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WD HDD's!?

MVPernula
By MVPernula
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by Captain_WD,
50 minutes ago, MVPernula said:

~snip~

Hi there :)

 

What's the current drive's brand and model and what makes you think it is failing? Did you check its S.M.A.R.T. status? Did you back your data up? 

 

What will you be doing with your new drive? Some drives like the WD Blue are best for certain type of usages while other are best at other types of workloads so it really depends on what you are planning. 

 

WD Blue is your regular everyday drive that is most commonly used for regular computing, light gaming and workloads and combined with SSD. It is fully capable to run most games as well as many programs for editing or programming. I'd go with it if you are simply doing everyday things or have a SSD as a boot drive.  

 

WD Green is your energy-efficient drive that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power. It is designed for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving. It is mostly chosen for massive media storage in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games. Mind that WD Green is no longer in production and the Green line has been integrated into the WD Blue line.  

 

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 llong, 5-year limited warranty and its mostly used in gaming computers or editing machines.

 

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 Purple is your surveillance-class drive, designed specifically for surveillance storage, video recording and streaming. It has optimized noise reduction (being the most quiet drive in the consumer line with only 22dBA nooise level during seeking time), significantly reduced frame loss nad optimized firmware. This drive is also used often for desktop computers due to its low noise levels. It has optimized sequential read/write speeds but the random read/write speeds are lower than normal and some people experience problems with it in regular desktops.   

 

WD AV is a drive that is designed specifically for 24/7 streaming and PVR, DVR and IPTV environments. It is an earlier version of the WD Purple and is still used for constant streaming in TVs, media players, etc.   

 

Let me know if you have any specific questions for any of the drives. :) I'd be more than happy to help! 

 

Captain_WD. 

Posted

Looking for new storage sollutions.. My 10 year old HDD is singing its last verse.

 

I want 4TB total, so going 2x2 is an option with RAID0.

What confuses me are the "colors", GREEN, BLUE and RED. What do they mean? Should I care?

 

Some say "NAS drives", does this make a difference for everyday computing/gaming/general storage?

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General use is usually blue.

Black is 'performance', green for 'storage', purple for 'surveillance', that's what I remember from the top of my head.

You can go to their website to learn more.

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Just now, Ichi said:

General use is usually blue.

Black is 'performance', green for 'storage', purple for 'surveillance', that's what I remember from the top of my head.

You can go to their website to learn more.

Would you recommend a specific color? Or maybe SEAGATE?

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Just now, MVPernula said:

Would you recommend a specific color? Or maybe SEAGATE?

Like I said if for general consumer use, just get Blue, Black usually comes at more expensive price for a little bit of extra performance, Green is super slow, you wouldn't want it.

 

Seagate is an option but generally I prefer WD, heard alot about Seagate HDD vibrates way too much.

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1 minute ago, Ichi said:

Like I said if for general consumer use, just get Blue, Black usually comes at more expensive price for a little bit of extra performance, Green is super slow, you wouldn't want it.

 

Seagate is an option but generally I prefer WD, heard alot about Seagate HDD vibrates way too much.

Thank you! :D

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5 minutes ago, MVPernula said:

Looking for new storage sollutions.. My 10 year old HDD is singing its last verse.

 

I want 4TB total, so going 2x2 is an option with RAID0.

What confuses me are the "colors", GREEN, BLUE and RED. What do they mean? Should I care?

 

Some say "NAS drives", does this make a difference for everyday computing/gaming/general storage?

They all work for all uses but some are especially intended for something specific. 

Blue is your everyday computer drive.

Green is low power.

Black is fast.

Red and purple are for 24/7 use. (Red is more for NAS and Purple for DVR)

If you don't care either way and just want it to be semi-reliable, get the Blue. If you are willing to pay extra for a little more reliability, get Red.

 

But I gotta say, 4TB RAID 0 array is a horrible idea. You need to know that you'd lose all of that data if either one of the drives or the RAID controller fails.

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50 minutes ago, MVPernula said:

~snip~

Hi there :)

 

What's the current drive's brand and model and what makes you think it is failing? Did you check its S.M.A.R.T. status? Did you back your data up? 

 

What will you be doing with your new drive? Some drives like the WD Blue are best for certain type of usages while other are best at other types of workloads so it really depends on what you are planning. 

 

WD Blue is your regular everyday drive that is most commonly used for regular computing, light gaming and workloads and combined with SSD. It is fully capable to run most games as well as many programs for editing or programming. I'd go with it if you are simply doing everyday things or have a SSD as a boot drive.  

 

WD Green is your energy-efficient drive that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power. It is designed for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving. It is mostly chosen for massive media storage in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games. Mind that WD Green is no longer in production and the Green line has been integrated into the WD Blue line.  

 

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 llong, 5-year limited warranty and its mostly used in gaming computers or editing machines.

 

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 Purple is your surveillance-class drive, designed specifically for surveillance storage, video recording and streaming. It has optimized noise reduction (being the most quiet drive in the consumer line with only 22dBA nooise level during seeking time), significantly reduced frame loss nad optimized firmware. This drive is also used often for desktop computers due to its low noise levels. It has optimized sequential read/write speeds but the random read/write speeds are lower than normal and some people experience problems with it in regular desktops.   

 

WD AV is a drive that is designed specifically for 24/7 streaming and PVR, DVR and IPTV environments. It is an earlier version of the WD Purple and is still used for constant streaming in TVs, media players, etc.   

 

Let me know if you have any specific questions for any of the drives. :) I'd be more than happy to help! 

 

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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1 minute ago, Naeaes said:

But I gotta say, 4TB RAID 0 array is a horrible idea. You need to know that you'd lose all of that data if either one of the drives or the RAID controller fails.

I always back up what's important anyways!

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35 minutes ago, Captain_WD said:

Hi there :)

 

What's the current drive's brand and model and what makes you think it is failing? Did you check its S.M.A.R.T. status? Did you back your data up? 

 

What will you be doing with your new drive? Some drives like the WD Blue are best for certain type of usages while other are best at other types of workloads so it really depends on what you are planning. 

 

Hello! :D

 

I have some really old Seagates, both are different models. One of them is a 2.5" 5200rpm drive and the other a 5200rpm 3.5". Both are just terribly slow and have some messed up sectors. I've been fine with them as storage sollutions for a while but I can barely open folders anymore.

 

My new drives are for storage only, movies, pictures and clips for when I record on OBS and such! I was as mentioned earlier thinking about either a single 4TB or 2x2TB RAID0 for faster read and write speeds. 2x2 is mainly considered for my case on the Air 540, the drives will be on display so symmetry basically. I'd rather have two.

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4 hours ago, MVPernula said:

~snip~

Checking the raw values of hte S.M.A.R.T. status would be the best way to figure out what's going on with those drives and if they are really failing or simply need some optimization. 

 

RAID0 does offer a good boost to the sequential read/write speeds but has little effect on the random read/write speeds. This means that if the things that you do mostly on the RAID depend on the random speeds for the most part you won't really see any real performance difference while increasing significantly the risk for your data, noise, vibration and heat output and spend more on them. For simple media storage a single drive may be the better solution, but again this is entirely up to you.

 

If you'd like to go for a RAID0 array WD Red should be the proper choice as these drives are designed specifically for this and have the necessary features such as TLER to decrease to a minimum the chances of dropping out from the RAID and perform well in such conditions. 

 

For a single storage drive WD Blue should be a great choice.

 

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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