Western Digital introduces 26TB hard drive for NAS

Western Digital has introduced the WD Red Pro 26TB hard drive for network attached storage (NAS).

The drive uses conventional magnetic recording (CMR), which provides stable write speeds without the latency typical of SMR. The device is equipped with a 7200 rpm spindle, 512 MB cache and a SATA interface with data transfer speeds of up to 272 MB/s, improved thanks to OptiNAND technology.

The WD Red Pro is optimized for RAID arrays and is equipped with anti-vibration technology with internal sensors. The average service life is 2.5 million hours, and the annual data transfer rate is up to 550 TB.

The drive is focused on storing large amounts of information, including 8K video and Blu-ray backups. The cost is $ 569.99.

Western Digital (WD), one of the leading manufacturers of solid-state drives and hard drives, is discontinuing the production of SSDs. The company has officially completed the separation of its NAND memory division, transferring it to SanDisk.

WD will now focus exclusively on hard drives, and SSD production will be continued by SanDisk, which actually led this direction last year. WD’s flash operations initially depended on the production of Kioxia (formerly Toshiba), and most likely SanDisk will continue to cooperate with this or another supplier, for example Samsung.

For users, this means only a change of brand: new WD SSDs will no longer appear, but analogues will be sold under the SanDisk brand. However, the question of positioning remains open – the SanDisk name is traditionally associated with memory cards, not high-performance SSDs.

This move was not a surprise, since it was announced back in October 2023. Additionally, WD has recently faced problems in this segment, including lawsuits over SanDisk external SSD failures.

Gamers accustomed to the WD Black SN850X and other popular models will now have to rely on SanDisk products or competitors such as Samsung and Crucial.