Western Digital 2.5″ Red 1TB NAS HDD Review

A Closer Look

Having a browse over the 2.5″ Red, we can see from the drives label, that this particular drive as mentioned has a 1TB capacity (Model number WD10JFCX) and comes with Western Digital’s NASware 2.0 features. NASware 2.0 is an exclusive technology to WD that gives their drives far more enhanced reliability with a 35% improvement in MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) over their standard desktop drives, better compatibility with NAS systems, a more energy-efficient operation which in turn leads to lower operating temperatures, a longer warranty for piece of mind and a system known as 3D Active Balance Plus. This dual-plane balance control, has helped to drastically increase the reliability of the drives – with a better balance, there is far less vibrations and this means the platters will degrade at a much lower rate thus increasing the longevity of the drive and its performance

Measuring in at only 9.5mm high, The 2.5″ red drive may not be as slim as the top end SSDs that we see around today, but for a drive that packs 1TB of storage this profile is by no means ‘thick’.

Flipping the drive over and having a look at the PCB, the 2.5″ Red’s PCB covers the majority of the drive, with a the actuators mechanism requiring a small cut-out to one corner and the spindle also poking through the bottom of the drive.

Removing the PCB we can see where the drives motor contacts are to the top and to the far right is an 18 pin data header for linking the drives internals with the PCB. A thin foam layer reduces any resonant noise that may be produced during drive operation.

Looking at the PCB itself, we can once again see to the bottom left a set of contact pads – similar to those found on Intel CPUs for connecting the PCB to the platters inside and on the other side of the PCB are the four contact pins that power the spindle, running the drive up to 5400RPM.

Keeping the drives operation in full swing is a Marvell produced 88i9446-NDB2 high performance storage controller.

Paired with the controller is a Samsung branded K4H2816380-LCC which gives the drive a mere 16MB of cache.

The last main chip on the PCB is a WD branded Nautilus motor controller. With this drive having Intellispeed capabilities, the WD branded chip is geared for the NASware operations that WD require over third-party controllers.