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Caviar Black vs RE4: Price diff £10, Support diff?

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parityboy

Limp Gawd
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Nov 13, 2010
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Here in the UK, the price difference between the Caviar Black 1TB and the equivalent RE4 is £10. Apart from support for TLER in the firmware, what's the advantage of the RE-4? Is the support and/or RMA process different or better?

Many thanks. :)
 
Its an enterprise class drive so you can assume it has improvement that are mostly reliability related. The RMA process will probably be no different but a call to WD will confirm otherwise.
 
i had 2 RE4 drives fail that were in a 24/7 operation around 2-3 years on both (in a RAID 1)

WD's RMA process is the easiest from my experience. I have owned a couple of the 640gb Blacks and they were good. I got escalating back sectors after about 3 1/2 years and RMAed them both (they were in a raid 0)
 
Of course the black is already extremely expensive, and likely just a rebadged RE4.
 
The RE4 is the previous generation (with SATA 3gb/s connector). The RE (without the "4") is the current generation with a SATA 6gb/s connector (same as current Blacks), with larger sizes available than the 4. The connector is only difference between those two that I can see if you don't go for SAS (besides the sizes) and it has no significance. One noted size difference: the RE has a 3GB size available, but the Black doesn't.

Only two other noted differences between the RE/RE4 and Black that I can see: the RE4 has additional anti-vibration electronics & shock sensors. Not a big deal unless you have a ton of them in a giant NAS box or similar. Also, the current RE models (I have one) & possibly RE4s have Advanced Power Management capability (defaults to 128); the Blacks do not. As well as TLER in firmware as you've noted.

Other differences of questionable benefit are posted specs of <1 in 10^15 non-recoverable read errors per bits read, 600,000 load/unload cycles & 1,200,000 MTBF rated hours for the RE/RE4 vs. lower specs of <1 in 10^14 NRRE, 300000 load/unload & no rated MTBF for the Blacks.

Whether those amount to anything in real world usage or not is another question. The warranty is the same for both (5 years).
 
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