WD Red SN700: New NVMe SSDs for NAS systems

Western Digital has introduced the WD Red SN700, a new SSD that is especially targeted at NAS systems. The manufacturer relies on a specially developed SSD controller and flash memory, which ensures a particularly low price.

Fast NAS SSD

The WD Red SN700 is the first SSD storage solution for network attached storage, after the manufacturer had only a much slower SATA model in the program with the WD Red SA500.

The SN700 is an NVMe SSD in M.2-2280 format and is primarily intended as a caching solution to noticeably accelerate read and write speeds in existing NAS systems. For this, an NVMe chip with PCIe Gen3 x4 is combined with the latest TLC memory including 3 bits per cell. Capacities from 250 GB up to a maximum of 4 terabytes are offered. The larger models are said to reach speeds of 3.4 GByte/s (read) and up to 3.1 GByte/s (write).

For NAS systems, durability in 24/7 operation is especially important. Western Digital puts this at 1 or 0.7 DWPD (Drive Writes per Day) for the WD Red SN700. In combination with the five-year warranty, this results in 1,000 TBW (Total Bytes Written) for the 500-GByte model and 5,100 TBW for the 4-TByte model.

Price and Availability

The WD Red SN700 SSD series models for NAS systems are already available, at least from Western Digital’s US store. In the German online shop, they have also been listed since October 01, starting at an MSRP of 64.99 for the 250 GB model. Four terabytes, on the other hand, are priced at 649.99 Euros.