WD Red drives?

sounds alright but i bet the price will be 1.5-2x a green drive. also would like a 5yr warranty but i guess 3 is ok.
 
Prices from AnandTech:

"Speaking of price, the MSRP for the 3.5" 1TB, 2TB and 3TB drives are $109, $139 and $189, respectively."
 
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Newegg.com (and Newegg.ca) is showing the following.

1TB 109.99
2TB 129.99
3TB 179.99

Not too bad. One could only assume they will come down a bit in the next little while. I might jump on some and test in a small ZFS configuration I am building as a backup storing system.
 
Apparently the 3TB has only three platters, so 1TB/platter. I hope that means we'll soon get 4TB green/red/av-gp drives.
 
Apparently the 3TB has only three platters, so 1TB/platter. I hope that means we'll soon get 4TB green/red/av-gp drives.

Yeah, I was going to post that. Hitachi 5k4000 is 5 platters... come on WD, you bought Hitachi, bring out the 5TB's already!!
 
FINALLY!!! Took them long enough! What's most amazing... I'm about to buy a bunch of low power disks for a raid array. I nearly pulled the trigger last week. I can't believe these disks were released BEFORE I bought my disks rather than AFTER. A first in the history of the universe! :D

I was planning on taking a gamble on the GP-AV drives. They're what WD currently ships in their "Live" consumer nas units. I guess I'll be giving these a shot.
 
so what's the difference between these and green drives (other than warranty)?

From the article:
"The obvious question may be then, what's wrong with the WD Greens and other low power drives that have been performing NAS duty to this point? The answer is really about projected use. The WD Green for instance, while the leading low power drive on the market, wasn't designed for the 24x7 access requirements that NAS systems require. The WD Red was engineered specifically for this duty, complete with customized NASware firmware which includes critical features like intelligent error recovery controls that prevent drives from dropping off the RAID due to long recovery cycles. The drives also are engineered with "3D Active Balance technology" which tunes the drive to eliminate vibration leading to improved reliability and overall performance.

WD has also gone to great lengths to ensure a great user experience. They've worked with Synology, QNAP and other NAS providers to make sure the WD Red was qualified as competible with these popular systems and host chipsets. The drives also offer a good blend of performance and power consumption, which is key given the always on nature of NAS drives. For that little extra push on the performance side, the drives feature a 64MB cache that's been migrated from DDR to DDR2, which should be twice as fast."

The article does a good job of covering the comparison
 
Very interesting. They are priced pretty good though I would like to have seen the 4TB ones.
 
As much as I dislike Hitachi for selling out to WD and competition and innovation being stifled, a 3TB with 3yr warranty built with nas and raid in mind becomes very relevant once they hit $150
 
Setting up a home NAS and was looking at the 1TB RE4 drives, but purchased 2TB red drives for just a little bit more. Will post results when they come in hopefully by Thursday!
 
I'd love to see a SAS variant. I'd even pay $25 extra per drive for it.
 
Hah! List price for 3 TB Nearline SAS drives are closer to $400. I don't think you'll see a $200 NL-SAS drive any time soon.

Oh, I'm well aware of the price discrepancy between SATA and SAS drives. It doesn't need to be there, and it's ripe for disruption. A $25 difference instead of a factor-2 difference means you'll sell a *ton* more of the drives: small businesses, anyone in the 10TB thread, I'd wager pretty much anyone buying more than 10 disks would spring for the SAS version.
 
Oh, I'm well aware of the price discrepancy between SATA and SAS drives. It doesn't need to be there, and it's ripe for disruption. A $25 difference instead of a factor-2 difference means you'll sell a *ton* more of the drives: small businesses, anyone in the 10TB thread, I'd wager pretty much anyone buying more than 10 disks would spring for the SAS version.

Since enterprise drives (and SAS in particular) are the cream of the crop in profits, and only 2 (Well, 3 once Fujitsu ramps up) manufacturers there is no way they will slash the costs of SAS drives, it is not in their best interests to. Also, that would also put them at odds with their enterprise customers (Dell, HP, etc) who also artificially keep the costs of the drives even higher.
 
I just bought 2 of the 3 TB WD Green Drives. In fact, they were just delivered today. I am going to use them in an HTPC. Should I send them back and buy the WD Reds?
 
If SAS drives were just a little more expensive, then it would mean they're the same drives and you pay for an interface that is of no use to you.

Also it can be argued that expensive enterprise drives help to pay the R&D every drive ends up using.
 
No, just look up the WDIDLE3 tool and disable/modify the head parking time. If they're going in your HTPC and not a NAS/server then they're not meant for you.
 
No, just look up the WDIDLE3 tool and disable/modify the head parking time. If they're going in your HTPC and not a NAS/server then they're not meant for you.

Thanks, that's a load off my mind. Yes, I've already modified the head parking time from 8 seconds to 300 seconds. Hopefully these are good to go now.
 
Will DEFINITELY be picking a couple or more of the 2TB variants up. I've been holding off building my NAS for a long time now due to HDD worries. When the price is right I won't hesitate :) Thanks for the head's up OP!
 
Hmm interesting. So I wonder if these would work well in 24bay type cases. I know it says 1-6 but that's probably just a marketing thing.
 
Hmm interesting. So I wonder if these would work well in 24bay type cases. I know it says 1-6 but that's probably just a marketing thing.

I would agree. I don't see any reason these wouldn't work just fine for that purpose. I'll certainly be considering these when I need to expand my storage array.
 
lets hope 3-4 years later we have sub $80 4tb drives... or even better. If reliability keeps up, I'll be using 6 of these to replace my current 2 TB drives.
 
Does anyone know if they are 512e or 4k native drives? The data sheet only says "Advanced Format"...
 
That looks nice. I felt lost since the Samsung drives went south and became Seagate-in-disguise.

I hope they come out soon here in Belgium because I really need some 2TB disks to provide my ESX server wit some juicy storage :).
 
lets hope 3-4 years later we have sub $80 4tb drives... or even better. If reliability keeps up, I'll be using 6 of these to replace my current 2 TB drives.

Still can't help but feel bitter at the state of the hard drive market, because I WAS paying sub-$80 for 3TB Hitachi 5K3000's 10 months ago.
 
How do these WD Red HD's compare to the WD Caviar Black 1T with 64mb cache and a 5-year warranty?

Which is better?
 
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