WD Green vs. WD Red

[ericgcollyer]

My sister owns a photography business, and she asked me to build a computer for her. Rather than build her one, I am going to sell her my old i7 920 system and get her some new drives. I was looking into doing a RAID 1 (mirroring) drive for her to store the bulk of her data on. All that data will be backed up to an external drive, as well as to an offsite backup service (Crash Plan). I have been doing some research, and I haven't come up with an answer as of yet. My question is this. For RAID configurations using the built in motherboard RAID controller, will Western Digital Red drives be that much better than Green drives? I know that Red drives are specifically designed for NAS solutions, but does this include mobo RAIDS? Also, are the warranties different periods? I red somewhere that a Green drive has a two year warranty, but a Red drive has a three year warranty. Is this correct? I was looking at the 3 TB option, and the difference in cost is $50 a drive. Is that worth it? Your thoughts are appreciated.

[Lackadaisical]

I would strongly advise against using the red drives in a normal computer/raid setup. As you said, those drives very purpose built for NAS solutions and I have read quite a lot of feedback where people have had problems using them in a normal computer. I have also seen manufacturer feedback on newegg indicating that these drives should only be used in NAS enclosures/solutions and not used with normal builds. I personally have no experience with using the green drives in a raid setup, but I bet a lot of others on this forum do

[Waco]

It shouldn't matter either way...but I'd suggest using Windows software mirroring instead of onboard RAID.

 

Personally I've had great luck using WD green drives in RAID 1 on my HTPC. I have 4 of them now.

[Tjj226_Angel]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136798

 

The green drives are fine, but if you were really going to be concerned about reliability, then the enterprise drives would be a better bet.

 

I also agree with waco about using some sort of windows utility, or 3rd party software for the mirroring.

 

I would like to add that if you don't have an SSD on the PC, you should probably get one. I think a nice cheap 60 GB ssd for a primary OS, and some programs would really help with the editing process.

 

Lastly, if your sisters business is doing well enough where she can afford a little bit more, you might want to thing about getting a UPS to protect against surges and power loss from corrupting any data.

[ericgcollyer]

I picked up a nice SSD for her. A 256 GB Vertex 4 to be exact. I don't know if I want to spend the money for a bunch of black drives just yet though. She is just getting started, and I figure with three backups (RAID 1, external drive, and offsite storage) she should be alright. I have three WD black drives and I love them. She just needs about 3TB of space and they don't have 3 TB black drives. Plus, they would be very expensive.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136798

 

The green drives are fine, but if you were really going to be concerned about reliability, then the enterprise drives would be a better bet.

 

I also agree with waco about using some sort of windows utility, or 3rd party software for the mirroring.

 

I would like to add that if you don't have an SSD on the PC, you should probably get one. I think a nice cheap 60 GB ssd for a primary OS, and some programs would really help with the editing process.

 

Lastly, if your sisters business is doing well enough where she can afford a little bit more, you might want to thing about getting a UPS to protect against surges and power loss from corrupting any data.

[ericgcollyer]

Why? Not trying to be bratty, just wondering the reason why. And what mirroring software would you recommend?

 

It shouldn't matter either way...but I'd suggest using Windows software mirroring instead of onboard RAID.

 

Personally I've had great luck using WD green drives in RAID 1 on my HTPC. I have 4 of them now.

[Waco]

Using the built-in Windows tool to do the mirroring will let you jump from mobo to mobo without complications if her board dies.

 

I'd get the green drives especially for that much less money. The enterprise drives are far beyond what any home user really needs because you're really just paying for special firmware (not needed at home) and a slightly longer warranty (which is moot when the enterprise drives cost enough more that you could just buy another green drive outright).

 

[Shurman292]

With so many backups available, does she even need to RAID or mirror the drives?

[VaporX]

With so many backups available, does she even need to RAID or mirror the drives?

 

This is a common misconception about the RAID 1. It IS NOT a backup, rather it is a redundant system. The difference is pretty easy to explain. A backup requires time to have it put onto the system if a failure occurs. A redundant system keeps the system working even with the failure until a convienant downtime can be arranged to fix the issue.

[El_Capitan]

1. 1TB WD Caviar Greens have been used in my server in RAID 10 and RAID 1 for over a year without issues before I replaced them with Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB's.

2. If you use something like the Intel RAID controller for RAID, as long as a new motherboard has that same Intel RAID controller, when you set it up on that motherboard, all your data will still persist. I've done this on many occasions. Even going from an x58 motherboard with an i7 950 to a P67 motherboard with an i7 2600K.

3. Back-ups are still essential to have. All back-ups are, is a form of redundancy. Two disk RAID 1 gives you failure from 1 drive, but if both drives go bad, you still lose all your data. I usually have another system for holding back-up data, and an external drive that only holds back-ups as well.

[Waco]

With so many backups available, does she even need to RAID or mirror the drives?

RAID isn't backup. It protects from hardware failure through redundancy. Backups protect from data loss through offline replication to protect from data corruption or data loss. RAID won't help you if you delete something you need or get a nasty virus, backups do.

[ericgcollyer]

One more question, how does Windows let you know that the mirrored drives are degraded? In other words if one drive fails, how will windows let me know?