WD Black 4tb vs WD Red/Green 6tb for Storage

[welkins974]

My current space setup for my PC is a 250gb SSD for my OS, video editing software, and some games that leave my SSD with decent amount of space.

-A 1tb WD blue that I plan to have the original files that I want to back up
-Some random external hard drives that have been going on for 2+years each that I want to back up.

Now, I'm planning to get a hard drive specifically as a backup hard drive with some disposable games on it (mostly Steam games that I don't really backup personally since losing them due to a DOA or hard drive failure would just be as easy as re-downloading them.

Is it better to get a WD 6TB red/green non-raid for storage/back up purposes? Or a 4tb wd black (it comes with a 5 year warranty as opposed to the 2 year green and 3 year red warranty).


The 6tb hard drives seem new and not a lot of information has been gathered on them. Mostly positive reviews, but not too sure if many of them are just shills or actual reviewers that have had them for enough time (months of usage). I've heard a lot of good and bad (mostly bad) things about the wd black

The 5 year warranty makes me want to go with the wd black as if it crashes within 5 years, I can get another one for free (I think thats how warranty works), but dont know if its worth the hassle. It's priced at 200 USD compared to 6tb red at 250 USD (3 year warranty) and 6tb green at 230 USD (2 year warranty).

Obviously, the 6tb has more storage space, but don't know if the "new technology" it claims to have makes it more reliable than past 4tb reds and greens (which were just awful as I've heard, worse than black).

Any suggestions would be helpful.

(Also, is it generally better to buy your products in stores like microcenter as you don't have to deal with bad shipping protection and long online DOA/Warranty/RMA processes? Or they are both equally in risk of failure/DOA.)

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, welkins974.

If I were you, I'd go for a WD Green drive. After all this is its purpose and a WD Black would be a bit of an overkill to be used solely as a secondary storage drive. Then again, if you plan on putting some games on it, it might be useful to go for the WD Black drive, because of its better performance and features. The WD Red drive is optimized and designed for NAS/RAID environments and I'd take it out of the equation if I were you.
And about the warranty - yes, that's basically it. If you get errors or bad sectors or something else happens to the drive which prevents it from working properly due to no fault of your own, then it is usually RMAed and you get another one.
As for the resellers - I can't vouch for any particular reseller, but all drives come with the WD warranty, that's specified for them. The DOA and failure probabilities - I think that the chances are the same no matter where you get it from. And actually DOA cases are pretty rare.

Here's some more info on the failure rates: How drive reliability is measured and the MTBF of WD drives

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions whatsoever.
Boogieman_WD

 

[welkins974]

Thanks for your input.

I don't think I'll bother with a WD Green just after thinking about that 2 year warranty. I'd like my backup to last a little longer than that and the WD black 4tb 200 USD is still cheaper than a WD green 6tb (albeit, less storage). But the fact I'm receiving 3 more years of safe backup precautionary if the WD Black somehow fails before my externals/ or my WD blue 1tb.

I'm just slightly worried about how I've seen how newegg ships their harddrives and makes me question how some of them are even alive. I could buy from amazon, but I thought if shipping was a big deal, I might just get it from my local microcenter. I'll still ponder that thought, but I'm pretty much sure I will get a WD black 4tb.




Another question if I might ask is would a 4tb enterprise be worth considering as it also has a 5 year warranty and technically more reliable?

I don't necessarily need a WD black for game performance as most of the games I play will be on my SSD.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I really don't think that you should go for an enterprise drive for that, except if you'd like larger storage capacity available than 4TB.
Just a quick reminder. I get what you want to do with this extra drive, but you should know that it's not really considered a backup if it's in the same system. If this is the sole purpose you're getting that drive, I'd recommend that you take a look at My cloud or My Cloud Mirror, although this way you'll lose the extra storage capacity in your computer in case you need it for a game or two.
Just fyi, you can check them out here: Personal Cloud Storage
Consumer Series

 

[welkins974]

Alright, but I'm not really a fan of cloud storage, and yes, I do need a little bit of space just for extra programs/games.

I'm mostly asking because the wd enterprise is only 20 USD more than the black, so if reliability is my priority, would a wd enterprise be the solution? I don't need more than 4tb (not even more than 2, but the 4tb is the most cost efficient and will allow my drive to have extra space in the future).

Also, I don't really understand how it's not considered a backup if I have the files I want to backup on a WD blue and externals, and it's basically copied and pasted on another drive. When one drive ( wd blue 1tb) fails, wouldn't it be safe since the other drive (4tb black/enterprise) would still have all the files (unlike RAID 0)? I understand that there are scenarios that both drives could fail simulatenously or fairly quickly between each other, but since I'll be accessing them pretty much everyday, I'll be able to tell if a drive is dead and that I need a replacement pronto to do another copy paste backup.

Worst case scenario a tree falls on my rig and both drives are dead, but funnily enough, I'm actually going to plan on that and I have 10 mega.co.nz accounts with basically 500gb of backup. It won't backup everything, but definitely the extremely important/old files I can't afford to lose.

Really don't want to move onto cloud storage (unless it's my "3rd" backup like my mega.co.nz accounts that I have) so I'm just asking which has a lower failure rate/more reliability between the enterprise and wd black as the price difference is pretty much negligible. Performance isn't 100% priority but I probably don't want a green's performance just in case I do put some games on my hard drive (games that I could care less if they crashed since I have them on my steam library/physical CD copy).

I understand that failure rates are fairly low, but they do happen, and there are still worryingly enough people with wd blacks, reds, and greens with DOA's, small life spans, etc. I understand DOA's happen just due to the architecture of Hard drives and all that, but i'd like to decrease my chances of having to deal with RMA and warranty (as I've heard bad things from even noteworthy sellers like newegg/amazon selling wd blacks with voided warranties and it obviously took them ample time before they noticed it when they needed to use the warranty).

 

[Boogieman_WD]

You are right about what you're saying considering the backup. The true definition requires that you have 2 backed up copies of your original data stored in 2 separate places. And yes, one of the reasons could probably be a tree falling on your computer ( ), but mostly it is because everything could happen: your computer may fall on its side while both drives are working and damage them both, fires, floods, electric shock, power outages etc. You do seem to know what you're doing, especially having in mind you've already backed up all your personal and irreplaceable data, so I'm not going to go in detail why and how this is important.
As for the reliability. Both enterprise (datacenter) drives and consumer drives are expected to be able to work without a hitch at least throughout the warranty period, but datacenter drives are meant to handle workload 24/7, so one should expect them to outperform and be more reliable than consumer drives.

If you decide to go with a datacenter HDD, I'd recommend that you take a look at the WD Se drive: WD Se