Red or Green?

[GDL]

Hi all,

I've seen a number of different threads on here between the WD Green \ Red variants within a NAS and I'm a little confused.

At this time, I have 4x2TB WD Green's in a HP Microserver at around 80% full on each drive with no backup or redundancy running some shares for all different types of data over a local network at home, plex and FTP access.

I've just picked up another HP Microserver that I intend to use as a pure backup server that will pull data from the other one (I use Microsoft Sync tool command lines run to scheduled tasks after midnight).

I'm looking at filling this one with 4x4TB drives however unsure of the drive variant I'd need.

The red ones are designed for NAS's which are always on which this machine would be, but the drives wouldn't be accessed unless it's running the backups.

The Green ones use less power and spin down faster from what I've seen which would be better but not designed to be used as a pure NAS drive like the reds...

Which would you go for?
Any help would be kindly received.

Thanks.

 

[zola25]

I'd always read that the reds were better in this scenario as they don't spin down as often and therefore don't get "lost" on the controller.

If you are already using greens without issue in another microserver, then I'd personally make decision based on cost.

 

[Frozennova]

Are you intending on using RAID?

if so then Reds, they have a lower TLER rate which means if the drive detects a correctable error the RAID controller won't wrongful mark it as a failed and degrade the array. if

 

[GDL]

Thanks for the replies.

I used to use RAID but not so much these days. I tend to go with 1:1 over multiple disks.

 

[demon8991]

Red would also be my choice if used in a RAID/NAS environment, as per the advice/reasons above.