WD Red vs Black sequential read/write performance

[Marinatall_Ironside]

Hello

 

What are the performance numbers of the Western Digital Red 3TB 5400 RPM vs. Western Digital Black 2TB 7200 RPM HDD. Both are in a similar price category. What I know is that I can get more storage with the Red drive for about USD $10 less than the Black drive. But what are the sequential reads and writes of the Red drive as I want to maintain similar performance going with a HDD that spins at 5400 RPM without the added noise of the 7200 RPM flavor.

 

@Captain_WD

[scottyseng]

24 minutes ago, JurunceNK said:

 

 

I have both a 4TB WD Red and a 4TB WD Re (7200 RPM, enterprise drive, a class above the WD Black). The Red gets 160MB/s read and write for sequential, and the WD Re gets 180MB/s sequential read and write. The Reds are pretty fast for what they are. I would go for the Reds if this is just data storage.

 

 

[Marinatall_Ironside]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

I have both a 4TB WD Red and a 4TB WD Re (7200 RPM, enterprise drive, a class above the WD Black). The Red gets 160MB/s read and write for sequential, and the WD Re gets 180MB/s sequential read and write. The Reds are pretty fast for what they are. I would go for the Reds if this is just data storage.

Yeah for me, in this case, I plan on using a Red drive for mass storage of my games, projects, and miscellaneous stuff that I won't access as often compared to things I plan on putting onto a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO.

[scottyseng]

Just now, JurunceNK said:

Yeah for me, in this case, I plan on using a Red drive for mass storage of my games, projects, and miscellaneous stuff that I won't access as often compared to things I plan on putting onto a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO.

Yeah, I would just get the Reds. Ah, I updated my previous post with the benchmarks.

[Marinatall_Ironside]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, I would just get the Reds. Ah, I updated my previous post with the benchmarks.

Yep. 20MB/s isn't that much to me IMO. So Reds it is for my upcoming build, and it's also my first desktop computer too as I am on my dad's laptop for over 3 years now.

[scottyseng]

3 minutes ago, JurunceNK said:

Yep. 20MB/s isn't that much to me IMO. So Reds it is for my upcoming build, and it's also my first desktop computer too as I am on my dad's laptop for over 3 years now.

Ah, the other thing to note is that a drive that has more storage (like 4TB) will generally be faster than a drive with a smaller storage. For example, the 4TB Red above destroys my WD 2TB Black (It gets 120 - 130 MB/s). I would try to push for 4TB, as that size point generally has the best GB per dollar (Unless you find 3TB on sale somewhere).

[Marinatall_Ironside]

3 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Ah, the other thing to note is that a drive that has more storage (like 4TB) will generally be faster than a drive with a smaller storage. For example, the 4TB Red above destroys my WD 2TB Black (It gets 120 - 130 MB/s). I would try to push for 4TB, as that size point generally has the best GB per dollar (Unless you find 3TB on sale somewhere).

Okay  I'll do that.

[Captain_WD]

8 hours ago, JurunceNK said:

~snip~

Hi there

 

Here are the spec sheets of both WD Red and WD Black.

 

WD Red is the NAS/RAID class drive from the consumer series that is designed specifically for RAID environments and NAS devices. It is tuned and optimized for 24/7 performance, RAID arrays and up to 8-bay NAS systems. This drive is often used for backups, stable secondary storage and in streaming builds, as well as NAS and RAID.

 

WD Black is the performance drive in WD's consumer line. It is the fastest among them and has good features such as a built-in dual-core CPU that makes the drive great for multitasking. It is designed for heavy gaming, big workloads and intensive file usage. It has a long, 5-year limited warranty and its mostly used in gaming computers or editing machines.  

 

Due to the difference in the designs of the drive, they have different firmware and internal features and would each perform better than the other at their respective field. It would really depend on what you will be using the drive for.

 

Captain_WD.