Are the WD Reds better than the Greens for 24 hour operation?

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jordan12

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So I want to build a decent sized drivepool. So these drives will be spinning all the time. 24/7 operation.

Are the reds better than the greens for this kind of thing?
 
WD specifically states REDs were rated for 24/7 operation.

But greens have their merits, power saving. But both reds and greens have 5k RPM's so power consumption should be about the same.

So the general answer is reds are better for your application.
 
Greens are really only good for long-term, less often utilized, power efficient, mass storage. They are great at what they're for, but these days HDD's are no longer a one-size fits all. You have to know what your needs are.

In a 24/7 case like this without specifics, then I'd definitely go Red. They are geared more toward NAS/RAID though. I consider them the poor mans version of those compared to the Black/RE4 drives where you don't care about power consumption or noise, yet need them to run 24/7 and kick ass doing so.

Depends on what you're doing exactly.
 
I got a green and it died after a year with only a few hours usage.

I only use red now but I think the reliability of disk drives has gone down a lot since WD used to have 5 year warranties and Samsung made the legendary EcoGreen F4 drives.

Once 2Tb SSD's are available it's probably time to get rid of mechanicals or "spinners" completely as they just fail too often nowadays.
 
Greens go to sleep, which will kill any kind of raid setup (learn from my fail), so I'd avoid them for that. Greens should only really be used as backup drives. Run a job, then when it's done it can go to sleep or do what it wants since it's only going to be turned off and removed anyway.

The blacks work well for raid too, I have 8 1TB blacks in a raid 5 and it's been problem free.
 
HGST NAS are faster then RED's but do not consume that much more power, I think it was 6.2 watts at idle.
They have the same 3 year warranty and are 24/7 as well plus vibration compensation.

They have been on sale recently, usually $130-135 for the 3TB.
 
i have two very old 1.5TB wd greens with about 30,000+ hours on the clock each. they're still chugging away, no signs of degradation and im able to stop them going to sleep. i want to replace them due to being 4+ years old but I'm not overly concerned about their health. i also have two of the EcoGreen F4 2TB disks, both have about 20,000 hours on them, still going strong. I'll replace those after the greens.
 
I got a green and it died after a year with only a few hours usage.
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This will happen with any drive from the cheapest drive to the highest end. I have had drives from more than 1/2 dozen manufacturers die this way.
 
How about the Seagate NAS drives? Are they comparable to the WD reds?

Basically I will be using these drives as mass storage only. But they will need to be on 24/7. I do not want to have to turn them off. And want to make sure I get drives that can do this without issues.
 
My server has a boot SSD and mostly 2TB drives. One 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F3, several 2TB WD Reds and a single 1TB WD Black. I use the Black for all live TV recordings with my PVR app. The 2TB Reds/Samsung are used for everything else. I think this gives the most bang for the buck on power usage & functionality. Keep a decent 7200rpm (like the WD Black) for anything I/O intensive and use Reds for everything else.

I have two external USB drives with 2TB WD Greens. Plug them in, backup, unplug them. Good for that.
 
Are there any drives not designed for 24/7 use?

I figured at this point the only difference are firmwares and warranties and prices. I do recognize the Reds have some important features for RAID, but that would be for a hardware RAID configuration only is my understanding?
 
It depends if you are doing hardware raid or not. If you are doing hardware raid then you will need the Reds, if not and you are doing something like MDADM or ZFS then go with the Greens.

The Reds are slightly faster but it's not like it's mind-blowing in difference.
 
Just wanted to say that my experience with greens for jbod's with stuff like flexraid has been really good. Unlike the seagates I got.....
 
kac77 said:
If you are doing hardware raid then you will need the Reds, if not and you are doing something like MDADM or ZFS then go with the Greens.
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no, I would not use greens for any kind of raid.
 
kac77 said:
It depends if you are doing hardware raid or not. If you are doing hardware raid then you will need the Reds, if not and you are doing something like MDADM or ZFS then go with the Greens.

