Are WD Reds worth the extra cash?

uncle_rufus

uncle_rufus

uncle_rufus

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As per the title, I need to buy a new drive which will (eventually) be one of several in my HP Microserver... I was thinking of the WD Red 2Tb because it is supposed to be designed for a fileserver

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-397-WD&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=2611

But on the "This Week Only" deals this week is a 2Tb Toshiba drive, with the same spin speed (more or less) so also a nice low power drive

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-032-TS

The price difference is huge! :eek: £60 for the Toshiba vs. £90 for the WD Red... I could probably even stretch to buying 2 Toshibas at that price... But part of me can't help but wonder what I would be missing by not going with the Reds... How much of it is marketing hype? Would greatly appreciate any thoughts on this - I've got to admit I'm leaning towards 2 of the Toshibas (which also gets me closer to my target of 4x 2Tb drives)
 
andy_mk3 said:
This may be worth a read: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/...eview-are-nasoptimized-hdds-worth-the-premium

Personally I would go with the Toshiba drives. I have standard Samsung drives in my HTPC which is on 24/7 and they've been just fine. the WD reds are obviously designed for the job, but it doesn't mean any other drive will crash and burn doing the same thing.
Click to expand...

A good read, cheers... It does seem to suggest that they are probably better, but at the time of writing the price jump from a regular GREEN to a RED wasn't huge (maybe £10 or so) which would be much easier to justify

As you say I think I will probably just go with the Toshiba drives - I'm only storing a bunch of media on it anyway, all stuff which I could replace if absolutely necessary (and probably plenty of stuff I wouldn't bother to replace if I lost it)... Anything more sentimental like my family photos etc. I will always have in at least a couple of other locations (and potentially in online storage too)
 
My Samsung drives are over 10,000 hours now and still in perfect health. I wouldn't pay the extra unless they were getting more of a hammering, serving multiple media players all day or something like that.
 
randal said:
Sorry mate, a pair of WD Reds, 3TB drives. :)
Click to expand...

Cheers :D I wish I could afford 3Tb Reds!!!

andy_mk3 said:
My Samsung drives are over 10,000 hours now and still in perfect health. I wouldn't pay the extra unless they were getting more of a hammering, serving multiple media players all day or something like that.
Click to expand...

It's a tricky one to justify, I think if it were only £5 - £10 extra for a "NAS 24/7" type drive then it would be a no-brainer, but when you think I could get 3x2Tb Toshibas for the same price as 2x2Tb WD Reds I don't think I can bring myself not to do it :p

They're not going to be getting the biggest hammering, file server for my main PC, a laptop, and a raspberry pi, with 99% of all the streaming going to the Pi
 
The Seagate NAS drives seem to be even more than the WE Reds.

Does Toshiba offer a NAS drive?
 
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