WD red series

[velocci]

Hi al, i'm thinking of buying two WD red 3TB hardrives for my PC. I might buy a nas later on and put them in there. what does everything think of them? are they good? are they fast considering they are only 5400rpm? they are supposed to be quiet with low temperatures. does everyone find this to be true?

 

[zdbc13]

They are pretty slow but WD is a good brand. Are you going to RAID 0?

 

[velocci]

no. I had a nas configured to raid 1 and something happened to the volume on it and I couldn't access the data. it might have been a virus or a hardware failure or both. I didn't realize that raid 1 only protects you from a HDD failure. if something happens to the volume, both hardrives get affected. so now i'm going to buy two new hardrives and have them in my PC and configure both as individual drives and do manual backups to make sure both are the same. I may end up getting a better nas later on and putting the hardrives in that, which is why i'm considering the WD red series. so are they alot slower or just a little slower? i like the hardrives because they use less power, less noisy and are more dependable. I don't mind if they are a little slower because I'm just using them to store my data. but if they are alot slower than maybe I wouldn't get them.

 

[zdbc13]

They're faster than green drives and the extra warranty and longevity are great:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/western-digital-red-review-are-nasoptimized-hdds-worth-the-premium/5
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248-9.html
They'll work even better when you get a NAS

 

[velocci]

thanks for the links. tom's site says they are "24x7 availability". do you know what that means?

 

[peterp01]

At a minimum they will be 25% slower than your typical 7200RPM drives. That sounds like a big difference to me.

 

[ELMO_2006]

The WD RED series drives are geared towards NAS installations which are run 24x7.

 

[zdbc13]

They're like server drives that are meant to be run continuously (24 hours a day x 7 days a week).

 

[velocci]

so right now, and maybe always, I'm gong to put them in my PC to store data, not to run th OS and applications. lets say i'll ever buy a nas for these hardrives and i'll kep hem in my PC. do you think i would regret buying these?

 

[zdbc13]

No, they'll be reliable and low power. Not super fast but for data drives that's not the most important thing. If you can afford them, go ahead....

 

[ELMO_2006]

You are paying a premium for a drive that is geared toward NAS installations which will now be slated for regular storage. With the price of these drives, you can purchase WD Green HDD's for almost half the price.

 

[velocci]

that's a good point. thanks. are the green drives as reliable as the red?

You are paying a premium for a drive that is geared toward NAS installations which will now be slated for regular storage. With the price of these drives, you can purchase WD Green HDD's for almost half the price.

 

[ELMO_2006]

I have 5 that are used for storage and for backup purposes and thus far have not had an issue.
My WD Drives are as follows:

2x 1.5TB WD Green via Win7 Striped volume.
1x 1TB WD Black + 1x 1TB Samsung F3 via Raid0 within Enclosure
1x 2TB WD Mybook = WD Green
1x 3TB WD Mybook = WD Green

The only drive to have failed was the Samsung which was replaced under warranty however individual results will vary.

You may wish to head over to www.newegg.ca or www.newegg.com and read the reviews. Please note that with all reviews, you will need to take them with a grain of salt.

The warranty differences between the Green and Red series are as follows:

WD Green - Component = 2 years, Retail Kit = 3 years
WD Red - Component = 3 years, Retail Kit = 3 years.

 

[velocci]

according to this chart though, the red is a bit faster than the green.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248-9.html