Western Digital Red: NAS-Specific SATA 6Gb/s Drives, Reviewed

[Guest]

Western Digital just launched its new Red family of mechanical hard drives, optimized specifically for home and small office/home office (SOHO) network-attached storage devices. The company sent its 2 and 3 TB models for us to benchmark and review.

Western Digital Red: NAS-Specific SATA 6Gb/s Drives, Reviewed : Read more

 

[f-14]

the reviews say these drives aren't very good, they are prone to high failure rates similar to the 1TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache caviar black drives they make. i thought maybe it was just me, but the reviews say other wise.

 

[EzioAs]

the reviews say these drives aren't very good, they are prone to high failure rates similar to the 1TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache caviar black drives they make. i thought maybe it was just me, but the reviews say other wise.

Where did you read that? I just finished reading Tom's review and found out that these are excellent in terms of power, temperature and price for SOHO NAS use. Not sure about the reliability just yet though since they are pretty new on the market.

 

[JeTJL]

Read some reviews with people experiencing their drives catching on fire.

Such a shame though I would of wanted some for my new FreeNAS server. Till then I'll be using some 2.5 drives pulled from some laptops.

 

[enewmen]

I think this class of drives are needed. I hope to read more about these and some long-term tests.
I personally only read good things about the Red drives - the low heat, low noise, low vibration, and low power consumption, low idle power consumption, and of course reliability are more important to me than maximum performance in its intended environment (even if some faster spinning drives have slightly more performance per watt).
Now I can't wait to put these drives in a Synology DS413 when they are released.

 

[mocchan]

I definitely need to pick up a few of these drives, they're looking pretty sweet to be honest.

 

[epsiloneri]

Thanks for the review, these kind of articles are the reason I keep check in on Tom's now and then (I'm not interested in buyer's guides, hardware is what interests me). These kind of drives have really been missing from the market, the enterprise ones are just too expensive for home users.

Read some reviews with people experiencing their drives catching on fire.

Eh, can you provide a source for that spectacular claim, or are you just trolling?

 

[EDVINASM]

[citation][nom]epsiloneri[/nom]Thanks for the review, these kind of articles are the reason I keep check in on Tom's now and then (I'm not interested in buyer's guides, hardware is what interests me). These kind of drives have really been missing from the market, the enterprise ones are just too expensive for home users. Eh, can you provide a source for that spectacular claim, or are you just trolling?[/citation]

I second that. Nothing on Google regarding WD Red issues or fire hazards. I have ordered 2 of these and I am going to enjoy them, never mind few trolls around - I have hater blocking glasses

 

[rantoc]

Caviar Green's in raid 5 or 6 depending on how much fault tolerance you need for a home nas - ftw!

 

[vipervoid1]

[citation][nom]f-14[/nom]the reviews say these drives aren't very good, they are prone to high failure rates similar to the 1TB 7200 rpm 64mb cache caviar black drives they make. i thought maybe it was just me, but the reviews say other wise.[/citation]

my Black 1TB 7200rpm 32MB cache
Used for about 4 years long ~
nvr gt any problem ~

 

[ZakTheEvil]

[citation][nom]rantoc[/nom]Caviar Green's in raid 5 or 6 depending on how much fault tolerance you need for a home nas - ftw![/citation]

Except that most RAID manufacturers specifically warn against using Caviar Green drives in RAID arrays due to IntelliPower technology causing problems with RAID due to their firmware not being optimized for RAID.

 

[hannibal]

Good for fast video streaming in home usage. So guite usefull in video and music server... Low power and low heat... I can see that there is a plase for HD like this!

There is allso a raid test of this HD: http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review_wd30efrx

 

[Saxie81]

Why wasn't TLER mentioned in the review?? Being that it's one of the huge benefits while using these drives in a RAID config....

 

[boiler1990]

Defintely going to buy a pair for my home server. I was looking at enterprise drives, but they're quite expensive. Power consumption numbers for therse are fantastic - I'm looking at an always-on server drawing under 50W

 

[serendipiti]

I think this is, in fact, the scenario for HDDs in the future, as SSDs will eventually replace them in other segments.
This kind of product line will replace desktop oriented lines as top sales HDD...

