Can a Western Digital Green be swapped for a Blue in RAID (now they've rebranded)

Redgie · 3 Mar 2017 at 16:43

So for those who don't know, Western Digital recently re-branded their "Green" range to merge it with the "Blue", supposedly in an attempt to simplify their offerings for consumers. The problem this has left me with however, is that I'm now unable to get a replacement green drive for a reasonable price, and one of mine had just died.

The setup that I have is RAID5 using a combination of 2TB greens (some "EZRX", some "EARX" and 1 "EARS"). What I'm wondering is, can I swap out the faulty 2TB green for a blue with model "EZRZ" without issue? Most sellers make a point of stating these drives "replace" the EZRX model, which leads me to believe this should be fine, but I'm looking for some reassurance?

Thanks

!

skyripper · 3 Mar 2017 at 17:17

Dunno, but I thought Greens were specifically not recommended for Raid due to their power saving and sometimes slow spin-up, leading to the Raid controller thinking the drive had failed and taking the array offline.

Saying that, if its been working fine for you, don't see why replacing a like for like would be a problem.

Redgie · 4 Mar 2017 at 09:56

Yeah the setup itself isn't going to be around for much longer, but want to reduce the risk of total data loss by keeping it going till it's ready to be decommissioned

bledd · 4 Mar 2017 at 14:55

Shouldn't matter. I like to keep the exact same drives in an array, but it should work.

As always though, keep your backup handy before doing it.

Redgie · 6 Mar 2017 at 07:31

bledd said:
Shouldn't matter. I like to keep the exact same drives in an array, but it should work.

As always though, keep your backup handy before doing it.

Will do, thanks Bledd