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WDC Black Drive in a RAID

davidst95
By davidst95
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Hi,

 

Could someone tell me breifly why WDC Black drives are not good in a RAID or a NAS setup?   I read articles about them not being good but they really never explain why in detail.  Thanks.

 

David

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Black drives are mostly performance drives which have fast seek timings and can be noisy and hot during operation

 

but the real question is what sort of RAID you are using?

 

RAID 0 is fast but chances of failure high and recovery is slim

 

RAID 1 is mirroring so you still retain your data

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Thanks for the reply. I use 3 black drives in Raid 5. Every once in awhile during boot not all the drives will be put in the Raid. I use a Samsung 850 as my primary drive.

David

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did you set them to all power on during boot up?

Budget? Uses? Currency? Location? Operating System? Peripherals? Monitor? Use PCPartPicker wherever possible. 

Quote whom you're replying to, and set option to follow your topics. Or Else we can't see your reply.

 

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I'm not sure how to do that?   Is there something in the BIOS?   Thanks.

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Hi,

 

Could someone tell me breifly why WDC Black drives are not good in a RAID or a NAS setup?   I read articles about them not being good but they really never explain why in detail.  Thanks.

 

David

 

Much like the Green Drives, Black / Blue Drives power off after a while when not in use. Greens do it far more though. But in RAID, you want all of the drives to be on. Otherwise the RAID controller will think that drive died and will tell you that drive isn't working anymore. The Red / Red Pros are what you want for RAID. The Enterprise SE lineup is comparable to the Red Pro, so check to see if the SE is cheaper first (It usually is).

 

Red - 5400RPM

Red Pro / Se - 7200RPM

 

The black drives should all be picked up when powering the system though. Do the Black drives show up in BIOS?

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Hi, yes they all show up in the BIOS.  THe issue is when the Intel RAID screen shows up on bootup not all the drives are in the RAID and the RAID status says degraded.   I turn off the computer for a couple seconds and turn it back on and it's fine.

 

David

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Hi, yes they all show up in the BIOS.  THe issue is when the Intel RAID screen shows up on bootup not all the drives are in the RAID and the RAID status says degraded.   I turn off the computer for a couple seconds and turn it back on and it's fine.

 

David

 

Yeah, that degradation is because of the Black Drives aren't made to be used in RAID. The RAID controller thinks the drives are going bad because they turn off when not in use / after long periods of time. I would recommend breaking the array and getting RAID ready drives.

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Thanks for the advice.    I think i'm going to sell my Black drives and NAS ready drives. Which are better Seagate NAS or WDC NAS drives?  Thanks again for all the advice.

 

David

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Thanks for the advice.    I think i'm going to sell my Black drives and NAS ready drives. Which are better Seagate NAS or WDC NAS drives?  Thanks again for all the advice.

 

David

 

Well, both work fine. There's also the HGST NAS drives, but I hear those run pretty loud / hot.

 

I personally can vouch for the WD Red drives. I have four of them (4TB) in RAID 10 for 2 years and they work fine, I have a 3TB one in my bro's PC that's still alive after 3 years. I just bought two more 4TB Reds to use as backup.

 

Remember though, with any drive brand you buy online, you will always run the risk of receiving a DOA. Don't hate the company because the drive comes dead (it's usually the fault of the shipping company anyway...). The one 3TB Red drive I bought came DOA...but ah, it fell out of the poor packaging (Before Newegg used the new drive pillow cases) and it really had no chance of survival. WD replaced for me though.

 

If you are in the need for a lot of speed though, you might look into the WD Red Pro or WD Se drives. I can tell you that four 4TB in RAID 10 gets me about 350MB/s read speed.

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Hi,

 

Could someone tell me breifly why WDC Black drives are not good in a RAID or a NAS setup?   I read articles about them not being good but they really never explain why in detail.  Thanks.

 

David

 

Hey there davidst95,
 
It is generally recommended to use NAS/RAID-class drives for RAID arrays, servers and NAS setups because these drives have additional features in the hardware and firmware of the drive that enable them to work safer and smoother in such environments, handle more vibrations and heat, generated from the longer usage and multi-drive environment. TLER is one of the major features that is recommended when choosing a drive for such usage.
I would recommend using WD Red as it has all the necessary features and should work much safer and smoother in a RAID set up. 
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Hi, thanks for all the informationl.   It's really helpful.   I'm going to start the process of replace the Black drives the Red version.

 

David

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