Are the new WD RED NAS drives worth it

[vmem]

Hi Guys

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with the WD red drives that just came on the market for home or small business NAS functions. I'm looking to buy maybe 5 or 6 harddrives to run in RAID 5 for a home media server, and while the description of the WD red drives sound nice. reviews on newegg have been horrible (yeah I know not everyone on newegg knows what they're talking about, but the only reviews I've seen talk about multiple failed drives and gave only 1 or 2 eggs)...

if you guys don't think the WD red drives are worth it? what would you recommend for an HDD that'll be running 24/7? note, I don't want to be buying enterprise drives.

thanks in advance!

 

[amsga]

That would be interesting to know too.
I'm planning to buy a NAS with a few of them to do home backups
Any luck of a review coming soon?

 

[inanition02]

Here's a review:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-3TB-SATA-SOHO-NAS-Drive-Full-Review/Conclusion-Pricing-and-Thoug

I'm interested as well..

 

[vmem]

Here's a review:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-3TB-SATA-SOHO-NAS-Drive-Full-Review/Conclusion-Pricing-and-Thoug

I'm interested as well..

Thanks for the link... I've come across another review that stated similar things (I'll link it when I find it again)

but the thing is, the reviews can't tell us how stable these drives are... I'm really curious about say if you buy 100 drives, how many will be DOA? because judging by newegg, there seem to be a lot of DOAs (of course, a lot of owners who experience no issues won't bother writing a review).

It is my general opinion that these drives are very low power, slightly on the slow side, and warrantied for 3 years of 24/7 use. which is awesome... but just because I have a warranty and WD customer service has traditionally been good, doesn't mean I want to be sending in one of my (maybe) 5 drives for service every year

 

[inanition02]

Thanks for the link... I've come across another review that stated similar things (I'll link it when I find it again)

but the thing is, the reviews can't tell us how stable these drives are... I'm really curious about say if you buy 100 drives, how many will be DOA? because judging by newegg, there seem to be a lot of DOAs (of course, a lot of owners who experience no issues won't bother writing a review).

It is my general opinion that these drives are very low power, slightly on the slow side, and warrantied for 3 years of 24/7 use. which is awesome... but just because I have a warranty and WD customer service has traditionally been good, doesn't mean I want to be sending in one of my (maybe) 5 drives for service every year

From what I've read, they're really just Green drives with a firmware upgrade to enable TLER and add the new balance technologies. That said, they aren't that much more than the green drives..and the egg has awesome customer service...might be worth a try. (I'm only buying one to start though...)

 

[vmem]

From what I've read, they're really just Green drives with a firmware upgrade to enable TLER and add the new balance technologies. That said, they aren't that much more than the green drives..and the egg has awesome customer service...might be worth a try. (I'm only buying one to start though...)

well, I wand to run my server on raid 5, and it would be a pain to upgrade to raid 5 later on... but you may be right, maybe I'll get a 2TB and see how it goes

 

[vmem]

well, didn't find the weird review I read before, but tweaktown came up with a review 🙂. and TT has generally been pretty good for me

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4842/western_digital_red_series_review_a_low_cost_validated_nas_specific_hdd/index13.html

seems like they got 4 of these drives and they didn't mention any of the drives being DOA

 

[vmem]

Best answer selected by vmem.