WD Red SA500 WDS500G1R0A 500 GB

Red equals reliability

WD Red SA500 is a new line of solid state drives from 500 GB to 4 TB designed for 24/7 operation. Includes both classic 2.5-inch and modern M.2 models, both with SATA3 bus. The main scope of these SSDs are NAS servers, that is, multi-disk network file storage. However, nothing prevents the Red SA500 from being used in both desktop PCs and laptops.

dual core controller

The Red SA500 is based on perhaps the best "old school" SSD controller — Marvell 88SS1074. It has two ARM architecture cores, eight channels of flash memory and supports external RAM cache chips. All this together allows him to develop the speed of reading and writing random files up to 95K and 85K IOPS (input-output operations per second), respectively. This parameter is especially important for those who often work with local databases (DBMS) containing a myriad of small files.

Selected Memory

The sequential read and write speeds of the Red SA500 also did not let us down: 560 and 530 Mbps, which is the practical limit of the SATA3 bus bandwidth. All thanks to the selected chips of SanDisk BICS3 64-layer 3D TLC flash memory (we remind you that SanDisk semiconductor factories are now owned by Western Digital). A separate Nanya buffer RAM chip adds even more responsiveness to the system.

Universal Soldier

In general, the WD Red SA500 is a fast (by SATA SSD standards), reliable (300 TB overwrite resource for a 500 GB model) and, most importantly, a versatile solid state drive. It is equally well suited for NAS storage, work or gaming desktops, and most laptops. Western Digital also has Red NAS-oriented hard drives.