WD at Computex 2013 Booth Tour Day 3 - Red NAS Drives, Green Efficient Drives & WD Giveaway
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,345 words · ~6 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
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trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
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is nc.com so guys it's day three of our
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computex 2013 coverage don't forget we are powered by Western Digital so we're
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starting out at our home base here in the WD Booth we are giving away a ton of
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stuff after the show guys remember the more you watch the more you win check
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out the links in the video description for a chance to win all kinds of crazy
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prizes just by watching our coverage of WD here at computex so we're going to
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talk a little bit about WD red and this is not going to be a new topic for
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anyone who's been following me for any amount of time what you see on the table
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in front of you is an example of what
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exactly makes WD red special so this is a bunch of different nazes or network
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attached storage devices you got two Bay devices you got four bay devices this
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particular one is from a sue store it actually feels pretty pretty nice and
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you can see right there there's a red in there you can also see right there that
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these Reds are packed incredibly tightly so WD red is validated not only for
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compatibility across a wide variety of Nas enclosures but is also optimized for
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Nas operation in a couple of key ways so number one is that it runs extremely
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cool so the thing about nases is you're packing these hard drives together as
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close as you possibly can in order to well save space but what happens with
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that is they're going to be able to pass heat to each other and sometimes they're
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not very effectively cooled so that's why having a cooler running Drive in the
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first place is going to give you better reliability next thing is with 3D active
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balance plus you eliminate the danger that comes from lower performance as
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well as potentially reduce reliability from the drives transferring vibrations
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to each other this is another thing that makes them optimized for Naz now if you
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buy a Nas and you buy a wd red drive and
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then it doesn't work for whatever reason the other thing that comes along with WD
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red is premium support you got 247
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support call a number talk to someone there's probably something wrong that
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goes beyond just the drive or just the NZ there's probably something else at
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play because there's a very good chance that uh well I don't want to say it's
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pebcak but there you go um let's move on
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to the Stagger Dynamics Elite core this is one of the prizes that we are going
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to be giving away if we can generate 100,000 views average for our WD content
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here at computex this is a liquid cooled
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htpc system that is fully gaming grade
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so the graphics card in there I actually have no idea what that is but whatever
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it is it looks like probably uh 690 or
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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
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draw your attention right over here to the similarities between a computer case
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and a NZ so whether you're running in raid or whether you're doing whatever it
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is you happen to be doing hard drives do tend to get packed together really tight
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so all that same stuff that applies to WD red and a Nas enclosure applies in a
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computer case as well in this case that's four 3 terb WD Reds and they are
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running in a raid array but being able to avoid transferring that vibration and
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that heat from drive to drive is beneficial regardless of the application
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now while the red may be the newest member of WDS one size does not
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necessarily fit all approach to hard drives the Green's been around for a
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while it's available in capacities up to 3 terab and what's cool about the fact
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that it's been around for 5 years is this besides the proven track record
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it's also still winning awards for eco-friendliness the current generation
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product actually the ezrx which we've tested not only maintains the cool
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operation and quiet operation of its predecessor but it also improved
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performance dramatically and this wasn't just marketing fluff we were running
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real world applications like black Magic's disc speed test and seeing those
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actual numbers coming out at us and we were like wow that's actually really
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cool because it's not all just about RPM anymore now the other thing about a
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5-year history is the fact that well it's got that track record now some
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people might have the perception that WD green is an unreliable drive because the
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reality of it is if you Google WD Green Drive failure or something along those
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lines you're going to find a lot of reports of failed drives at the end of
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the day any device fails and a mechanical device particularly can fail
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and the person who it fails for goes like this and the person who it doesn't
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fail for goes like this now this is a concept I've talked about a lot and
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having chatted with the WD folks I actually got a little bit of insight
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into the actual numbers and it looks like because they've sold 120 million
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drives today the reason that there are
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thousands of complaints about it is the fact that even though the RMA rate is
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very low when you sell that many drives
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someone is going to have a problem and not every problem is actually caused by
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the hard drive manufacturer many retailers do not pack drives correctly
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when they ship them to an end user I have seen customers walking into a store
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to buy a hard drive chucking it in the bottom of a bag putting that bag in
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their backpack walking out to the bus stop and dropping their bag on the
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ground you don't treat a sensitive electronic device like that so a lot of
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the time when someone says oh hey I bought five Western Digital green drives
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two of them failed all 40% them die sometimes there's more to it that meets
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the eye and the reality of it is with margins in the IT industry if WD was
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taking back 40% of their drives they wouldn't be able to afford these fancy
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uniforms that uh our lovely WD uh Booth
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member here is wearing I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that so in short
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guys WD green is eco-conscious not only in power consumption where for you it
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might not B but by the time you deploy 121 million of them you save a few Watts
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here and there times 120 million it's probably going to add up but also the
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way they manufacture them with lead free halogen free materials and it makes them
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optimal for not only Standalone Drive applications in your computer or small
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for small form factor enclosures where you can still put a 3 and 1 half inch
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drive but also things like their own enclosures where they rely only on
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passive cooling because the green does run so cool don't miss any of our
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computex 2013 coverage by making sure you're subscribed to lineus Tech tips
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and check out the links in the video description you can actually get some deals on WD drives as well as ways to
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figure out how we can amp up the prizes for our giveaway after the show and all
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that cool stuff