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The
WD 2TB RE4-GP™ Enterprise drive
has most certainly lived up to its
claims and Western Digital must be
extremely pleased, a hard disc as
versatile as this has produced such
exceptional results. It most certainly
caught us on the hop here with its raw
performance and a huge leap forward from
its elder brother the RE2. Remember
when comparing this drives results you
should not mix it up with the RE3
Enterprise drives as they are of a
completely different class and do not
fall into the "green" scenario and
therefore results will be different. It
also means that many enterprise end
users from all walks of life can utilise
this disc in just about any scenario
that springs to mind. Large data
centres, web service providers who are
now penalised on per watt usage, these
drives have to be to the forefront of
your mind when planning out hard drive
upgrades and new servers. Video File
on demand servers and Video Surveillance
end users will be jumping around at the
endless possibilities that this 2TB
drive will bring - on mass storage space
savings for one, but importantly the
added valued security from WD's
enterprise discs.
What of
the Tier Ones, S.I.’s and OEM’s alike,
well, for those trying to move forward
the ultimate system this has to be
currently using a large slave hard disc
of choice for the performance systems.
Once more the emphasis today globally is
of lower the carbon footprint and saving
energy. Whilst a powerful workstation
does pull a substantial amount of power,
we can compensate slightly with the
introduction of these drives as slave
discs and saving some power back into
the system. The drive has shown it has
the performance aided with the secondary
drive processor, so there should be no
hesitations for it not being used within
a mission critical system. For the
ones who feel the need for bigger is
better; then what the heck as the
WD 2TB RE4-GP™ Enterprise drive
does it exceedingly well.
When drives of this magnitude normally
appear, a bios fix is urgently
required. Not so again the
Supermicro X8DAi rose to the
occasion finding the drives first time
and allowing us to manipulate them into
our desired configurations for test.
We have
consistently seen read/write speeds
sitting at approximately 85 MB/s. A
remarkable set of figures. Hard disc's
of this nature normally struggle to
reach 75 - 80MB/s. Western Digital has
done their homework well within the
logic of the disc in all sectors. What
we did importantly find was that
utilising the
2TB RE4-GP™ Enterprise drive
at performance level found the Disc to
have hardly any impact on the CPU usage
which is good news for those intensive
I/O outputs. Therefore, we have no
worries on that department as the 500GB
platters will make short work of this as
we have seen within the burst speeds are
extra-ordinary to say the least. What
we have to carefully note are the
real-time results obtained from day to
day usage as these are what we need to
see which in turn gives us a more
realistic idea of what to actually
expect.
Temperatures of the Disc as seen within
the article are respectable for a unit
of this nature surrounded by a very
tight condensed area of the test
system. Test systems here are fully
enclosed within the chassis to get the
true ambient system temperatures, not
that of a system lying on an open
workbench. What must be dually noted
and taken into consideration is that the
temperatures seen within the HD Tune Pro
benchmark were recorded at the end of
the working set of benchmarks and
results. So these are very respectable
temperatures from a working system of
this calibre. As a point of note
ambient average room temps were
approximately 22.5C. As a point of
interest and to gauge the true localised
heat of the hard disc at the bottom of
the chassis, the lower fan of the
chassis was disengaged fully.
Another
important factor is the price of this
beastie romping home at today’s rate of
an MRSP of $329 US Dollars and this is a
reasonable price for a hard disc of this
capacity. Shipping, at going to print;
drives should be available with OEM's,
S.I.'s and
E-Tailers
on this
article going to print therefore; please
watch your resellers sites very closely.
The
pioneering technology Western Digital
has implemented into the drive is
amazing and one has to give kudos were
it is deserved to the engineering R & D
teams. Time will tell if other 2TB hard
drives surface in the wild. Though for
now and with demonstrated proof of
concept and availability, Western
Digital have soared ahead with their
superb manufacturing magic. With
"green" dominating both
Supermicro and
Western Digital; it most certainly
is an exceptional point of focus that
these two companies have concentrated
upon.
Supermicro and
Western Digital now have
implemented this exceptional protocol
for some time promoting green whenever
possible. Major corporations who
boast green and want to buy green, then
this should be immediately and
ultimately their first port of call. Going back earlier we stipulated
large data centres for the enterprise
user who are now penalised on per watt
usage, you should look no further. This
is a proposed marriage of convenience
utilising these two companies will in
turn save you long term monies.
An extremely important factor no-one
within the enterprise market should be
ignoring today.
Although short, it has been very factual
and hard hitting proving unequivocally
that Western Digital have done their
sums right. This magnificent
monumental powerfully built 3 ½” Disc
takes the throne as our star "green"
performer. |
