WD Red (NAS) Drive for normal PC use?

[ResurgenceX87]

I have a long term goal of putting together a NAS build where I will want to use WD Red drives. I have a more immediate need for a storage HDD in my home theater PC. Is there any downside to buying a Red drive to use in my home theater PC, with the eventual goal of moving it to a NAS?

 

[Emerald]

No, it should work just fine.

 

[kilerb]

No, it should work just fine.

Would there be an advantage of using a non-NAS HD? I need a larger hard drive in my PC. (Not the HD with the OS on it.) Will pretty much just stream videos to my TV. I read some posts saying that NAS drives are 5200rpm, but the new WD Red Pro's are 7200... So would a different hard drive be better for any reason? Or would these actually be the best way to go? Thanks!

 

[The Original Ralph]

the WD red drives are all 5400 scroll down on the link to the specifications section https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-red.html

the 7200 would offer some advantage if you were using it to load OS etc, but not for video streaming - i've been using WD red and green HDD, all 4 TB for 4+ years for exactly the purpose you're describing with no issues. I was a little surprised to see one of the vendors drop their price on the 4 TB Reds to $99 shipped, and have since caught 3 at that price

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[kilerb]

the WD red drives are all 5400 scroll down on the link to the specifications section https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-red.html

the 7200 would offer some advantage if you were using it to load OS etc, but not for video streaming - i've been using WD red and green HDD, all 4 TB for 4+ years for exactly the purpose you're describing with no issues. I was a little surprised to see one of the vendors drop their price on the 4 TB Reds to $99 shipped, and have since caught 3 at that price

It looks like the red pro on Amazon is 7200rpm... Here's the link... https://www.amazon.com/3-5-Inch-SATAIII-7200rpm-Internal-WD8001FFWX/dp/B01H33VQDG/ref=cm_cd_al_qh_dp_i

Is there any disadvantage to using the NAS drive? Is it the best way to go? Or would green be better for this purpose?

 

[kilerb]

the WD red drives are all 5400 scroll down on the link to the specifications section https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-red.html

the 7200 would offer some advantage if you were using it to load OS etc, but not for video streaming - i've been using WD red and green HDD, all 4 TB for 4+ years for exactly the purpose you're describing with no issues. I was a little surprised to see one of the vendors drop their price on the 4 TB Reds to $99 shipped, and have since caught 3 at that price

I think it's these....

https://www.wdc.com/products/business-internal-storage/wd-red-pro.html

 

[The Original Ralph]

my bad

 

[kilerb]

my bad

I guess my main question is this... If cost isn't an issue, is the red a better buy than the blue or green for my purpose? Seems like it's made to last longer and endure... But if there are any disadvantages, besides price I'd want to know before grabbing it.

Thanks!!!

 

[The Original Ralph]

well the greens are no longer available, but they were the bottom of the food chain from WD
all i can offer is my own experience - after having too many seagate hdds go tits up, i switched to the wd greens about 4.5 years ago - have 9 of them and 3 WD reds - the oldest WD Red is only 2 years old, but have had zero failures on any of them. And i am running the WD Red, standard grade. Newegg (and i'm sure other vendors) have been putting them up for sale a $99 for the 4TB unit - when i see them come up, i jump on one or two.

 

[kilerb]

Cool! So reds (especially the red pro at 7200rpm) doesn't have any disadvantage compared to say the blue or black other than costing more? They'll work great in a PC as a secondary storage drive for streaming?

 

[The Original Ralph]

imho, a little bit of a waste of coin to go with the PROs for streaming - the standard Red has 64 MB cache and the 8 TB units have 128 MB cache. I've never seen any buffering with my 5400 RPM units FWIW

 

[kilerb]

Yeah... But I think it's only a 30 dollar difference between the WD red 8tb and the WD pro red 8tb. Plus the pro is on prime and the other isn't.

 

[The Original Ralph]

actually on a per TB basis, the 8 TB red Pro is about $11/TB more - $99.99 / 4 TB = $25 a TB, the 8 TB Red PRO was something like $36.71 per TB

When i copy (and write) a 5-7 GB file to the 4 TB red HDD it takes a total of 4-5 seconds. No way i need it to transfer faster when reading or streaming that same file. So 7200 rpm is kind of like buying a 396 chevelle to go to the corner convenience store for milk & bread. Think about it

 

[cat2devnull]

I have a long term goal of putting together a NAS build where I will want to use WD Red drives. I have a more immediate need for a storage HDD in my home theater PC. Is there any downside to buying a Red drive to use in my home theater PC, with the eventual goal of moving it to a NAS?

Using a NAS drive in a non-NAS (more specifically a non-RAID) environment is a really bad idea. One of the key differences is that NAS drives by default will have TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery) enabled.
This is important because in a RAID environment you don't want the whole array pausing while one drive struggles to read one faulty sector. You want the drive to immediately give up and the array will recreate the damaged data from the other copy (RAID1) or parity (RAID5).
In a single drive desktop environment you absolutely want the drive to keep trying to get that data back because there is no redundancy.
So if you use a WD Red as a stand alone drive in a desktop and it has any issue then it is just going to give up and your data will be lost.
Now I believe that you may be able to find some software online that allows you to edit the firmware and disable TLER but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.