 

[rdc85]

I can use this for cctv storage's, if it's 24x7 and reability is true and the price is in right spot....

 

[CaedenV]

I am curious about RAID performance of these drives as that is what they are intended for. Do they scale better in RAID performance compared to (let's just say) an F4? Could we have a RAID roundup? See performance in RAID 0, 1 and 5 for some of these popular Home/Office storage drives?


At some point in the next year I am finally going to get my little home server up and running, and I am looking at a 9-10TB RAID5, which would be ~$800 with 4 3TB Red drives (or ~$600 with normal drives). But then you look at things like hybrid drives, or even SSDs if they continue their insane price drops and can up the size limits on more civilian units, and I begin to wonder if this next year is simply the wrong time to jump on such an investment with HDD tech going out the window, but SSDs not quite ready for prime time yet.

 

[penguintech]

Would love to upgrade to one of these drives, one day... when I can upgrade one of my older systems to run as a server.

 

[rantoc]

[citation][nom]ZakTheEvil[/nom]Except that most RAID manufacturers specifically warn against using Caviar Green drives in RAID arrays due to IntelliPower technology causing problems with RAID due to their firmware not being optimized for RAID.[/citation]

The raid chips/card manufacturers that can't get them to work well with their hardware/drivers then yes - they recommend you stay clear of them for their product shortcomings. Not all manufacturers however have those issues so its fully possible to build a huge fault tolerant NAS with very low power consumption and descent sequential transfers for unsurpassed bang for the buck... That is however requiring the consumer know what components to choose, apparently some here don't know such things and rather blindly follow their favorite brands recommendation and spend loads of extra cash for nothing, if that is what you consider clever then by all means - Go ahead and recommend people from being clever and at the same time help the environment! For me that choice is very simple. Several years running 24/7 with no issues at all on a 8 drive raid 6 proves what i need to know!

 

[Luscious]

These would be sweet inside those compact QNAP NAS boxes and wouldn't cost a lot to set up either. I like the idea of a small 2-drive RAID0 setup running 24/7 as a network backup solution and DLNA media server.

 

[nforce4max]

I trust consumer reviews a lot more than reviews on sites such as this when it comes to reliability. A lot of companies over the years are well known that once in a while they will cherry pick before sending ANY thing off to any review site such as this while providing vastly different quality to consumers. I learned my lesson when it came to power supplies (bought into NZXT).

 

[TeraMedia]

i just RMA'ed a 1.5 TB Caviar Green. I have another that's showing bad sectors. These are lt 3 years old each, and represent 2 out of a population of 6.

I also have a set of 500 GB RE2 and RE3 drives that have been kicking for a while, the earliest since 2006. They've also been surviving in an undercooled HTPC enclosed in furniture. I've lost one out of a population of 6. The REs cost more, but they do seem to be more reliable.

What I don't understand is why anyone would want a WD Caviar Green drive now? Yeah the IO's are a bit better, but if you're getting a WD Caviar Green or Red, you probably don't care much about IO.

 

[doomtomb]

So basically all the graphs and measurements indicate that this designed for lower power, lower noise, lower I/O operations, while still maintaining slightly higher throughput than Western Digital Green drives.

 

[LukeCWM]

I wish this article would have touched more on TLER and also the balancing technique they are using for the first time, a new stability feature that hasn't even made its way to the enterprise drives yet.

With TLER in case you need it, the balancing technique, the greater streaming rates, the lower temp, lower noise, increased reliability, and increased warranty all with only costing slightly more than Caviar Green, I don't see a reason to purchase the Green ever again. All these features except TLER are useful for consumers as well! In fact, outside of business servers or particular needs, I don't see the need for any HDD but Red, since an SSD can provide much better speed than a 10k RPM drive anyway and therefore makes a better boot drive.

Does anyone think that these shouldn't be used for consumer applications in standard desktops? If so, please explain why so I can learn.

 

[hannibal]

Does anyone think that these shouldn't be used for consumer applications in standard desktops? If so, please explain why so I can learn.

Well, if you don't have SSD or you have a lot of writing and reading with small files. Then the RED series access time can be a problem, but this is not a bad HD as an only system HD, not perfect though. It still would be energy effient, just not very fast in those situations.