Conclusion, Pricing, and Thoughts
Conclusion:
PROS:
- Whisper quiet operation, even while seeking!
- Power sipping thanks to Green pedigree.
- Outstanding sequential read and write speeds.
- 3-Year warranty with 24/7 support hotline.
- 1,000,000 hour MTBF (35% boost over other consumer-grade hard drives).
CONS:
- Random access performance is low (on-par with WD AV-GP).
Even this close it's hard to tell the Red is even on.
Pricing and Availability:
Here's the current snapshot a couple of days after launch (Newegg prices):
- 1TB @ $110 ($0.11 / GB)
- 2TB @ $130 ($0.07 / GB)
- 3TB @ $180 ($0.06 / GB)
When compared to pricing of other Green and equivalent models on the market right now, it works out to a $10 premium per drive. TLER, automatic dynamic balancing, 24/7 support for 3-years. That's absolutely worth $10 per drive.
Update: These are now for sale on Newegg.com!
Warranty:
Standard Western Digital 3-year Warranty.
Final Thoughts:
Western Digital has seen a future market demand and filled that void brilliantly. The new Red series offers outstanding throughput, dead-silent operation, and even some enterprise features at a cost only slightly above that of the lowest cost consumer drives out there. The ability to continuously and dynamically self balance is a feature unseen in even their own enterprise lines, and is a sure contributor to the 1 Million MTBF rating. I see the Red becoming the defacto standard for all bulk storage array applications. Given the recent push towards the home NAS concept, I think a bunch of folks are going to start seeing Red everywhere (in a good way).
Areca cards are great!
Areca cards are great! However very pricey. Which is why I was I posted the question above your post.
BUT as a person who owns one of these cards, I’d move away from it. Why? ZFS is a better storage system. Grab a AMD cpu (because it supports ECC), get ECC ram, and load a OS that supports ZFS. From what I hear it is a much more reliable storage system than RAID.
I would have done this myself, but I didn’t learn about ZFS until after my purchase. Secondly, I have nearly 6TBs across 8 drives. Moving that amount of data would be a pain.
Lastly, if you really decide to go with an Areca card. Try to find them second hand. I picked up my 1231ML for $375 used. Run a google search on the key phrase : “FS Areca”, and sorta by date.
Good luck!
Do any of you see a problem
Do any of you see a problem using these drives in a 12 bay NAS running FreeNAS? ZFS/2
The WD site just says for up to 5 bays.. Is this just marketing hype> Or do you think these drives will be OK for large bay NAS enclosures?
Thought? Thanks
As I understand it, It’s
As I understand it, It’s because the RED drives lack vibration sensors and pressure sensors.
However, I’m also speculating in using 15 of these babies in a file server for private use.
I’m really wondering if this will actually be a problem or not….
-JKJK-
As I understand it, It’s
As I understand it, It’s because the RED drives lack vibration sensors and pressure sensors.
However, I’m also speculating in using 15 of these babies in a file server for private use.
I’m really wondering if this will actually be a problem or not….
-JKJK-
Hi,
I would really love to
Hi,
I would really love to hear more about your 15 drive setup. Care to share some more details?
Thanks,
-jj
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Sorry about that triple post
Sorry about that triple post … got a “page could not be found for each time I tried to post”.
A while back WD Red 3TB was
A while back WD Red 3TB was selling for $169.99 now that I want to buy it is about $259.99 any idea if the prices would drop to below $200 and why the sudden increase in price?
Would you recommend the RED
Would you recommend the RED series if you don’t use a RAID solution. Why, i’ll running Windows Home Server 2011 that have 4 drives and i’ll make (lessons learned) a robocopy once a week to een external esata drive of my important DATA.
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I know this if off topic but
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own blog and was curious what all is required to get set up? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I’m not very web savvy so I’m not 100% sure. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated. Kudos Deon Vanderweerd
“I have an 8-drive array of
“I have an 8-drive array of 3TB WD Caviar Greens in a RAID-5.”
This array is just a disaster waiting to happen. Consider the situation when one of your drives fails: you’re left with 7-drive RAID 0 array! And if the thought of housing your important data on such a large RAID 0 array doesn’t make your pulse race, you’re either an idiot (sorry) or the data wasn’t that important to begin with.
