WD RE4 or Black?

M

macrospect

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 22, 2004
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So I am in the market for a new NAS and along side with that will be 4 new drives- 2TB capacity each. I have been reading TONS of reviews online on the two products but have failed to find anything comparing the new WD Black Drives (WD2003FZEX) to the pre-existing RE4 drives (WD2003FYYS). Aside from a reliability standpoint, I presume that RE4 wins in that area, I am interested in seeing how the two compare from a performance standpoint.

Which would you chose for my setup? A full summary of my environment is:

  • 4-Drive NAS connected via LAN or eSATA (I am keeping it generic for now)
  • NAS setup in RAID-6
  • 2TB Drive Capacity per drive (4096 GB Total)
Of course the RE4 drives are also less than the new Black ones so that would also be a consideration as well.
 
I don't have an answer, but there's also the WD2000FYYZ / WD3000FYYZ and similar drives -- these are the successors to the FYYS series RE4s. If you're searching for model numbers you might give those a try.

(I have one of each in my desktop - both perform great).
 
I was looking at the same two drives myself the other day. I was going to buy a couple 4TB drives and run them RAID 1.

For faster sequential reads and writes on large files, go for the newer Black series. For longer lifespan, go for the RE Series. The RE Series is faster for 512K and 4K reads and writes. So it depends on what you want and what you'll use them for.
 
A few of the main differences are:
1. The RE4 is marketed for RAID setup and certified by WD to work in multi-disk environment
2. The RE4 has a slight advantage when using hardware RAID due to added TLER


IMO, all RE disks are created as a marketing scheme so the manufacturers can charge more for their old consumer disks by simply turning down the error recovery time. Get the cheaper of the two and spend the extra cash on your NAS.

As for your setup, RAID6 is pointless with 4 disks. Use RAID10 as you will get the same disk redundancy with better speed.

**edit**
Both the RE and Black runs at 7200RPM so updated recommendation.
 
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can i ask.. the RE drives versus the Reds? i ask because I've seen both and although I've not seen much about returns, dabs.com offers a lot of "b grade" REDs and they're all factory refurbished which suggests an amount of DOA returns.
 
mrtckane said:
can i ask.. the RE drives versus the Reds? i ask because I've seen both and although I've not seen much about returns, dabs.com offers a lot of "b grade" REDs and they're all factory refurbished which suggests an amount of DOA returns.
Click to expand...

For WD
Green+TLER = RED
Black+TLER = RE
 
I thought the SEs were similar price to blacks. Plus the raid features and 5 year warranty. I was thinking of picking these up for my home nas since the reds have had such bad reviews. Also, the increased soured wouldn't hurt :D
 
I run SE and RE in my NAS. I'm happy with both.

I would never run Green, Red or Black in a NAS setup but that's me. I'd never use any of these drives every again anyway due to SSD in my systems but again, that's me and my usage. I have some old Black I use in other systems for 'storage', etc... but for a NAS go SE or RE.
 
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