Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
is nc.com so guys it's day three of our
computex 2013 coverage don't forget we are powered by Western Digital so we're
starting out at our home base here in the WD Booth we are giving away a ton of
stuff after the show guys remember the more you watch the more you win check
out the links in the video description for a chance to win all kinds of crazy
prizes just by watching our coverage of WD here at computex so we're going to
talk a little bit about WD red and this is not going to be a new topic for
anyone who's been following me for any amount of time what you see on the table
in front of you is an example of what
exactly makes WD red special so this is a bunch of different nazes or network
attached storage devices you got two Bay devices you got four bay devices this
particular one is from a sue store it actually feels pretty pretty nice and
you can see right there there's a red in there you can also see right there that
these Reds are packed incredibly tightly so WD red is validated not only for
compatibility across a wide variety of Nas enclosures but is also optimized for
Nas operation in a couple of key ways so number one is that it runs extremely
cool so the thing about nases is you're packing these hard drives together as
close as you possibly can in order to well save space but what happens with
that is they're going to be able to pass heat to each other and sometimes they're
not very effectively cooled so that's why having a cooler running Drive in the
first place is going to give you better reliability next thing is with 3D active
balance plus you eliminate the danger that comes from lower performance as
well as potentially reduce reliability from the drives transferring vibrations
to each other this is another thing that makes them optimized for Naz now if you
buy a Nas and you buy a wd red drive and
then it doesn't work for whatever reason the other thing that comes along with WD
red is premium support you got 247
support call a number talk to someone there's probably something wrong that
goes beyond just the drive or just the NZ there's probably something else at
play because there's a very good chance that uh well I don't want to say it's
pebcak but there you go um let's move on
to the Stagger Dynamics Elite core this is one of the prizes that we are going
to be giving away if we can generate 100,000 views average for our WD content
here at computex this is a liquid cooled
htpc system that is fully gaming grade
so the graphics card in there I actually have no idea what that is but whatever
it is it looks like probably uh 690 or
something along those lines very high in graphics card the one we're going to be giving away has a GTX 780 and I want to
draw your attention right over here to the similarities between a computer case
and a NZ so whether you're running in raid or whether you're doing whatever it
is you happen to be doing hard drives do tend to get packed together really tight
so all that same stuff that applies to WD red and a Nas enclosure applies in a
computer case as well in this case that's four 3 terb WD Reds and they are
running in a raid array but being able to avoid transferring that vibration and
that heat from drive to drive is beneficial regardless of the application
now while the red may be the newest member of WDS one size does not
necessarily fit all approach to hard drives the Green's been around for a
while it's available in capacities up to 3 terab and what's cool about the fact
that it's been around for 5 years is this besides the proven track record
it's also still winning awards for eco-friendliness the current generation
product actually the ezrx which we've tested not only maintains the cool
operation and quiet operation of its predecessor but it also improved
performance dramatically and this wasn't just marketing fluff we were running
real world applications like black Magic's disc speed test and seeing those
actual numbers coming out at us and we were like wow that's actually really
cool because it's not all just about RPM anymore now the other thing about a
5-year history is the fact that well it's got that track record now some
people might have the perception that WD green is an unreliable drive because the
reality of it is if you Google WD Green Drive failure or something along those
lines you're going to find a lot of reports of failed drives at the end of
the day any device fails and a mechanical device particularly can fail
and the person who it fails for goes like this and the person who it doesn't
fail for goes like this now this is a concept I've talked about a lot and
having chatted with the WD folks I actually got a little bit of insight
into the actual numbers and it looks like because they've sold 120 million
drives today the reason that there are
thousands of complaints about it is the fact that even though the RMA rate is
very low when you sell that many drives
someone is going to have a problem and not every problem is actually caused by
the hard drive manufacturer many retailers do not pack drives correctly
when they ship them to an end user I have seen customers walking into a store
to buy a hard drive chucking it in the bottom of a bag putting that bag in
their backpack walking out to the bus stop and dropping their bag on the
ground you don't treat a sensitive electronic device like that so a lot of
the time when someone says oh hey I bought five Western Digital green drives
two of them failed all 40% them die sometimes there's more to it that meets
the eye and the reality of it is with margins in the IT industry if WD was
taking back 40% of their drives they wouldn't be able to afford these fancy
uniforms that uh our lovely WD uh Booth
member here is wearing I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that so in short
guys WD green is eco-conscious not only in power consumption where for you it
might not B but by the time you deploy 121 million of them you save a few Watts
here and there times 120 million it's probably going to add up but also the
way they manufacture them with lead free halogen free materials and it makes them
optimal for not only Standalone Drive applications in your computer or small
for small form factor enclosures where you can still put a 3 and 1 half inch
drive but also things like their own enclosures where they rely only on
passive cooling because the green does run so cool don't miss any of our
computex 2013 coverage by making sure you're subscribed to lineus Tech tips
and check out the links in the video description you can actually get some deals on WD drives as well as ways to
figure out how we can amp up the prizes for our giveaway after the show and all
that cool stuff