WD 1Tb Black RAID 1

Nuclear Fusion · 28 Jun 2014 at 17:40

I currently have two WD 1Tb Black hard drives, one of which I use for programs (ones that don't go on the SSD) and one for non programs. I was thinking of putting them in RAID 1 from windows disk management for my non programs and just getting a single HDD replacement for my programs (as these don't need redundancy). Would there be any issues using these drives for RAID 1? I've heard of issues using them in RAID 0 but since RAID 1 is just mirroring surely they should work fine? They are both WD1002FAEX models. This seemed like the most cost effective solution for redundancy for my non program files.

AtaRo · 29 Jun 2014 at 19:10

I got 2 1TB Hitachi drives in Raid 0 ( striped ) using windows disk management and it is so easy to use and configure.

The best thing I like about it, is I just change mobo and proc and I just plug it back in to the new mobo and windows recognise it automatically no need to mess about with raid bios.

Admetos · 1 Jul 2014 at 23:29

Nuclear,

Your in luck, as i'm doing exact the same, that's RAID 1 using 2 x WD1002FAEX. I've been running these on Windows Server 2008 (similar to Windows 7) and everything is fine.

Apparently according to a post I read from WD. Desktop drives are preferred for RAID 1 software solutions as a drive won't immediately drop out when an issue occurs.

Nuclear Fusion · 1 Jul 2014 at 23:42

Ah ok thanks! I think I'll probably just get a replacement HDD for my programs then, maybe the newer 1Tb black as that'll be a performance upgrade too

Admetos · 1 Jul 2014 at 23:46

Performance from the drives in RAID 1. Respectable speed for data, incidentally i'm running SQL Server database from mine, drives are running 24/7 all year, been running for about two months, all good so far.

Nuclear Fusion · 1 Jul 2014 at 23:51

Pretty good performance increase there, that read speed is better than the new 1Tb blacks. Though of course these will only be used for non-programs so I won't really feel any performance gain. Maybe I'll put a pair in RAID 0 for my programs

Admetos · 1 Jul 2014 at 23:56

I'm not totally sure, but apparently in mirrored RAID, data reads are spread over both drives. It may explain why the read is looking so high.

Also, my drives are the version 2 of these. The version 2 has lower seek times, it's also a very quite drive. It's as if WD has forced the drives acoustic management to full silent, but this has affected seek times.

Some people have been concerned about the above, however i'm not worried as my drives run fine to me!

Nuclear Fusion · 1 Jul 2014 at 23:59

Ah ok, I was wondering if there might be something like that as I didn't think RAID 1 improved read speeds much at all, and writes should in theory be slower. As long as it works though it doesn't matter for what I'm using them for of course

Admetos · 2 Jul 2014 at 00:38

Writes will be the same as data writes are in parallel.

I have the feeling reads are off-set with each other allowing some degree of parallel read - notice the 4k QD32 is quite high.