The Reds are slightly faster but it's not like it's mind-blowing in difference.
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yeah, i was mainly referring to the TLER feature, which seems like something they recommend you turn off for stuff like ZFS. So yeah, if hardware raid, then get the REDS.
 
I go with Reds over the Greens in my ZFS array.

The main reason is that Reds have a 3 years warranty and Greens have a 2 year. I like that I am guaranteed one extra year of operation of the drive at least via RMA is I have to.

I'm buying 4TBs now so I get 4TB Reds on sale for about $165 last time I bought a few. Cheapest i've seen the Greens is $140, so I feel $25 more is worth it for 1 more year warranty.

Look at it this way, out of 5-6 drives, if you had 5-6 greens and one died past the 2 year warranty you would pay the same because you would have to buy a replacement compared to if you had Reds and could still get the free replacement within that third year.

Now Blacks have a 5 year warranty, but those cost quite a bit more and also use more power so there's that.
 
Honestly, I'm using Red series drives for everything these days. I mean, sure, I have four 3TB Reds in my file server, but I also have two 2TB Reds in my desktop.

Went with Reds in my desktop because they're insanely quiet AND perform well. Noticably better than the 1TB Caviar Black I used to use (and much quieter).

jwcalla said:
Why not?
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Because WD Green series drives do not have configurable TLER (time limited error recovery). Green drives also have an abnormally long TLER period set.

If a Green drive encounters an error, it will pause all operations and attempt to recover over, and over, and over, and over... It will try for so long that most RAID controllers will mark the disk as bad and drop it from the array before it finishes.

Good RAID controllers handle error recovery on their own, they don't need the disk to do it. Reds have a short TLER by default (short enough not to cause issues with any RAID controller), and can have it totally disabled if need be.
 
I've have a 2009 1TB green running 24/7 for over three years in a plex server (measured by Christmas holidays). Was a backup drive for at least a year before that. No problems yet.
 
pbassjunk said:
I've have a 2009 1TB green running 24/7 for over three years in a plex server (measured by Christmas holidays). Was a backup drive for at least a year before that. No problems yet.
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Now only if you had 999 more of these we could begin to make conclusions about your experience..

My point is 1 or 10 drives are statistically meaningless.
 
drescherjm said:
Now only if you had 999 more of these we could begin to make conclusions about your experience..

My point is 1 or 10 drives are statistically meaningless.
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Completely agree. However, statistically meaningless > 0, so anecdote away!
 
Agreed. You do show that there is a greater than 0% chance a 2009 era WDC 2TB green will make it ~5 years.
 
Unknown-One said:
Because WD Green series drives do not have configurable TLER (time limited error recovery). Green drives also have an abnormally long TLER period set.

If a Green drive encounters an error, it will pause all operations and attempt to recover over, and over, and over, and over... It will try for so long that most RAID controllers will mark the disk as bad and drop it from the array before it finishes.

Good RAID controllers handle error recovery on their own, they don't need the disk to do it. Reds have a short TLER by default (short enough not to cause issues with any RAID controller), and can have it totally disabled if need be.
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Does that really apply for software RAID setups as well? People have been building NAS boxes and ZFS solutions for long before Reds even became available.
 
I actually ended up buying the Seagate 4 TB NAS drive. Not sure why. I have always prefered WD. But this time I changed it up.
 
If you say greens are not for ANY kinds of Raid, looks like you don't know about Raids these days.
Hardware Raid ---> Reds : I agree (but who care of hardware raid these days?)
Software Raid ----> doesn't matter if you're using reds or greens.
I totally agree if you buy reds with more money to pay for another year of warranty. Otherwise, they (red and green) are both same. For the durability, it's almost up to the way you use it.
 
jwcalla said:
Why not?
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because head parking/load cycles and TLER and an extra year of warranty. ZFS can deal with non-TLER drives, but I don't want my pools freezing up for 30 seconds or more dealing with a read issue. Not saying greens won't work, I just prefer the benefits of the reds.
 
