If you're on the prowl for ample storage for your NAS system, you're in luck. Western Digital has unleashed the company's WD Red Pro 20TB, one of the biggest hard drives for NAS users, for $499.99.
The WD Red Pro 20TB isn't Western Digital's first 20TB drive by any means. The company has previously launched the WD Gold and Ultrastar DC HC560 in 20TB trims. However, those drives target the enterprise and data center segments; meanwhile, the WD Red Pro 20TB is more for mainstream consumers.
Unsurprisingly, the WD Red Pro 20TB leverages Western Digital's OptiNAND technology that relies on an iNAND UFS embedded flash drive (EFD) to open the doors for higher performance, reliability, and capacity. To hit the 20TB target, Western Digital fits nine ePMR (energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording) platters into the WD Red Pro 20TB, each 2.2TB in size. NAS owners will be happy to know that the WD Red Pro 20TB features the conventional magnetic recording (CMR) technology, which is excellent for moving vast amounts of data.
The WD Red Pro 20TB adheres to the standard 3.5-inch form factor and communicates through the SATA interface with your system. The hard drive comes with 512MB of cache and rotates at 7200RPM. Unfortunately, one piece of information that's not on the WD Red Pro's product brief is the capacity of the onboard NAND. However, a Western Digital manager has reportedly confessed to German publication Heise Medien that the WD Red Pro 20TB has 64GB of NAND. So here's a fun fact: Your typical 64GB SSDs nowadays start at $38.50.
Performance-wise, the WD Red Pro 20TB is suitable for a transfer rate of up to 268 MBps. It's only 4 MBps slower than the 18TB variant from the same family. For comparison, the WD Gold 20TB and Ultrastar DC HC560 offer 269 MBps, so the WD Red Pro 20TB stacks up pretty well even against enterprise-grade options.
Western Digital rates the WD Red Pro 20TB (WD201KFGX) with a workload rate of up to 300TB per year and backs the drive with a limited five-year warranty. WD has listed the drive for $499.99 on its site.
Update 2/28/2022 3pm PT: WD added price to its website, updated article accordingly.
