WD Black or WD Red?

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night_2004

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I'm looking to buy a few hard drives, and I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about which drives to buy?

I currently have this setup for data storage. I am running out of space for my media drive. I have an SSD and DVR drive that isn't on this list.

- 2x 1TB WD Black's in RAID1 (data, games)
- 2x 1TB WD Green's in RAID1 (media)
- 5x 1TB WD Black's in RAID6 for backup/NAS (my PC, wife's PC, laptop all back up to this NAS).

I'm thinking to replace all four RAID1 drives with a single pair of 3TB WD Red's and move the 1TB blacks over to the NAS. I could also upgrade just the media RAID1 with 2TB WD Red's or 2TB WD Black's. Price and warranty are factors too (because naturally a product with a longer warranty is less prone to failure right? /sarcasm).

Combining all three drives (data, games, media) would make it a bit easier to reallocate space later if needed and I get to increase my NAS capacity. Not to mention fewer drives gives me options to expand later if needed. But keeping them separate keeps my critical files (data) on drives that have already proven their reliability.

I'm also pretty nervous about getting high capacity drives -- I am not personally convinced they are as reliable (so I'd prefer 1TB over 2TB, and 2TB over 3TB if all other things are equal). So yeah, I am a bit torn on what to get here. Any suggestions? Reliability surveys? Thanks for the advice!
 
Black drives on a NAS are a waste of money.

They make more heat and use more energy. A nas is going to have its max performance based on two main criteria, 1. How fast is the raid solution handling the drives? and 2. How well utilized your gig connection is?

Also a gigabit Ethernet connection is going to max at around 120'ish MB/sec transfer rates. Which is the max transfer you typically will encounter sequentially from a Black Drive. Say you have 6 black drives all in a RAID that can do 500MB/sec max sequential transfer, your ethernet connection is gonna throttle that puppy right down to the limitations of about 120/MBs max due to gig/eth.

In my honest opinion fed by experience, get the red drives. They have a 5 year warranty, have NAS Ware which is a fancy word fro TLER (Time limited Error Recovery) which is a MUST for many raid solutions lest you will be dropping disk from the array all the time. Have a 1 mil hour MTBR.

I run 8 2 TB drives (RED) and they have been feeding my ZFS NAS now for going on a year this December. Not one smart event, not one bad anything, 24/7 uptime too. I NEVER shut off my NAS unless I am cleaning out dust or something else.

Also the RED drives believe it or not have about the same sequential speeds as a Black drive. Of course the black drives have a faster response and seek time due to the higher rotational speed but in a NAS access time is not the driving factor as much as stability, compatibility, and "Play nice in Raid" factors are.
 
I agree with tangoseal. Reds are the ones to use. Come March 2014 I'm building a big back up server and I will be using Reds.
 
I thought the Reds only have 3 years warranty? If it is just for media storage or other bulk data, get the Reds. They are quieter and use less power, and for me have been very reliable. The Blacks are better for workloads that require more space than will fit on an affordable SSD, but need as much IOPS as possible. I personally would get the RE4 or a 10/15k rpm drive instead of the Black for such workloads however.
 
I agree with REDs for the reasons people have stated above.

But what I would do is take all your current old drives and use them as a separate backup system. RAID isn't a backup.
 
omniscence said:
I thought the Reds only have 3 years warranty? If it is just for media storage or other bulk data, get the Reds. They are quieter and use less power, and for me have been very reliable. The Blacks are better for workloads that require more space than will fit on an affordable SSD, but need as much IOPS as possible. I personally would get the RE4 or a 10/15k rpm drive instead of the Black for such workloads however.
Click to expand...

I do stand corrected. My apologies. Yes 3 year warranty. You are right.

If you are wanting to pay the premium for the extra 2 years then no harm.

And I would take a 15K Seagate Cheetah SAS over a black drive any minute of the day and they cost $300-600/disk sigh, also will not fit a SATA connector... An SSD would be even better if they were as reliable and you dont get 15K cheetah reliable until you get in the enterprise SSD realm of course which is absolutely cost prohibitive for normal people at home.
 
Are the red drives better now? I know when they first came out they had a huge DOA rate. I've been debating myself on buying more drives. I've always gone with the blacks myself but the reds do seem attractive too.
 
tangoseal said:
Black drives on a NAS are a waste of money.
Click to expand...

Two years ago, before reds were out, the price I got them was a good deal.

tangoseal said:
They make more heat and use more energy. A nas is going to have its max performance based on two main criteria, 1. How fast is the raid solution handling the drives? and 2. How well utilized your gig connection is?

Also a gigabit Ethernet connection is going to max at around 120'ish MB/sec transfer rates. Which is the max transfer you typically will encounter sequentially from a Black Drive. Say you have 6 black drives all in a RAID that can do 500MB/sec max sequential transfer, your ethernet connection is gonna throttle that puppy right down to the limitations of about 120/MBs max due to gig/eth.
Click to expand...

