Western Digital RE SATA 4TB WD4000FYYZ Enterprise Hard Drive

It feels just like yesterday when we’ve had the chance to check out 3TB drives here in Back2Gaming and now the time has come to check out our first single-drive 4TB product. Unlike the previous ones we checked out though, the one we have for today is intended for the enterprise and business computing space but that doesn’t stop any enthusiast with the financial resources in getting one and that’s why we have one right here. Western Digital has sent us over their latest entry in their enterprise storage solutions port folio: simply called the WD RE. This line includes both SAS and SATA interface offerings and carry capacities up to 4TB and we have the top-end 4TB SATA (WD4000FYYZ) variant for review today. Let’s make this extremely showy!

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Western Digital seems like their on a roll these days with a lot of products rolling out their gates from the Thunderbolt VelociRaptor and now the RE line. Looks like they got everything covered from consumers and now the enterprise line. Barring the SAS model, basically anyone with a modern PC can hook up these new drives from WD on their desktop and use it as local storage provided you can afford the Php25,000 asking price. That said, even if this product is for the data center it still has its spot in any rig that’s why Back2Gaming’s got its hand on it. Let’s take it through our usual gauntlet and see how it stacks up against previous drive we’ve checked out.

Features of the new WD RE SAS and WD RE SATA hard drives include:

• Dual port, full duplex connectivity: Ideal for leading business-critical enterprise topologies. – I’ve seriously no idea how the different between SAS and SATA can do that
• 1.4M hours MTBF / 1.2M hours MTBF: Provides the highest level of reliability for 24×7 and up to 100% duty applications, for the WD RE SAS and SATA, respectively. – Pretty good numbers but I’ve seen better
• Planet friendly: RoHS compliant, halogen reduced components. – For the tree-hugger in you
• NoTouchâ„¢ ramp load technology: Recording heads never touch the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to recording heads and media as well as better drive protection in transit. – Because headcrashes will make you do a head crash
• Dual Stage Actuation (DSA) and Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFFâ„¢): Best in class operation and performance when drives are used in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis. – If your storage chassis happens to have a built-in jackhammer, this is great to have
• Highest Capacity: Perfect for maximum capacity enterprise storage solutions, such as scale out, cloud storage, RAID arrays, and NAS; a massive 2.4 PB of available storage (with 10 4U, 60 bay enclosures). – I know you nerds are here just for this
• Highest Reliability: 5-disk platform, 800 GB per platter, SAS-interface, 6 Gb/sec transfer rates built for high performance 24×7. – Wooohooo more numbers

• 	Model #	Interface	Form Factor	RPM	Capacity	Cache
  	WD4000FYYZ	SATA 6 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	4 TB	64 MB
  	WD3000FYYZ	SATA 6 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	3 TB	64 MB
  	WD2000FYYZ	SATA 6 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	2 TB	64 MB
  	WD2003FYYS	SATA 3 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	2 TB	64 MB
  	WD1003FBYX	SATA 3 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	1 TB	64 MB
  	WD5003ABYX	SATA 3 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	500 GB	64 MB
  	WD2503ABYX	SATA 3 Gb/s	3.5 Inch	7200	250 GB	64 MB

CLOSER LOOK

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As with most hard drives, the dimensions are still standard 3.5″ form factor. To provide 4000GB, WD has employed a 5-platter design, 800GB per platter, which is very visible in the drives bulk. The last picture shows the WD RE 4TB lined up with other drives for enterprise racks.

PERFORMANCE

Test Setup

Processor	Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 3770K 3.5Ghz (Turbo up to 3.9Ghz)
Motherboards	ECS Z77H2-A2X Golden Board
Cooling	Corsair H100
Power Supply	Silverstone Strider Plus ST65F-P
Memory	Avexir Core Series DDR3-2400 16GB
Video Cards	ASUS GeForce GTX660 Ti DirectCUII TOP
Storage	Kingston HyperX SSD 120GB, WD RE SATA 4TB, WD VelociRaptor 1TB, Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB, Seagate Barracuda 3TB
Operating System	Windows 7 64-bit SP1

 

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We used HD Tach to measure the potential read speed of our SSD. The average read speed is what matters in this test as this is more indicative of the drive’s performance on a day to day basis. HD Tach is at end of life status right now but we believe the program still manages to present a valid picture what to expect from a storage product.

