Captain_WD

Hey DemcoX99X,   You can use pretty much any RAID card on a regular PC. If you need a RAID array for simple storage/speed boost/redundancy you can freely used the one that is built-in on your motherboard. Most RAID cards are rather expensive and are not worth it if you plan on doing simple consumer-level storage on the array with no need for extra stability or features.  What are your goals with this?   Captain_WD.

Hey warnat,   WD Purple has optimized writing speeds, special error correction features and is generally developed and tuned for DVR and other surveillance systems. It can work, but there may be some data corruption due to the error correction feature of the drive that is designed to record videos with no frame losses.  As it was suggested, I would look into WD Blue and WD Black drives as they are more appropriate for what you are looking for.   Thanks @ for mentioning I can't get notifications from mentions so if anyone needs me, feelfree to PS me or drop a line on the profile.    Captain_WD. 

Hello lavaleta and welcome to Linus Tech Tips forum   As @Senzelian mentioned, it involves a bigger risk of data loss since you would lose everything on the array even if one of the drives fail. Moreover, you will actually have a slower initial booting time compared to a single boot time.    Having said that, you will have to go to BIOS and configure the two drives into RAID0 and they WILL be formatted, so if you have any important data - do back it up. After that, you would have to restore your backed up data or do a fresh install (which is the recommended step).   Hope this helps!   Captain_WD.

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

Well currently i'm out of town , going to try your advice Captain. Will yet you know if anything occurs. Thanks for your helpful responses.

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

um replacing a captain with a boogieman? you couldnt call yourself major_WD or colonel_WD?

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

Dear all,
 
It is with great regret that I must inform you I am moving away from this position in Western Digital and Captain_WD will no longer be representing the brand nor it will be associated with WD.
It's been quite the ride for over two years and it was a great honor and pleasure to share and gain knowledge in the Linus Tech Tips community. You guys form an amazing community which has made my job fun, enjoyable and has enabled me to take pleasure in doing it each and every day that I have been here. I have also learned a lot of new things here from you guys so a huge Thank you for that.
 
I will truly miss being a part of this community, help people and interacting with each and every one of you. 
 
My role will be taken by @Boogieman_WD who I'm sure will do an excellent job helping people and offering solutions to whoever needs them. He has quite the experience throughout other communities so I'm sure he will be an excellent consultant. Please, treat him well and refer all WD and Storage related questions and troubles to him. 
 
If you have any questions or comments for me or for my colleague, please feel free to share them here.
 
Cheers! 
 
Captain_WD.

Thank you guys for the great words. This serves once again as proof of how truly amazing this community is. It was an honor and a pleasure chatting and helping here. 

Hi there Welcome to the community! 
 
If the drive passes WD DLG's tests it should be safe to use. Could you get the S.M.A.R.T. status with the raw values and post them here? 
I would try moving the drive around the case and try it out with different SATA and power cables and see if the sounds persist. Also, if you can, try the drive on another computer. 
As @dragoon20005 and @SCHISCHKA suggested, the drive could be defective and RMAing it may be the best thing to do here. 
 
Post back with some more info  
 
Thanks dragoon for the mention! 
 
Captain_WD. 

That should mean 8 hours, 5 days a week... basically a regular office/home usage-type

I'm sorry to hear about the troubles you are going through. 
Try testing that drive on another system with the DOS tool and see if the drive is recognized. 
 
Let me know if you need help with your new WD Blue.
 
Your current drive's S.M.A.R.T. status doesn't really seem that critical so you should be able to save some data on it but don't rely on it for important data that you can't afford to lose. 
 
Captain_WD. 

Hi there
 
As @Electronics Wizardy suggested, you can reuse all your storage rives in your new system but you will need to reinstall your OS as it has been configured to work with other set of hardware. You may be able to boot from your old OS but you will encounter many problems and it will be unstable. 
Reinstalling it will create a new system registry and you won't be able to run your old applications and games so you will need to reinstall those too. 
You should be able to access everything else without issues. 
 
I would simply move everything away from the old C partition (everything you need that is), place the drive in the new system, run the installation media of the OS, delete the old C partition as well as the old system partitions without touching the rest of the data, install the new OS on the remaining unallocated space (it will create a new partition and will format it) and you should be ready to go. Simply reinstall your applications and games and everything should be back to normal.
 
If you are reusing that WD Blue I would recommend running some diagnostic tests first so you are on the safe side that the drive is still healthy and won't pose any threat to your data. You can do that with WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Check if the drive passes both the quick and the extended tests. 
 
Let me know if you have any questions! 
 
Captain_WD.

Hi there
 
What are you using your system for? Most consumer usage types don't really notice the several MBs difference in performance between the different brands nor consumers are really able to reach the TBW limit of most SSDs. WD Green SSD is a good option for low-power cost-efficient upgrade for everyday computing. WD Blue SSD has improved performance, durability and is designed for heavier usages. 
 
