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Expanded NAS storage offerings

WD, a Western Digital company, has announced the expansion of its WD Red line of SATA hard drives for home and small office NAS (network attached storage) systems with the release of a 5 TB and 6 TB capacity for NAS-specific storage; and the introduction of WD Red Pro hard drives that address the medium to large business NAS market.

Compatibility-tested with top NAS system manufacturers and optimised for power and performance, WD Red 3.5-inch hard drives are now shipping in 1 TB to 6 TB capacities; and the new WD Red Pro 3.5-inch hard drives are available in 2 TB to 4 TB capacities.

WD Red

First introduced in 2012, WD Red hard drives address the unique environment of NAS and the growing demand for affordable, reliable and compatible storage that reduces customer total cost of ownership. With the release of 5 TB and 6 TB models, the WD Red line of hard drives is now further enriched with greater storage capacity and increased performance with NASware 3.0, an enhanced version of WD’s original NASware technology, designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime and to simplify the integration process.

WD Red hard drives also feature 3D Active Balance Plus, an enhanced balance control technology, which significantly improves overall drive performance and reliability. Exclusive for WD Red customers, WD offers free premium 24x7 dedicated support. By increasing NASware 3.0 capability, the WD Red 1–6 TB capacity drives are capable of supporting up to eight bay NAS systems with no negative impact to performance.

Says Kalvin Subbadu, sales manager, WD Components, WD South Africa, “As we see the exponential increase of data in consumer and small office home office (SOHO) environments, the need for additional storage becomes a pressing issue. The introduction of our new 5 TB and 6 TB capacities will support up to eight bays is super charging users ability to store even more data than ever. This is particularly relevant to the South African market where broadband costs and availability is perpetually improving, ultimately resulting in an increase of digital data downloads.”

WD Red Pro

Ideal for medium to large business environments, the new WD Red Pro line of NAS hard drives supports 8 to 16 bay NAS systems. The enhanced design offers reliable, high performance storage powered by NASware 3.0.

WD Green

The WD Green line of cool and quiet hard drives is also seeing capacity expansion with 5 TB and 6 TB additions for high capacity consumer storage. High capacity WD 6 TB hard drives will integrate seamlessly with WD’s My Cloud, My Cloud EX2, My Cloud EX4, My Cloud Mirror personal cloud storage as well as My Book and My Book Duo external drive solutions and are compatible with a wide array of WD OEM NAS partners. An updated list of WD Red-qualified products and manufacturers is available on the WD website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

The drives are available from Pinnacle Africa, Drive Control Corporation and Sahara Computers from August 2014, the WD Red and WD Red Pro have three- and five-year limited regional warranties, respectively.

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