When you replace the failed drive of an (n-1)-drive degraded array, the rebuild process places the greatest strain on the array when it is most vulnerable. It may seem counterintuitive, but at some point an n-drive RAID 5 array is more likely to fail and suffer complete data loss than a single large disk with no redundancy. I think n=8 is well beyond that point. This has actually been studied scientifically here: http://media.netapp.com/documents/rp-0046.pdf
Conclusion, large RAID 5 arrays are not safe. You need at least a RAID 6 configuration.
As for whether TLER actually improves the safety of the array, I think some of the other comments have covered this already.
Hi,
I had some green disks in
Hi,
I had some green disks in my NAS and had to do the update with wdidle3 to come over the 8 sec park issue. Is this same fix also needed on these drives?
I find it interesting (and
I find it interesting (and very depressing and confusing) that the only Raid storage devices listed on WD’s certified Red drive compatibility list are devices that previously included Green drives in the manufacturer’s own compatibility lists.
These include Drobos, and the Synology, QNAP, et al software Raid NAS boxes. It is my understanding that the NAS boxes all use Linux MDADM under the covers of their proprietary user interfaces. It is also my understanding that Synology SHR, for example, is simply a well built user interface over Linux LVM.
Suspiciously absent from the list are any of the hardware Raid controllers and devices that use various hardware Raid controllers.
If the above is factually correct then it calls into question the true value of Red drives. We can argue the merits of using Red drives in hardware Riad solutions, but the fact is that if you do have a problem, and you attempt to get support from your Raid controller maker, he will give you a simple response: “We don’t support Red drives so we cannot tell you why your Raid array dropped (or regularly drops).
Seems to me there is little or no value in attempting to use Raid for an increased level of protection if the controller maker will not support it. It is, in that way, no better than using Green drives.
It calls into question the value of Red drives. I’ve read a lot of discussion (mostly speculation) about these new drives but never seen my concerns mentioned or discussed.
As an afterthought, I use a
As an afterthought, I use a SansDigital TR4UTBPN 4 bay eSata/USB3 external Raid/JBOD enclosure. I know, having read their now defunct support forum for many years, that in every case where someone reported Raid array failure or frequent rebuilding problems that they washed their hands of the matter by simply pointing out that they don’t support those drives in that enclosure (or any other Raid enclosure they well). You are totally on your own.
They are not listed on WD’s Red drive compatibility (lists as are no other hardware Raid devices that previously only recommended or certified Enterprise drives). Nor do they specifically address Reds on their site (and their HCL list is not easy to find).
I recently submitted a support ticket asking if they supported Red drives. They initially just said “no, they have never been tested”.
When I persisted and asked *why* they have not tested those drives, they responded by saying that because WD did not include them on their list they had no interest in testing them. I found that a strange response- does the tail wag the dog or the dog wag the tail?
Anyway, since I have no interest in using non-supported drives in a Raid device, I will continue to run the box in JBOD mode, as I always, have for the same reason, with the Green drives I currently use.
IOW, nothing has changed, except we consumers can now speculate about all the various vague claims by the various manufacturers of hard drives and the boxes that use them, and how the Raid system might respond to bad sectors.
A sad state of affairs.
Can you persistantly patch
Can you persistantly patch the red drives to disable tler or change its setting for desktop use?
Great review Allyn !
Very
Great review Allyn !
Very informative.
Bought 2 WD20EFRX (2TB)
Seriously. This is a piece of
Seriously. This is a piece of crap drive. I just lost all my data after 2 weeks old. Trying to recover and the whole drive is in raw and extremely slow trying to access it.
Was good for the first week. Then boom!!!! Instant poop.
Really the Reds seem to be
Really the Reds seem to be Greens rebranded with new firmware/ram.. Unless you are using hardware RAID (and running 24/7) they are not worth it… Go up to enterprise (actual enterprise) drives and never look back..
Also people with early failures aren’t stressing their builds before putting drives etc into production.. I’ve never lost data due to early failure.. I’ve lost a green due to head parking though in a NAS.. WDIDLE is a must for greens – and probably reds)..