WD Red vs Red Pro

Soldato
Joined
22 Feb 2014
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2,782
I know this argument has probably been done to death, however.

I am currently running a 6 x 2TB RAID-Z2 array using NAS4Free.

the 2 oldest drives are WD Greens, closely followed by 2 x WD Reds, and finally 2 more WD Reds that were added to increase the array size 3 months ago.

The array is currently up with no issues, however I was not as knowledgeable when i first set this array up and the greens were originally left with their default config that parks the heads after 8 seconds of idle time.
I did amend this a few years ago, however they are currently sat at about 495,000 load cycles (@5 years old).
I am of the understanding that the recommended life span is 600,000 cycles.

So perhaps it is time to replace these 2 drives.
I was just about ready to click buy on 2 x RED drives when i noticed in the description it said recommended 1 - 5 drives bays.
Further reading seems to suggest that this has possibly increased to 1- 8 bays, but the difference between REDs and RED Pros is that the Pros are designed to be used in racks, as a pose to the REDs only being designed for tower usage.

My case is in a "rack" but its purely home use and the only other equipment in there is routers/switches/UPS/Fans.

its quite a price difference £140 for the Reds vs £200 for the Red pros



TL:DR
should I replace my drives with standard WD Red drives or something better (Seagate Enterprise, WD Gold, WD Red pro, etc) or should I just wait until the drives die, they are all running fine and showing no SMART errors.
 
I've been running some calcs over the last few days and as i already have 1 x 4TB red its going to cost around £40 more to upgrade to 4TB drives for my RAID-Z array. (presuming I can sell the old drives for around £140)

still feels painful clicking buy on £460 worth of HDDs :(
 
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