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Again, Average read speed is what counts here and we can see the WD RE positioning itself quite well topping out at around 156.8MB/s which is nearly in VelociRaptor territories.

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For potential write testing, HD Tune was used to measure the drive’s write performance. Again, we focus on the average results for real-world relevance.

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In complement to the read graphs, we see our potential write speed with the WD RE again ranks good for 3rd place as the already powerful Seagate 3TB and WD VelociRaptor still contend for top spot.

[/tab] [tab] Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. Crystal Disk Mark measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.

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Here is where the WD RE flexes its muscle overtaking the Seagate 3TB in small file operations which should matter for any enterprise and database operations. This puts the WD RE 4TB at 2nd spot next to its powerful brother, the 1TB VelociRaptor.

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AS SSD is a benchmark tool that determines the performance of Solid State Drives but can also be used to measure hard drives, it just takes longer. The tool contains six synthetic and three copy tests.

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Similar to the previous test, the WD RE enterprise drive takes 2nd spot next to the Raptor, easily putting out very good numbers for an HDD. What’s surprising though is that when it comes to write performance, the WD RE comes out on top, easily edging the the competition with an impressive small file write performance. Again, we stress the importance of these numbers when it comes to datacenter operations.

We’ve also included AS SSD’s built in file copy option. Not much comparative for this part but we can see how much faster the WD RE is compared to its desktop cousin.

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ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them. Many companies use ATTO as their reference in their marketing.

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If you look closely at the read graph, we can see the Seagate take top spot up until 8KB but that’s when the WD RE catches up with it and trades blow for 2nd spot. As for the write performance, we’ve already seen how impressive the small file write capabilities of the WD RE is and again it shows here as it dominates all others up to 8KB. Sadly though, that’s where it stops for the WD RE as it maxes out at around 167MB/s for write speed and 177MB for read. WD rates this drive for around 171MB/s so we’re around that number and that’s pretty respectable, especially a mechanical drive.

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ACCESS TIMES

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We’ve omitted a couple of tests from our suite like the boot-up time as this drive is positioned at a place where we just can’t see it being a boot drive. Regardless, the bottom-line from all these results is that the WD RE is a very capable hard drive easily creeping up closely to the Seagate 3TB and WD VelociRaptor 1TB, one is a 1TB per platter monster and the other is a 10,000RPM beast and both of which are top of the line from their respective brands.

TEMPERATURE & POWER CONSUMPTION

As most data-center focus on efficiency and maximizing resource-utilization, every watt counts.

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At an ambient 26-27*C, the drive idles at around 29*C and tops out at around 44*C. Now we’ve seen cooler drives, but with 5-platters this is expected and for mechanical hard drives, it is reasonable. As most data centers and storage racks have more effective ventilation, numbers should be better in these environments.

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WD rates the 4TB WD RE at 10.4W during load and 8.6W during idle. Based on our readings, the drive consumes 10.6W during load and 8.2W at idle. This is very much the same values that WD has tacked onto their specs sheet and its good to know it delivers advertised value if not better especially at idle. Now these may not be the most exciting figures especially as SSD’s consume far less, but we’re very glad that drive only needs so little power.

CONCLUSION

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The step up to 4TB is definitely the most important aspect here but maintaining competitive if not class-leading performance is what’s key to the success of this product. For the most of our test, we see WD RE 4TB impress us showing it can hang with the likes of the VelociRaptor and the Barracuda. What’s more impressive is that its small file write operation performance is the best we’ve seen from a mechanical drive to date. For database applications and other active application that won’t be seeing large file transfers this is good news. All in all this is a great achievement from Western Digital and as such we award it straight 10’s for quality and performance. This drive is also backed by a 5-year warranty which is equally impressive.

Again, we stress that this drive is for enterprise applications like database servers, NAS and NVR/DVR or video-surveillance applications. That should be obvious, as the WD is asking for Php24,725 (estimated) for this 4TB hard disk. Any company that needs that kind of storage should find the acquisition rather an easy choice as the electrical consumption, ease of maintenance and space saved by acquiring a single drive should be better than a multi-drive option. Still, for any CFO the cost of a bunch of these drives is daunting especially for any storage admin proposing a rack filled with such. With the Thailand flooding way behind us, we’ve yet to see HDD prices return to how they were.

We’re looking forward to WD’s desktop variations of these monster drives. For now, the enterprise space gets first dibs on it and the WD RE gets our GOLD Award.

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