Western Digital WD Red Pro with up to 20 terabytes of storage

The OptiNAND technology from manufacturer Western Digital is now also used in NAS models. This now enables a storage capacity of up to 20 terabytes for the WD Red Pro hard drive.

WD Red Pro with 20 TB of storage

Western Digital is introducing its proprietary OptiNAND technology to its NAS lineup, equipping the WD Red Plus hard drive with up to 20 terabytes of storage. Realized is the additional capacity compared to the previous top model with 18 TB of storage solely by the new technology with additional NAND flash (64 GByte NAND in the new OptiNAND drives). Purely mechanically, there should be no innovations.

Accordingly, Western Digital could achieve a capacity increase of 2 terabytes by increasing the flash memory. The manufacturer’s OptiNAND technology ensures that the heads of the drives can follow the track on the hard disk faster and no longer have to fully rely on the magnetic disks required for this.

The result is faster access to storage, allowing heads to follow tracks better, which provides an increase in capacity due to a smaller form factor. OptiNAND technology is to be used in all drives with a capacity of 20 TBytes or more in the future. However, this will probably only be in the server sector, because Western Digital’s desktop segment currently offers a maximum of 10 TB.

WD Red Pro already available

The WD Red Pro hard drive with the type designation WD201KFGX is already available in stores. It is available as a classic 3.5-inch SATA hard drive with traditional CMR technology and reaches 7,200 revolutions per minute. The model offers 512 MB DRAM cache and an extrapolated life expectancy of 100,000 hours. Thus, 300 TBytes of data per year are possible within the warranty period of five years.

While Western Digital itself has not yet named an official price, first retailers are already listing the hard drive from 819 Euros. However, the prices should probably drop quickly, after all, the Western Digital WD Red Pro with 18 TB capacity is already available in stores from about 479 euros. As a delivery date for the Western Digital WD Red Pro 20TB, retailers currently state March 31, 2022.