WD RED or WD BLACK for video editing in RAID 0?

[Michael Trenton]

Hi,
I'm in the process of picking which drives to get for the video editing/ visual effects workstation I'm currently building.
So far I've bought a Samsung 512GB SSD for my OS and software. When it comes to storage for my video footage I'm thinking of buying three drives for a raid 0 configuration (within the case, not in a separate NAS device btw), but I'm unsure what drives to get. Either:

A) 3x 3TB WD BLACK. If I wasn't gonna run the drives in a raid I would certainly get these due to 7200rpm. But as I want a raid do I really need the WD Blacks?
They will run louder and hotter than the Reds right? I'd like to keep noise and heat down to a minimum.

B) 3x 3TB WD RED. They run at a lower RPM than the Blacks so that's a concern maybe, but does it really matter if I run the three of them in RAID 0? Will the read/write speeds that I gain from running them in a raid outweigh the negative effects of lower RPM?
And they will run quiter and cooler than the Black drives is that correct?

Most of my video footage is 1080p shot with DSLR camera so it's usually low bitrate H.264 and AVCHD (usually less than 50 mbps) material that I'll be editing so no RAW files or 4K (yet), but I would prefer to 'future proof' by getting drives that can handle higher quality 4K video in the future. I'm guessing both the Reds and the Blacks in a raid should handle this, but as I'm not experienced with raids and I've never configured drives in a raid before so I would really appreciate some input and advice on this from you guys.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

WD BLACK

 

[Gracodana]

WD BLACK

There isn't to much argueing with you(your best answers says it all) though I would have said the red would be better because arn't they designed for RAID?

 

[Michael Trenton]

WD BLACK

May I ask why?

 

[BlazinHot]

WD red's are specifically designed for servers and the purples are designed for surveillance recording. WD blues and blacks are for normal PC uses, where black is the enthusiast/high quality one. The greens are environmentally friendly... whatever that means, lol.

 

[Michael Trenton]

WD red's are specifically designed for servers and the purples are designed for surveillance recording. WD blues and blacks are for normal PC uses, where black is the enthusiast/high quality one. The greens are environmentally friendly... whatever that means, lol.

Thanks. I'm aware that the WD Reds are designed for NAS networks (the regular Reds are mainly intended for smaller NAS/Homeserver builds of up to five drives if I remember correctly) but as I'm gonna configure the drives in a RAID anyway I figure they might be suited for my use even though I'm installing them in my computer case instead of a NAS case.

I guess what I'm asking is whether having three WD RED drives configured in RAID 0 will make up for their individual weaknesses in terms of performance. Will it make them fast enough for video editing? (while providing advantages over the WD BLACKS in terms of lower noise, less heat and costing less to buy?)

 

[Cristi72]

Hello,

I understand your needs for high speeds and capacity, but never use a RAID0 for storage! Try to go for a RAID 5 or RAID 10 (you will need an additional 3GB HDD for RAID 10 though). Or, even better, buy a 256 GB SSD for OS, use the 512 GB SSD for temporary rendered files and use 2 x 3TB Blacks in RAID 1 for storage (yes, it will be three times lower capacity, but the data will be much safer; it's not funny when several weeks worth of data is going away...).

 

[Michael Trenton]

Hello,

I understand your needs for high speeds and capacity, but never use a RAID0 for storage! Try to go for a RAID 5 or RAID 10 (you will need an additional 3GB HDD for RAID 10 though). Or, even better, buy a 256 GB SSD for OS, use the 512 GB SSD for temporary rendered files and use 2 x 3TB Blacks in RAID 1 for storage (yes, it will be three times lower capacity, but the data will be much safer; it's not funny when several weeks worth of data is going away...).

Hi and thanks for your reply. Losing my work if one of the three drives fail doesn't worry me too much though. My plan is to have the video files on those three drives in RAID 0 while editing, but I will also keep a backup of those videofiles on separate drives so I won't lose them permanently if one drive should fail. I will probably loose a lot of time replacing drive(s) and copying the vidoefiles from the backup drives onto the RAID drives again, but as this computer will be used mainly for my personal projects losing time isn't really that critical to me.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I already have an additional SSD that I will be using for the render and preview files so those won't go on the RAID drives.

 

[Cristi72]

Hello,

I understand your needs for high speeds and capacity, but never use a RAID0 for storage! Try to go for a RAID 5 or RAID 10 (you will need an additional 3GB HDD for RAID 10 though). Or, even better, buy a 256 GB SSD for OS, use the 512 GB SSD for temporary rendered files and use 2 x 3TB Blacks in RAID 1 for storage (yes, it will be three times lower capacity, but the data will be much safer; it's not funny when several weeks worth of data is going away...).

