WD Red Drive for standard desktop use?

liberty610

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Oct 31, 2012
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Hi everyone.

I am getting mixed answers when I look this topic up online. So I was hoping someone might be able to clarify this for me.

I run a small production studio where I use a lot of storage space. I have the Western Digital PR4100 NAS unit that originally had 4 WD Red drives in it for 16TB total. I just upgraded those to 4 of the 8TB red drives. The original 4 drives that were in it, are now extras. I have a full tower PC case with 3 standard HDs in it. They are all Western Digital Black drives. 2 of them are 2TB each, the other is 1TB. I use one of the Black drives for production work (video editing/rendering ect) and the other 2 are for picture/video sotrage from various camera shoots.

I have room to add a couple more drives in my tower, so I was wondering if I could use these extra Red drives in a standard PC environment that isn't in a Raid configuration. I would just be using them for video/picture storage, where the most I would do is just view the files instead of trying to edit or do production related tasks on them.

I am seeing mixed advice, with some people saying that the firmware on Red drives are different and because of TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery) settings being enabled and they shouldn't be used in a standard desktop setting. Some are saying they are just fine for a standard desktop environment.

Can anyone clarify the pros/cons on this for me? Thanks in advance for any replies.