To be clear the drives I am looking to get are going to go into my desktop. Anything I pull out of the desktop will get thrown over to the NAS to expand its RAID array.

tangoseal said:
In my honest opinion fed by experience, get the red drives. They have a 5 year warranty, have NAS Ware which is a fancy word fro TLER (Time limited Error Recovery) which is a MUST for many raid solutions lest you will be dropping disk from the array all the time. Have a 1 mil hour MTBR.
Click to expand...

Would that benefit in a desktop RAID1 environment though? I'd bet so but I thought TLER was more for parity schemes.

tangoseal said:
I run 8 2 TB drives (RED) and they have been feeding my ZFS NAS now for going on a year this December. Not one smart event, not one bad anything, 24/7 uptime too. I NEVER shut off my NAS unless I am cleaning out dust or something else.

Also the RED drives believe it or not have about the same sequential speeds as a Black drive. Of course the black drives have a faster response and seek time due to the higher rotational speed but in a NAS access time is not the driving factor as much as stability, compatibility, and "Play nice in Raid" factors are.
Click to expand...

Anything you did when you got the red drives to "test" them for early failure? I'm almost thinking to let an eraser program just chew and scramble bits on new drives for a few days straight just to beat up on them.

omniscence said:
I thought the Reds only have 3 years warranty? If it is just for media storage or other bulk data, get the Reds. They are quieter and use less power, and for me have been very reliable. The Blacks are better for workloads that require more space than will fit on an affordable SSD, but need as much IOPS as possible. I personally would get the RE4 or a 10/15k rpm drive instead of the Black for such workloads however.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they have three year warranties. The blacks have 5 year warranties. I'm tempted to say that reds are going to be "fast enough" for home office use.

staticlag said:
I agree with REDs for the reasons people have stated above.

But what I would do is take all your current old drives and use them as a separate backup system. RAID isn't a backup.
Click to expand...

That's what the NAS is for. Backups :p.

Red Squirrel said:
Are the red drives better now? I know when they first came out they had a huge DOA rate. I've been debating myself on buying more drives. I've always gone with the blacks myself but the reds do seem attractive too.
Click to expand...

...and that is what has me concerned about buying red drives. I would hate to think if I am replacing gear that the new drives would have worse reliability. I've bought ~13 drives, all 1TB WD Black's, in the last few years for builds on family PCs. Only two gave me any trouble.
 
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tangoseal said:
Black drives on a NAS are a waste of money.

They make more heat and use more energy. A nas is going to have its max performance based on two main criteria, 1. How fast is the raid solution handling the drives? and 2. How well utilized your gig connection is?

Also a gigabit Ethernet connection is going to max at around 120'ish MB/sec transfer rates. Which is the max transfer you typically will encounter sequentially from a Black Drive. Say you have 6 black drives all in a RAID that can do 500MB/sec max sequential transfer, your ethernet connection is gonna throttle that puppy right down to the limitations of about 120/MBs max due to gig/eth.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. If this is a file server or media server I'd get the WD Red. In fact, I use 3TB WD Reds in a 10-drive RAID6 set in a Synology for my media. But if it's a NAS for other things...like my vSphere lab....I won't use WD Reds. I use Blacks. It's not about the throughput in that case it's about the IOPS.
 
WD SE drives for the 5yr warranty, and cheaper than the RE.

I finished off my NAS with the SE drives (instead of buying more RE), and couldn't be happier.

WD also advocates use of the WD Se drives in NAS units with 6 to 24 bays in both the desktop as well as rackmount form factors as a complement to the WD Red drives in the lower end units. In the datacenter, WD suggests usage of the WD Re and WD Xe drives for higher durability and performance. Note that the suggested workload for the WD Se is only 180 TB/yr, compared to 550 TB/yr for the WD Re, suggesting that WD is positioning this drive as a solution for backups, archiving and other low intensity tasks. On a comparative basis, the WD Red apparently has a workload rating of less than 100 TB/yr (the client storage division doesn't give out specific numbers) despite coming with a higher MTBF rating (1M hours compared to the 800K for the WD Se).
Click to expand...
 
Just placed an order for two 3TB WD Red drives. Going to put them through their paces for a few days before replacing four of my 1TB drives in my desktop.

If all goes well with these first two drives, I might slowly swap out the five 1TB drives I have in my NAS in the next few months.
 
difference SE and Red (on synology ds214)
http://tinypic.com/r/2agkhz8/5

translated from Dutch:
http://tweakers.net/productreview/85492/synology-diskstation-ds214.html
Why this guy chose for SE:
- spin rate is just 7200 RPM and not 5400 rpm which can vary through Intellipower
- Read/writespeed a lot higher than WD Red discs
- warrantee 2 years longer
- Workload 180TBYear WD SE versus 100 TB/yr WD Red
-Dual head processors for more performance
-Multi-axis schock sensors
-Dynamic fly heigt control, (for less wear and tear)

I am a newbie..just bought 6 months ago a 3 TB Seagate 7200 rpm.

Can I add a WD SE/Red 4TB in a synology DS214 NAS (raid 1). possible with Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) type, I read...
Al my important data is on the new disc from 6 months ago...So I don't want to lose that...
perhaps, I buy 3 TB disc instead of 4TB...
What I know, that it will be the synology ds214 ;)
 
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