RAID 10 - WD Red / Red Pro / Black

Zeldarawwk

Zeldarawwk

Zeldarawwk

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12 Apr 2013
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Hello,

I am looking to majorly upgrade my current storage solution in my desktop PC, and will be looking to have 4 drives in RAID 10, each being 2TB.

Now, my issue is that my PC is on 24/7 and is also used for gaming, so I'm slightly torn between the WD Red and Black, and now the Red Pro drives.

The drives would be storing various data, including games, so performance is needed here. I also wanted to set up a network share on certain areas of the drive, so I can stream media to other devices on the network.

I understand that:
  • WD Black drives are all about performance, so would be perfect for games, however I'm unsure of the suitability for RAID and 24/7 uptime.
  • WD Red drives are great for network activity, along with being in a RAID setup, however then I'm not too sure on how these perform in comparison to the Black drives for games and other intense read applications.
  • Finally the WD Red Pro drives recently caught my attention as being the same as the standard Red drives, however have a constant 7200 RPM, which to me would put them on-par with the Black drives.

So to summarise, would purchasing four 2TB WD Red Pro drives be the best solution for my needs here?

I would appreciate any input on this.

Many thanks. :)
 
WD Blacks are fine in RAID - I've used them in 100s of machines. They are your best bet.

Can vouch for the Reds too though not as much experience with them

No idea about Red Pros.
 
Black is OK but as it doesn't have the TLER the RAID controller *might* fail a drive necessarily - Reds are very good, Red Pro if you need it a little faster - Red Pro is basically the same as the SE series.
 
If it's only media storage then standard reds will be fine. You only need the higher rpm if the drives are doing more work that involves them being responsive and you are sensitive to seek times.

For someone with a raid 10 4 disc with 2tb drives, I wouldn't do it again. Just 4tb total doesn't seem enough.

Question to ask is do you need raid 10? Do you need the speed over raid 5?
 
I had a RAID 10 of WD Caviar Black drives (all 1TB, was a little while ago). Good performance drives and solid. I wouldn't say you need to pay the extra over Reds. You certainly don't need the performance for streaming media and the fact that data is striped means you're already getting enhanced performance on reading.

I would go with Reds these days if I were to do it again, purely on cost. So that would probably be my suggestion. However, I don't know how much money you like to throw about and if your question is "which is best" then the Blacks are going to give you better speed and are (I believe) no less reliable.

I have never used Red Pro but if what you're telling me is that they don't spin down, then they're not suitable for your needs, they're designed for constant 24/7 access. I don't think you want to go for Enterprise class drives - lot of extra expense for something you don't need.
 
I've just re read the OP, how about a different spin on it?
SSD drive for your OS and games as the performance will far outweigh RAID10.
2 drives at 4TB each in RAID1, these could be WD reds for your data storage, if I'm honest you probably don't need raid here.
1 external 4TB drive for backup in case your storage gets destroyed.

You get better speed than the R10 setup, it's easier to set up and it's less disks to maintain (if you don't raid the storage). You will not push a raid array with a normal gigabit network for streaming so there isn't much gain in over specifying it.
 
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