WD RE3 RAID Drives

[JSM88]

And no, I'm not SHOUTING.

Came here to see what folks had to say and found there wasn't even a mention of RE3 in the forums. Released yesterday: http://www.wdc.com/en/company/releases/PressRelease.asp?release={71D2134F-26E5-47CC-819C-AB702980FD89} it appears that they've added some substantial new features. Many questions; will they work comfortably with the RE2 drives (or do I need to start stocking up on the 500GB RE2 drives for array replacements?) Are they really that much of an improvement over RE2? Will they be releasing GP drives with RE3? Which would you buy now, an RE3 or a GP RE2 drive? Who invented liquid soap and why?

The prices listed on the release are fairly impressive - at least I haven't been able to find the 500gig RE2 for any less than their official price for the 500gig RE3 (ok, so I only looked on newegg...) Finally, so long as I'm posting - does anyone know if the ICH10R will support Array Expansion, nothing on the Intel site.

 

[Rakinos]

I've got 6 500gb re2s currently in my box running raid 5 (they can be picked up new on ebay fairly cheaply now), they haven't given me any problems yet. I wonder why the largest size is 500gb on the re3. It will be interesting to see some benchmark comparisons.

 

[JSM88]

I've got 6 500gb re2s currently in my box running raid 5 (they can be picked up new on ebay fairly cheaply now), they haven't given me any problems yet. I wonder why the largest size is 500gb on the re3. It will be interesting to see some benchmark comparisons.

I thought it odd as well, given that there are 750 and 1tb RE2 versions of the GP drives which would seem to dovetail nicely with these RE3 enhancements. I assume it's because the RE2 GP drives are recent releases and they want some time before rolling a new product at that size. The big question is whether the RE2 and RE3 drives will play nicely together in an array - anyone with insight on that would be appreciated. I am running 4 500gig RE2's in an array and would like to expand that to 6 if the ich10r allows it.