Mixing WDC Black and Red Drives

[davidst95]

Hi, I have 3 WDC drives in a Raid 5 setup. I initially had these drives in various computer before I used them in Raid. I would like to add a 4th drive because I'm running out of space. Should I buy another Black drive or get a true NAS Red drive. Would adding a red drive slow down the black drives? I hope this makes sense. ☺ Thanks.

David

[mikat]

@Captain_WD

[MourningSouls]

Don't RAID drives need to be identical?

[davidst95]

Don't RAID drives need to be identical?

I thought they just have to be the same size.

[ttam]

I try to stick with the same drives for raid 5 setups but you can throw in another drive. If it's off by even 1 sector it may not work. When I do these I will leave a small bit blank.. for example 299,990 of 300,000 size for each drive so they are identical. This is why most of the enterprise/nas drives will come at exactly the same size to make this not an issue.

[d3anio97]

Hi, I have 3 WDC drives in a Raid 5 setup. I initially had these drives in various computer before I used them in Raid. I would like to add a 4th drive because I'm running out of space. Should I buy another Black drive or get a true NAS Red drive. Would adding a red drive slow down the black drives? I hope this makes sense. ☺ Thanks.

David

doesn't really matter... WD's desktop drives have always been really reliable. if your rig is always on, then the WD10EFRX is the way to go since it's designed for 24/7 loads with no error tolerance whatsoever! the WD black drives are less reliable than reds in a 24/7 load, they consume more power and produce a slight amount more heat... unless you REALLY need that extra boost in speed... but I don't recommend taking speed over data integrity! especially if you have important stuff that absolutely MUST remain safe at all times... like, say... your 200GB large folder of ill repute or that 600GB collection of rare pepes... (these are just examples... I know that resume is more important than dank memes or pr0nz)

[d3anio97]

Don't RAID drives need to be identical?

not physically... you can throw any drive into a RAID array as long as it's the same capacity... I could go out and grab 6 3TB hard drives from different vendors, slap them in a system, throw in an LSI RAID controller or use the one on my motherboard and BAM! I could throw them into a RAID partition without a glitch... yeah, the setup would be janky as all balls with the reliability of such a mixed array being questionable at best (especially with OEM drives in there! I've had LOADS of them die on me!) but it sure as heck works!! besides... hard disks are so cheap nowadays... if you find some that aren't OEM drives, so maybe the odd Seagate ST1000 or a 7200.10, WD10EZEX or EFRX... possibly the HLFS etc then you're golden!... reliability on an 8/7 basis would be awesome... for 24/7 you're looking at enterprise or NAS grade drives, so Seagate Constellation ES, Western Digital's Red "EZEX" line and their VelociRaptor "HLFS" line would be better suited with the VelociRaptor being the best performing of the bunch being a 10K RPM drive... (I actually have one of those old beasties in a machine somewhere... I'll have to bench it!! it's an old WD800HLFS 80GB )

[scottyseng]

Hi, I have 3 WDC drives in a Raid 5 setup. I initially had these drives in various computer before I used them in Raid. I would like to add a 4th drive because I'm running out of space. Should I buy another Black drive or get a true NAS Red drive. Would adding a red drive slow down the black drives? I hope this makes sense. ☺ Thanks.

David

 

I would say get a Red drive. Not really recommended to put Blacks/Greens/Blures into RAID. It's preferred that they're the same model / size, but as long as they're the same size it works. I still would try to keep them all the same if possible.

[ValkyrieX]

WDC RED are optimized for NAS & RAID.

I hope this helps.

 

 

WDC Red compare:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/nas/

 

WDC Blue/Green/Black compare:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/

 

 

TQ: Western Digital (Red & colors explained)

 

TQ: Raid 5 & 6:

 

TQ: Raid 0, 1, & 10: