro, the gap appears to have filled up. Though you can use WD Se is a NAS environment, it would be advisable to opt for the more advanced and suitable option in the form of WD Red Pro.

Check them out and make a learned choice between the two depending upon the exact requirements you may have.