Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB OEM HDD - What's the verdict?

SaltandSauce · 20 Jan 2013 at 05:40

So after purchasing myself an HP ProLiant MicroServer a few weeks ago, I've been wanting to stretch out as much hard drive space as possible. After hunting around, the biggest drives that I've come across are the Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD30EFRX - OEM HDDs.

Can anyone vouch for these? They seem to be recommended for NAS boxes and since I intend on using my HP server mainly as as NAS, I thought these would be the most appropriate.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

nutcase · 20 Jan 2013 at 07:54

I've just put 2 on a RAID controller (RAID 1) and the results seem reasonable (if it were a more expensive case with redundant PSUs and UPS I'd feel more confident to enable write cacheing which brings the write speeds up a LOT):

Can't speak for real world or longetivity yet as not tried it but they do have a 3 year warranty it would seem.

SidewinderINC · 20 Jan 2013 at 11:46

What actually is it about them that makes them more reliable?

Looking at getting a single drive for an eSATA enclosure but not sure if the benefit is there as they're continuously pimped for NAS/RAID usage.

413x · 20 Jan 2013 at 12:14

I'mcconsidering getting one of these for the OS of my server. Have wd greens for the pure data drives

Picking the drives for this thing is quite tricky!

SaltandSauce · 20 Jan 2013 at 13:11

SidewinderINC said:
What actually is it about them that makes them more reliable?.

That's something I'd certainly like to know. Their whole advertising campaign is based on the fact these are built for NAS/Servers which tells me their built to last. But we all know, when moving mechanical parts are involved, they will never last forever.

Can someone shine some light on these murky waters?

Puppetmaster · 20 Jan 2013 at 13:28

Easiest thing to do is watch this video for why its better / good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkmEFfCy-88

shahpor · 20 Jan 2013 at 17:18

I have 3 3tb Red drives and can't complain.

Obviously haven't had them very long, but I can say that they run quiet and cool.

I can also say that Western Digital's customer service has been first rate, at least in my case.

httk · 21 Jan 2013 at 00:36

To summarise the video above:

They have reduced vibration, and they deal with errors differently to desktop drives.

At the start of the video he says "there's a good reason why there's 4 drives in this box and not five" and then doesn't say why...

Puppetmaster · 21 Jan 2013 at 19:28

httk said:
To summarise the video above:

They have reduced vibration, and they deal with errors differently to desktop drives.

At the start of the video he says "there's a good reason why there's 4 drives in this box and not five" and then doesn't say why...

Because he was fitting 4 into a nas box of some kind?

uniQ · 21 Jan 2013 at 20:18

SidewinderINC said:
What actually is it about them that makes them more reliable?

Looking at getting a single drive for an eSATA enclosure but not sure if the benefit is there as they're continuously pimped for NAS/RAID usage.

All you likely need to know:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/...eview-are-nasoptimized-hdds-worth-the-premium

httk · 21 Jan 2013 at 22:11

Puppetmaster said:
Because he was fitting 4 into a nas box of some kind?

Presumably, but he made it sound more interesting than that.

Reedy · 21 Jan 2013 at 22:25

Typically these came out ~10 months after I bought greens...

SidewinderINC · 22 Jan 2013 at 12:46

Cool, thanks for all the links guys

Even though it's going into an enclosure, it'll likely be on all the time (or at least for 15 hours a day, every day) so it seems that the red drive is the one to get over the Green. I don't see any obvious drawbacks to using these over the Greens as single drives either.

For the extra few pennies you pay, the added year warranty seems worth it anyway