Western Digital Introduces WD Red SN700: PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs for NAS Systems
by Ganesh T S on September 28, 2021 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- Western Digital
- SanDisk
- WD Red
Western Digital's Red series of drives for network-attached storage systems has a significant share in various NAS market segments. The series started off with a focus on hard drives, and more recently WD Red SSDs were introduced in Q4 2019, a few years after the SanDisk acquisition. These SATA SSDs (in both 2.5" and M.2 form-factors) were based on Marvell 88SS1074 controllers and targeted caching applications.
The increasing popularity of tiered storage, coupled with the deployment of NVMe (in the form of add-in cards, and now, natively in NAS boards) has prompted Western Digital to create a new member in the WD Red family. The new WD Red SN700 comes in 5 capacities ranging from 250GB to 4TB.
| WD Red SN700 NVMe SSDs for NAS | ||||||
| Capacity | 250 GB | 500 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | |
| Model Number | WDS250G1R0C | WDS500G1R0C | WDS100T1R0C | WDS200T1R0C | WDS400T1R0C | |
| Controller | SanDisk In-House? | |||||
| NAND Flash | 3D TLC NAND | |||||
| Form-Factor Interface |
M.2-2280, PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 | |||||
| Single-Sided (22.15mm x 80.15mm x 2.38mm) |
Double-Sided (22.15mm x 80.15mm x 3.58mm) |
|||||
| Seq. Read Max (128KB @ QD32) |
3100 MBps | 3430 MBps | 3400 MBps | |||
| Seq. Write Max (128KB @ QD32) |
1600 MBps | 2600 MBps | 3000 MBps | 2900 MBps | 3100 MBps | |
| Rand. Read IOPS (4KB @ QD32) |
220K | 420K | 515K | 480K | 550K | |
| Rand. Write IOPS (4KB @ QD32) |
180K | 380K | 560K | 540K | 520K | |
| SLC Caching | Yes | |||||
| DRAM Buffer | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
| Opal Encryption | No | |||||
| Power | Peak | 9.24 W | ||||
| PS3 (LP) | 70 mW | 100 mW | ||||
| PS4 (Sleep) | 3.5 mW | 5 mW | ||||
| Warranty | 5 years | |||||
| MTBF | 1.75 million hours | |||||
| TBW | 500 | 1000 | 2000 | 2500 | 5100 | |
| DWPD | 1 | 0.7 | ||||
| Addl. Info. | Link | |||||
| MSRP | $65 | $80 | $145 | $290 | $650 | |
A PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drive can provide a quantum leap in I/O performance, especially over pure HDD-based systems. NAS units are fast becoming hyperconverged application servers, and NVMe drives can improve user experience with both storage tasks as well as application tasks. In particular, tasks related to workloads like virtualization, multi-user collaborative editing and other similar applications. The benefits for traditional enterprise workloads such as intensive databases are also evident, even when the NVMe drive is used purely as a caching drive. Interestingly, the 1TB and lower capacity models have a 1 DWPD rating, while the 2TB and 4TB ones have a 0.7 DWPD endurance number.
It must be noted that Seagate has already released two generations of NVMe drives for the NAS market in their IronWolf series. WD is playing a bit of a catch-up in this particular market segment, but its SanDisk heritage and vertical integration can possibly give the WD Red SN700 an edge over the IronWolf series.
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shelbystripes - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
It’s too bad this is from WD, and you can’t trust them not to change the specs and sell you an inferior product at any time.kaidenshi - Thursday, September 30, 2021 - link
Yep, and unfortunately these days even Samsung and Crucial are guilty of swapping SSD controllers and NAND with inferior versions without notifying customers. It's hard to trust anyone in the storage market lately.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-se...
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/325824-buyer...
GNUminex_l_cowsay - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
If you ignore the 4TB drive those specs are identical to the WD Black SN750.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13760/the-western-d...
Samus - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
I was thinking the same thing. Outside of undisclosed firmware tweaks, these are basically SN750's - which are often found cheaper.Small Bison - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
The warrantied write endurance is significantly higher on these, though. 2000 TB vs 600 TB for the 1 TB model, for example. And at $145 vs $130 for the equivalent SN750 (as of right now, via Newegg), it’s not a huge increase.Samus - Friday, October 1, 2021 - link
True. More write endurance and not 'that' much more in price is ideal for some applications.Wereweeb - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Yeah, this looks like a rebranded SN750 with a slightly extended warranty (2-3x the DWPD). And given that this isn't a "Plus" skew, I wonder how they will implement SMR in NAND.MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Based on a quick search the SN700 looks like might be the least expensive option for a 4TB NVMe SSD that's not QLC.A handful of years ago the groundbreaking 2TB model of the Samsung 960 Pro was ~$1300. When the SN700 becomes available, you'll be able to get a 4TB drive for half that.
Granted, the 960 Pro is probably still faster, but the WD Red SN700 should be a lot closer in perf than any SATA drive.
LeonaHardyy - Monday, November 8, 2021 - link
This for sure a very expensive upgrade for my PC NAS units are very quality for sure! https://www.akrtowing.ca/Liam_Brown - Monday, December 6, 2021 - link
This is well worth the money! I know it's expensive, but the specs it can add to your PC are incredible! I'd like to take advantage of this for my <a href="https://igtasecurity.com/security-cameras/"&g... camera installation</a>