what's the highest quality Western Digital hard drive?

Red Pros are spec'ed for use in NAS setups.

Blacks aren't. They're desktop performance drives.

Also, Red Pros are apparently subject to extended testing and burn in (like most enterprise-level drives are supposed to have).
 
How they are specified and rated can be read in various datasheets and press releases.

What I mean are actual technical differences, which are not published.
You would either have to talk with the engineers or open the drives yourself.
Patrick seemed to have some insight.
 
patrickdk said:
If you compare the drives.

RED have a different balancer than greens, and blue, probably referse to bearings.

The RE have totally different motor and bearings and probably most other parts, completely different grade than blacks.

It's those details that change the reliability, it's not just firmware changes between the disks.
Click to expand...

tell me this: it's MTBF is 1.2M, whereas Raptor is 1.4M, its rpm is 7200 rpm, where as Raptor is 10K rpm, so if WD Re is that good, shouldn't its MTBF be higher than 1.4M?
 
Happy Hopping said:
tell me this: it's MTBF is 1.2M, whereas Raptor is 1.4M, its rpm is 7200 rpm, where as Raptor is 10K rpm, so if WD Re is that good, shouldn't its MTBF be higher than 1.4M?
Click to expand...

Well, if the VR is indeed based off of their 10k RPM enterprise drives, it would make sense, as those have a MTBF of 2M I believe.
 
I do not have any faith at all in MTBF as long as companies calculate it internally. The reason is drives that had high failure rates in the past did not have a lower MTBF.
 
The MTBF values are too similar to be based on actual failure rates.

Maybe they calculate them based on the failure rates of the individual parts. A a simple mistake in the firmware can destroy a drive much faster.
 
Happy Hopping said:
tell me this: it's MTBF is 1.2M, whereas Raptor is 1.4M, its rpm is 7200 rpm, where as Raptor is 10K rpm, so if WD Re is that good, shouldn't its MTBF be higher than 1.4M?
Click to expand...

You don't put a Raptor drive in a NAS.

You don't use a Raptor drive in places where you're worried about thermal output cooking components.

You don't use a Raptor when your requirements call for drives larger than 1TB.
 
It does say "enterprise grade" drive on my (oldish) Raptor, same sticker as my RE drive (same yellow colour even). I personally trust it for important data :D (of course not as much as the RE) I'm not using it in my desktop rig atm though because of the noise.
 
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