Western Digital Rescues Scuba Shop Drowning in Data
A vibrant underwater scene in Cozumel, Mexico, featuring a diver exploring coral reefs teeming with colorful fish.
Challenge
Expanding business data and accumulated high-resolution media were sinking, their NAS system causing them to drown in data.
Solution
Upgraded existing NAS storage systems with new Western Digital WD Red 26TB1 hard drives to deliver more space-efficient and cost-effective storage capacity.
Key Results
By simply upgrading existing hard drives with new higher-capacity drives, the dive shop was able to quickly create a larger, more reliable, and cost-effective data storage environment with the following improvements:
- Massive capacity for storing terabytes of high-quality 4K video and photos
- Immediately resolved data loss, drive failure, and other storage issues
- Increased peace of mind with reliable, on-premises storage of valuable business data
Drift through Cozumel's reefs and revel in its splendor
A close-up of a moray eel with its mouth open, swimming in an underwater environment.
Cozumel, Mexico, is often hailed as a diver's paradise. Its powerful, constant current keeps the water crystal clear, creating visibility often exceeding 120 feet. Divers effortlessly drift along vibrant reef walls and through cathedral-like caverns while enjoying stunning coral formations and hidden chambers bathed in ethereal light. Here, divers encounter an array of marine life, from graceful sea turtles and curious nurse sharks to sleek barracuda. Angelfish, butterflyfish, and sharpnose puffers graze coral gardens, while spotted eagle rays and stingrays glide across the sandy bottom. Every descent reveals vibrant marine spectacles that beckon divers back again and again.
Salty Endeavors - Cozumel's premier dive shop
Salty Endeavors Dive Center stands out as Cozumel's top boutique dive operation, delivering VIP service with small-group excursions and fully sun-shaded, fast boats. Their instructors and divemasters combine decades of experience with over 40,000 dives logged. This deep passion for the ocean, paired with personalized attention and local knowledge of every dive site, cements their reputation as the island's best scuba shop.
Trouble in paradise
Salty Endeavors relies on a central computer system for every aspect of their business: booking and processing transactions, managing dive certifications, running their website, and storing photos and 4K videos of guests' underwater adventures. As their daily operations grew—multiple boats, two dives per group, high-resolution footage—their NAS filled rapidly. Insufficient capacity led to users moving large amounts of data in and out to make room for new content, which led to data loss, corruption, and occasional crashes. They had previously invested in a high-quality NAS system, but filled the chassis with an odd mix of HDDs of various capacities and brands, leading to unpredictable performance and headaches for their system administrator.
No clouds on Cozumel's beautiful shores
Being a small island off of Mexico's remote Yucatan peninsula, Cozumel had limited cloud storage options that were both costly and unreliable. Therefore, all storage had to remain on-site. To overhaul their existing NAS storage infrastructure, Salty Endeavors installed all-new Western Digital WD Red Pro 26TB1 CMR hard drives. These enterprise-class HDDs are engineered to deliver high performance and reliability in commercial and enterprise NAS environments.
WD Red Pro drives to the rescue
Western Digital WD Red® Pro drives were engineered to handle high-intensity workloads in 24×7 multi-user NAS environments like this. WD Red Pro drives have delivered the performance, scalability, and dependability the visual engineers needed to store, share, and collaborate on the large amounts of data produced by their computer-generated imagery and visual effects.
WD Red Pro drives are built for high-intensity workloads running 24×7 in multi-user settings. With vibration-resistant rotors and optimized drive mechanics, they maintain peak performance even under constant read/write pressure, perfect for a busy dive shop generating large volumes of media every single day.
"Having a reliable storage system has enabled us to focus on our customers, not on our troubleshooting our NAS system."
These drives deliver the performance, scalability, and dependability businesses need to store, share, and collaborate on massive datasets. Each 26TB WD Red Pro offers sustained transfer rates up to 164MB/s2, supports annual workloads up to 550TB, and is fully RAID-optimized for multi-bay NAS systems. That means faster file transfers, more reliable rebuilds, and seamless playback of 4K/60 fps video without hiccups.
By unifying their NAS with six identically configured WD Red Pro HDDs, Salty Endeavors gained the massive capacity required for terabytes of high-quality video and photo archives. At the same time, they eliminated drive failures, data loss, and performance bottlenecks. The result is smoother daily operations, instantaneous access to dive footage, and total confidence that every guest's memories are safely stored.
A Western Digital WD Red Pro 26TB 3.5-inch NAS Hard Drive.
Keep your adventures underwater and your data on solid ground
Already scuba-certified? Visit Cozumel and let the scuba experts at Salty Endeavors guide you on a dive into one of the most beautiful places in the world. Learn more at www.cozumelscuba.com.
In the meantime, storage specialists are available to help you find the right solution to solve your data challenges.