I've had 6 Greens in my ReadNAS (have since sold the whole setup), and I have 3 Greens 2TB (one Drive from my original 6) and have been running 24/7 for the last year with no issue. The 1 Drive from my previous setup ran for atleast 2 years 24/7 prior to that. Yeah, I don't have that many drives, but i've had good luck with mine. But these both are Software RAIDs.

In Hardware RAID on a Perc 5i, I had issues where the array would drop a drive even after disabling drive idle with the WDIDLE utility. The drives I had were WD20EADS.

http://www.overclock.net/t/733575/enable-tler-on-wd20eads

But in a software RAID/ZFS, no issues.
 
Elpee said:
If you say greens are not for ANY kinds of Raid, looks like you don't know about Raids these days.
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Any drive can be used in RAID, whether hardware or software based. Just because you can use any drive doesn't make them all equal in efficiency or reliability.

Hardware Raid ---> Reds : I agree (but who care of hardware raid these days?)
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A LOT. Software RAID has been shit for a long, long time. Only recently is software being put back into focus with exponential storage in the business world (SAN) and for NAS devices, which can use software or hardware. Right now the market is pretty much half-and-half with regards to NAS's.

Software Raid ----> doesn't matter if you're using reds or greens.
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Completely besides the point OP was making. A shit slow drive is a shit slow drive. Play around with those cute, energy "efficient", low-cost "green" drives long enough and you will want to pull your hair out.

I totally agree if you buy reds with more money to pay for another year of warranty. Otherwise, they (red and green) are both same. For the durability, it's almost up to the way you use it.
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No, they're not really the same. Both will allow you to run software RAID/Non-RAID/ZFS just fine, but only one will do hardware RAID properly. The pricing is hardly a justification for picking up Green drives anymore. Just like the Black drives practically killed the Blue's in the desktop world, the Red's should just kill the Green's. Get the best of both worlds.
 
Christ. We got along for YEARS without 13 different colors of hard drive.

It's all 99% marketing BS by "performance" drive platter makers trying to survive in an SSD world. Buy for warranty/space just like you always have and backup your data like you always should. The subset of users that should actually care aren't buying red/green/blue hard disks off of newegg. They are buying factory supplied FRUs designated for use in and backed by the SLAs of their storage vendor of choice. Then they are backing up that data in 3 more places regardless because failures will always happen.

This is just like the power supply nonsense. People will debate until they are blue in the face whether they need to buy the 70 dollar or the 200 dollar PSU for their meaningless home gaming system but don't even flinch at the fact that a chinese OEM makes the 13 buck power supply of the machine keeping them alive during open heart surgery. It's all marketing BS. Nothing more.

Buy the spec you need with the warranty you feel comfortable with. Plan that it will fail someday regardless and carry on.
 
ill put in mt 2 cents too.

99% of non enterprise raid solutions completely ignore the TLER flag. So unless your controller was 5-10 grand TLER doesnt matter. Please feel free to prove me wrong so i can update my list.

If you get the 100gb platter versions, red/green are the same. The only difference is the software power saving and TLER.

On wd green head parking can be turned off, and should be as soon as you get it. This makes it an almost red.

Reds have a much nicer warranty length.

Reds are oem and can be packed like crap. Newegg is particulary bad at packing reds with an over 25% doa rate. If you picked hard drives by reviews you wouldnt touch a red with a ten foot pole.

Greens with either the 666 or 750 gb platers are completely and utterly garbage. Out of the 7 people i know who ran the 3tb 4 platter greens, ALL of them got rma'd at one point, and each was in a completely different environment.

If i was ordering from somewhere other than new egg. and the difference between a red and a green was less than $20, id get a red :)
 
The primary problem with the Green's is their excessive head parking. I bought two 3 or 4 years ago and the first thing I did was disable head parking. After 11000 hours my primary one only has 1600 unloads (head parking). With head parking off they're just cheap storage.

I've seen screenshots with people who have 100,000+ unloads. No wonder their drives wear out so fast.
 
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