Western Digital RE series of HDD

EffBee · 11 Dec 2006 at 20:56

People,

Do you think I would be making a bad mistake to use two of these raid edition drives in a games PC which is very, very heavily used. I would be using them as standalone drives, not raid. I would be sacrificing a little performance for a little long term data security (I hope). With all that cache and SATA-II surely it won't actually be slow?

The particular drives I have in mind are:
2 * WD Caviar RE 250GB SATA II 16MB CACHE OEM at 57.56 each + VAT

Does anyone know if they are particularly noisy?

rpstewart · 11 Dec 2006 at 21:50

The RAID Edition tag is simply marketing, the drives are apparently meant to be designed for 24/7 use although under the skin they're not much different from the normal version.

Whether you would notice a difference in performance between 2 single drives and a pair in RAID0 is debatable. The benchmarks all say RAID should be faster but the anecdotal evidence from those who have tried it is mixed.

Mind you for that sort of money I'd be considering the Seagate 7200.10s, benchmark comparisions have them running about 10% faster than the current competition due to the Perpendicular Recording method they use for data storage. Their data density is higher and therefore more data passes under the head per revolution = quicker data transfers. 5 year warranty too!

jbloggs · 11 Dec 2006 at 21:59

EffBee:

I think the WD RE HDDs are very good, they have a 5 year warranty.

The RE range of HDDs have been well reviewed, see the 400GB review Here

They don't appear to be noisy.

They should work well for the purpose you are proposing.

You might also consider the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 range.

EffBee · 11 Dec 2006 at 22:51

Thank you.

jhmaeng · 12 Dec 2006 at 10:39

There's even a little program to disable the TLER feature (which is only necessary in RAID situations) if you look on the Storage Review forums.

Although the RE versions might well be more or less the same under the skin as their equivalent consumer models, I've heard that RE ones go through a more rigorous testing out of the factory which I guess means less chance of getting a model that fails early on. And for a 10-15 quid difference in most cases, the (apparently) increased reliability and 2 extra years of warranty can't hurt

meglamaniac · 12 Dec 2006 at 11:59

I have the Western Digital WD2500KS Caviar SE16 which is a similar drive. It's really pretty quiet, I can only hear it seeking if I put my ear right next to the case. It doesn't make much spin-noise either, although I have acoustipak sound deadening material in my case so I can't hear it at all with the sides on.

One thing it definately is, is quick. I only have SATA150 but it still beats out my Samsung SP80s at reading large files off.