You could look around for some feedback and reviews of the rest of the drives and see if there are any known bugs or issues and how do they perform.
 
Captain_WD. 

Wow thanks for the information. I just need to earn some funds first

Ahhh right yes, that was how i thought RAID 1 worked, some earlier comments confused my ideas about how it worked, yeh, its purely a cost issue for RAID 1 in my case, its a reassuring thing to have covering your back, with the addition of external backups too and id be covered from all angles so to speak. Thanks for just confirming that, ill have a think about doing that, not quite sure just yet.
 
Just need to make the final decision, have spent my last few nights playing with FreeNAS to see what i can do, its pretty fun yet sometimes very frustrating ahaha

Hi there
 
My two cents on this: both self-built and pre-built NAS solutions have their pros and cons. 
- Self-built NAS devices offer a wider variety of parts, customization (both hardware and software), upgrade-ability, longer warranty on some parts and the joy of putting everything together yourself. On the other hand, it is a far more complex process to set it up and manage it, usually takes far more research to make a good balanced system for the budget and you don't have overall support on the device. 
- Pre-built NAS devices are very simple and easy to setup, manage and use, are designed to be a low-powered small systems specifically for this purpose, everything is put together to work at optimal performance and power for the price and you get full support on the whole device from the manufacturer. Pre-built NAS devices don't really offer much customization and freedom when it comes to the software, though. 
 
If I understand correctly you need a NAS mostly for sharing data and media between different devices on your network. You should be able to do this with both a pre-built and a self-built NAS.
 
Could you provide a bit more detail on what data exactly will be stored on the NAS and what devices will be accessing it? 
 
Just to throw another option for pre-built NAS devices, check out WD My Cloud series and see if any of them cover your needs and fit in your budget. 
Personal NAS.  
Prosumer NAS.
 
Regarding the redundancy, it really depends on how many storage drives are you looking to use, how much data safety you'd want, how much storage space you'd need and what solution and OS are you going for. RAID1 is a good choice for basic data redundancy. Mind that, as @Sunshine1868 pointed out, RAID is by no means a replacement for a backup so if you have important data on the NAS I would strongly recommend keeping a copy of it on another storage drive that is not connected to the NAS. 
 
Let me know if you have any questions! 
 
Thanks Sunshine for the mention! 
 
Captain_WD.

As I pointed out, using either WD Blue, WD Black or WD Red would all work for basic storage in a RAID1 configuration. 
 
As for the RAID1 option, If one of the drives fails you should still be able to access your data, but it is recommended to replace the failed drive so the RAID can rebuild itself. If a drive fails you won't be able to get the other drive to a different port or a different computer to get your data. Simply put: you are stuck using that drive solely on that system and on that SATA port. It does, however, provide with instant copying of the data on the other drive and you won't have to use any software or wait for a backup to complete to have your data secure. In case you are doing something important and something happens to your drive, with a simple backup to another drive you will have all the information up to the point of the last backup. All changes and new data from that point to the point of failure will be lost. You can use a backup application to move the data to the other drive in the system and thus be able to swap PCs and ports, but mind that if you use a backup application to another drive in the same system this won't be a true backup as you are still prone to system failure, power outage, malware attacks and other factors that could damage your data regardless of your copies.  
 
I'd say you should simply stick with backing up your most important data to external drives.
 
Captain_WD.

As I pointed out in my previous post, M.2 is simply a form factor, meaning just the size of the drive. 
WD Blue SSD and WD Green SSD both have M.2 versions and they have the exact same performance as the 2.5" versions. 
If you take a M.2 SATA SSD and the same model but in 2.5" SATA format you will have the exact same performance with only the physical size of the SSD being different. 
You can check out the spec sheets of both WD Blue SSD and WD Green SSD and see that there are no differences between the M.2 and the 2.5" versions. 
 
You will see a performance difference if a M.2 uses the PCIe bus instead of the SATA bus, which not all M.2 do so that's one thing to look out for. Also, your motherboard's M.2 slot needs to support M.2 PCIe connection (either over AHCI or NVMe) otherwise the M.2 SSD will again work through the SATA bus and will work as a regular 2.5" SSD.
 
Captain_WD. 

He's gonna need a bigger drive.

Tools that check the S.M.A.R.T. status usually figure out the health status of SSDs in percentages by checking how much of the TBW (the write limit) has been depleted (comparing it to the manufacturer set theoretical limit for the normalized values in the S.M.A.R.T. status) . Being a new drive with very little data written on it it is normal to be at 100%. Unlike SSDs, HDDs don't have write cycle limitations so you can't predict how much of its life is left and give an estimate. Let me know if you need more info on it. 
 
All your drives seem in great shape and health given their Power On hours.
 
Captain_WD.