WD "Red" drives? At Newegg.

[RaiderJ]

Would using Red drives make sense for a 5- or 6-drive RAID array where each drive is plugged directly into the PC's motherboard? My objective is capacity and longevity (i.e., I don't want drives failing after a year or two), not speed. I still haven't decided between on-board hardware RAID or Windows soft RAID. My current setup uses 5x green-type drives (from mixed vendors) in an external RAID enclosure, and I'm very worried about the drives starting to fail. Plus I'm looking to get rid of the enclosure itself.

I think the Red drives would make sense for a RAID array of that size, regardless of where they are plugged in, at least according to the technical aspects of the drive WD is marketing.

However, I would be nervous about setting up a RAID with all Red drives because they are so new. All the fancy features are great on paper, but real-world stats on their longevity are not available yet. By having all drives of the same type, you increase your chances of a systemic failure of that model killing off multiple drives in a time period that is shorter than your ability to replace the drives.

My vote would be to continue your path of utilizing drives from different manufacturers, or at least drives that have been manufactured at different times.

As for RAID type, hardware RAID can be more portable and sometimes better performance, but Windows RAID can be very portable as well between Windows OS's. I personally use ZFS, so all for software RAID. Having extra hardware just gives another component to fail, and software RAID can actually be faster.

 

[ohforfs]

I wouldn't buy a WD penny chew. Worst HD failure rate by far in my experience, and they always try to gouge the customer for extra money, which is exactly what this "pay extra to use a NAS" drive is for.

 

[Tsavo]

My Red 1TB came in today. I would have grabbed a 2TB, but Amazon was out of them when I ordered.

It replaces the 500GB Samsung F3 that I had as my main data drive behind my SSD on my primary PC. The Samsung died, needed a new HDD right away. Space wasn't a concern since all I keep on that drive are games and boobs pix and other backups. I probably would have never used all the space on the 2TB, so no real loss save for the notion that the 2TB unit is supposed to be faster than this one.

Seat of the pants feel, the Red is much faster as a data drive than the 7200 RPM F3, which was an old design. I wouldn't want to use one as an OS drive because it's still a 5400 RPM unit.

I had 350GB of data that needed to be put on it, and it is easily the fastest home drive I've used for that purpose; it's faster than my F3 was and the 1TB Black (FALS) that I've got. This was to be expected as these are old designs with low storage density. Beyond that, it's vastly faster than the 2 platter 5400RPM 1TB WD Green and 1TB Samsung F2 that I've got...then again, those are old drive designs.

It builds thumbnails of "media" faster than any of my home drives do...maybe WD made a drive that has enthusiastic mammary photograph prediction algorithms..who knows, but it's fast at doing it.

I've only noticed one instance where it's slower than my F3 was, and that's in the loading times of levels in Everquest 2. All of my other games pop right off of it in a manner indistinguishable from the 7200 RPM drive I have.

And there you have it. The world's fastest 5400 RPM drive.

 

[Tsavo]

Forgot to add: next to no vibration, some noise, but not at all distracting.

CDM bench, indicative of drive performance for what I use it for. WD Red on the left, Samsung F3 on the right:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[Elitecrewman]

I'm in the market for some 3TB drives for this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816111149

I've been running it with just 4 random drives I had laying around in JBOD. Would the red's be a good fit?

 

[taltamir]

If I can get TLER on a drive with 24/7 support for three years, I'm buying eight of the 3TB models for my server.

TLER is not a feature, TLER is the REMOVAL of a feature that causes compatibility issues with low quality RAID controllers (the 2 minute it takes to perform a "deep recovery" cycle causes no issues at all with ZFS' RAID for example)

Honestly, the only things I really want from those drives is the reduced power consumption compared to the green drives. But at the moment they are too overpriced due to initial shortages do justify that.
The no head parking is nice and so is the supposedly more durable components and reduced vibrations... but neither justifies paying extra.
The rest is just meh.

 

[Soulkeeper]

To be honest these don't interest me at all.

Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001
Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001
The newest seagates also use 1TB platters, and low power.
Apparently the dual core controller chip on these one's pcb uses 40nm tech for low power usage. And they get near 200MB/s
Also $100 cheaper for the 3TB seagate than the wd red ...

Would be nice to see WD release a black series drive with 1TB platters to compete here

 

[BFG10K]

Would a WD Red drive make a good second system "storage" drive with the primary drive being an SSD for OS, applications, etc.?

It would be absolutely fine for a storage drive. It’s faster and has a better warranty than the Green, so it’s good if you’re looking for that kind of drive.

The rest is just meh.

It’s faster and has a better warranty than the Green drives.

Also $100 cheaper for the 3TB seagate than the wd red ...
Would be nice to see WD release a black series drive with 1TB platters to compete here

The problem with the Seagate drives is the one year warranty, and questionable reliability. They’re fast but I wouldn’t trust them.

FYI –the Caviar Blue WD10EZEX is a 7200RPM 1TB platter drive. But yeah, the Black line badly needs a refresh.

 

[Ferzerp]

No. A Red and its higher associated cost only make sense for a NAS. For what you want to do, a Green would be just fine.

I can't really agree with you here. They make sense for any consumer RAID implementation.

I have 4 running in a WHS box. The noise level (or lack of) is great. Not having to worry about power saving features and read retries causing them to drop out of the array and force a rebuild, super great (especially after seeing the mess that is trying to use consumer drives in RAID arrays over the years).

 

[billyb0b]

... since all I keep on that drive are games and boobs pix and other backups.

+1 for boobs pix :thumbsup:

 

[taltamir]

It’s faster and has a better warranty than the Green drives.

Both fall in the meh category.