At long last and well overdue the WD 5TB Red HDD is now starting to be listed, and this is backed up by the anecdotal evidence of the 4TB HDD's dropping in price a little.

WD50EFRX

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/shop/Sh ... 31&t=507#T

I have been waiting for this to happen for some time, it now looks like it will happen soon

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Update (21-07-2014), the 6TB WD Red HDD has been launched as well, and ironically the 6TB HDD is in stock at Newegg Canada whilst the 5TB is still missing.

Better news still, judging by the pricing, the 6TB HDD is just as affordable per GB as the 5TB model, which is of course a serious advantage over what is usually expected of a price premium of 15-25%

Here is AnandTech's review (does not include all of the data for other drives tested, but you cant afford those anyway ).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8263/6-tb ... ec-hgst-he

And here is the prices at Newegg (21-07-2014)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... LJPEHHSZQT

And if you wonder why you cant see their prices, they have likely removed them (standard procedure for items out of stock with no current resupply date).

I hope to see these available the other side of the Atlantic soon, especially with the prices listed, the 6TB looks like a sweek offering with exactly the same cost per TB s th 5TB model and not much more than the new sweet-spot of the 3-4TB models.


Andy

WHat makes me wonder is if the 6tb consumer drives from WD will be like Seagate or will it be like Hitachi Helium drives. Personally i hope 4tb drops some, my guess is we will see them around $150 mark, while 5tb should remain around $180-200 and the 6tb might be $250-300.

I am going to wait and see what happens for a couple of months for a couple of reasons.

Firstly I was planning on getting 4x 4TB Drives once they have settled on a lower price and Seagate / Toshiba have had a little price war.

Secondly, in light of the "WD Care Pack" that extends a WD Red with a 3-year warranty to having a 4-year warranty for £6 per drive I will also consider the 5TB HDD's so I wont have to worry about upgrades for a very long time.

http://www.dabs.com/learnmore/component ... -programs/

All in, I will wait and see before committing to anything.


Andy

Uggh rotating disks.

On another thought, Andy when are you going to get rid of RAID5 and go to RAID 1+0? Parity based RAID was old school more than ten years ago, but then every day is international backup awareness day.

I wont be.

A couple of reasons, firstly I dont have the money to be able to afford all of the storage that I want/need AND to go for RAID 10, secondly I am not a large fan of RAID 1 as I have had a few bad experiences over the years, but I do keep on-top of my backups (when I actually have enough space to do the backups - that issue will be fixed with my next array upgrade).


Andy

I forgot to add.

Read my original post, updated with new info.


Andy

Thanks for the update, im really interested on the 6tb reds, but seem also seagate is moving to 8tb, will be mostly for enterprise Seagate is Sampling 8TB HDDs, but i bet we will see sometimes soon the 8tb consumer drives... this might push the 6tb from the $300 price tag toward $200-$250, probably the 5tb toward $150-$200 and the 4tb below $150.... but im glad the hdd market is starting to move on, seems we stayed on 4tb for a long time.

Have anyone seen any review where the noise level of the 5 & 6 TB WD Red drives is measured? Especially since at least the latter is 5 platter.

Preferably, I'd like to see such a review from SPCR, but I don't know if that is ongoing?

Mike C confirmed that SPCR has 6TB drives from both Seagate and WD on request.

Here is hoping that they turn up soon.


Andy