Western Digital Red's

[shahpor]

The Reds aren't being sold as the fastest drives. They are being sold as specific to the NAS market: low vibration, quiet, cool, low power consumption, faster error recovery (to avoid dropping out of a RAID array), longer warranty than most consumer drives, all while offering *reasonably* fast performance. I think they have achieved these goals admirably, assuming the drives are reliable.

Spot on.

As for my benchmark, well, as you can see, I only have the free version of HD tune, so it is the only speed test available to me.

Perhaps someone who has a Red drive and has the Pro version of Hd Tune can run a benchmark and see how fast they are?

Also, no idea why it is showing only 2199Gb. If you look at the model number at the top, you can see it is the correct drive.

Cyber-May, rotor has a point about the RE drives. I would also like a 3tb RE4, but as the 2tb version is currently retailing at £179.99, it is not really an option.

Personally I don't think you can compare the Red's to any of the current drive offerings. On one hand, you have the Green's (and others of the same type), which offer similar performance, but aren't really suitable for NAS's for the reason already mentioned. Then the Black's are high performance and as such cost more. And the RE4 are enterprise level and cost a lot more.

I guess time will tell if the Red's were a good idea or not. Personally, it is a case of so far, so good.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

the green drives have been out for ages and have been used in NAS systems all the time, just because the RED edition has launched now doesnt mean that every other drive out there is no longer suitable for nas use.

from what i can work out, the red drives are just a cheaper way of getitng a drive with TLER available.
although from reading around a bit some people have managed to hack green drives to enable TLER.
need to look into that a bit more.

 

[deshepherd]

the green drives have been out for ages and have been used in NAS systems all the time, just because the RED edition has launched now doesnt mean that every other drive out there is no longer suitable for nas use.

Yes, given the way WD promoted Red's with the line that it was designed for NAS and other disks just weren't suitable for that task then I found it a bit amusing to wonder why WD had been selling NAS units for the past few years with disks that they clearly now thought were "not fit for purpsoe"

from what i can work out, the red drives are just a cheaper way of getitng a drive with TLER available.
although from reading around a bit some people have managed to hack green drives to enable TLER.
need to look into that a bit more.

Agree, to me they sound very much like green drives with modified firmware to provide TLER and have different spin down characteristics.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

the green drives have been out for ages and have been used in NAS systems all the time, just because the RED edition has launched now doesnt mean that every other drive out there is no longer suitable for nas use.

from what i can work out, the red drives are just a cheaper way of getitng a drive with TLER available.
although from reading around a bit some people have managed to hack green drives to enable TLER.
need to look into that a bit more.

Horse-drawn carriages were out for ages before the horseless carriage (aka the automobile) was invented. Didn't mean that once the automobile came out all horse-drawn carriages were instantly retired (the Queen still uses one to this day)... it just meant that whoever could afford one, probably preferred an automobile for many reasons, mainly that it was a much better solution to the transport problem. Why does anybody ever upgrade anything?

A WD Green is still perfectly suitable as a NAS drive; nobody is saying that all of a sudden it is magically not. It just happens that there is now something that is MORE suitable for NAS use, namely the WD Red. And in my opinion, for a reasonable additional cost, WD is providing excellent features that make it an easy decision.

Small anecdote, I pulled one of my Reds out its enclosure (I had it running in an ML110 G7 for a few days), and was blown away at how cool it was. I've never owned a WD Green, but compared to all my other drives (7200 RPM) which are always hot to the touch, the Red was barely room temperature.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Yes, given the way WD promoted Red's with the line that it was designed for NAS and other disks just weren't suitable for that task

Would be interested to see where you saw that (the bit about other drives not being suitable).