Hi and thanks for your reply. Losing my work if one of the three drives fail doesn't worry me too much though. My plan is to have the video files on those three drives in RAID 0 while editing, but I will also keep a backup of those videofiles on separate drives so I won't lose them permanently if one drive should fail. I will probably loose a lot of time replacing drive(s) and copying the vidoefiles from the backup drives onto the RAID drives again, but as this computer will be used mainly for my personal projects losing time isn't really that critical to me.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I already have an additional SSD that I will be using for the render and preview files so those won't go on the RAID drives.

Well, in that case do a 4-drive RAID 0, but use the 1TB Blacks, it will be faster and much cheaper .

 

[Michael Trenton]

Hello,

I understand your needs for high speeds and capacity, but never use a RAID0 for storage! Try to go for a RAID 5 or RAID 10 (you will need an additional 3GB HDD for RAID 10 though). Or, even better, buy a 256 GB SSD for OS, use the 512 GB SSD for temporary rendered files and use 2 x 3TB Blacks in RAID 1 for storage (yes, it will be three times lower capacity, but the data will be much safer; it's not funny when several weeks worth of data is going away...).

Hi and thanks for your reply. Losing my work if one of the three drives fail doesn't worry me too much though. My plan is to have the video files on those three drives in RAID 0 while editing, but I will also keep a backup of those videofiles on separate drives so I won't lose them permanently if one drive should fail. I will probably loose a lot of time replacing drive(s) and copying the vidoefiles from the backup drives onto the RAID drives again, but as this computer will be used mainly for my personal projects losing time isn't really that critical to me.

EDIT: I forgot to mention I already have an additional SSD that I will be using for the render and preview files so those won't go on the RAID drives.

Well, in that case do a 4-drive RAID 0, but use the 1TB Blacks, it will be faster and much cheaper .

Thanks for the suggestion. 4x 1TB Blacks is definitely an option, but leaves me with only 4TB of storage space VS 3x 3TB Reds which gives me 9TB.

The larger storage space, less noise and heat that the three Reds will produce (particularly if going with four Blacks like you suggested) seems like the most viable option right now to be honest. Plus one 3TB Red costs only slightly more than a 1TB Black where I live. Unless someone convinces me the Reds will not be suitable for the job that is.

 

[Cristi72]

Thanks for the suggestion. 4x 1TB Blacks is definitely an option, but leaves me with only 4TB of storage space VS 3x 3TB Reds which gives me 9TB.

The larger storage space, less noise and heat that the three Reds will produce (particularly if going with four Blacks like you suggested) seems like the most viable option right now to be honest. Plus one 3TB Red costs only slightly more than a 1TB Black where I live. Unless someone convinces me the Reds will not be suitable for the job that is.

A Black HDD is roughly 20 - 30% faster; if you are concerned about the heat, a 4 x 2TB RED array will match the speed of a 2 x 3TB Black array.

I just hope the HDDs will cope with the high write speeds needed for a 4K rendering. A 4K RAW file will need in excess of 250MB/s write speed; when the HDDs are empty, you could count to 600MB/s write speed, but as soon as the data is piling up, the write speed falls abruptly, as the HDDs will use the slower areas. Have that in mind, especially when wanting some future-proof for your storage.

 

[Michael Trenton]

Thanks for the suggestion. 4x 1TB Blacks is definitely an option, but leaves me with only 4TB of storage space VS 3x 3TB Reds which gives me 9TB.

The larger storage space, less noise and heat that the three Reds will produce (particularly if going with four Blacks like you suggested) seems like the most viable option right now to be honest. Plus one 3TB Red costs only slightly more than a 1TB Black where I live. Unless someone convinces me the Reds will not be suitable for the job that is.

A Black HDD is roughly 20 - 30% faster; if you are concerned about the heat, a 4 x 2TB RED array will match the speed of a 2 x 3TB Black array.

I just hope the HDDs will cope with the high write speeds needed for a 4K rendering. A 4K RAW file will need in excess of 250MB/s write speed; when the HDDs are empty, you could count to 600MB/s write speed, but as soon as the data is piling up, the write speed falls abruptly, as the HDDs will use the slower areas. Have that in mind, especially when wanting some future-proof for your storage.

Thanks. I think I might go for the WD Reds (either 4x2TB like you suggested or 3x3TB, I haven't made up my mind yet) as I think I will mostly be editing HD footage and AVCHD encoded 4K footage at 50mbps for the next couple of years. I'm not likely to get my hands on too much RAW 4K footage and if I do I'll figure something out I guess. So I think I'll be safe if going with the Reds for now.
Thanks a lot for your help