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staticwinter
join:2001-03-15
Ronkonkoma, NY

staticwinter

Member

Replacing drives - WD Black or Red?

So after finally getting a motherboard that supports Sata 6GB/s drives last year, I've decided that all of my 3GB drives need replacing. They've been used in 3 builds, and now they are my PC's bottleneck.

I plan on going with a 250 or 500GB Samsung EVO SSD for running my OS, and WD 2TB Green drive for storage or music/media/photos, etc.. but I need drives for my programs, games, and such. Normally I'd go for the WD Black drives, which I've never had issues with, and provide nice performance for gaming, video and photo editing, and whatever else I do...but I am debating running a Raid 0 setup again.

I've ran several before, lost one, learned from it, and I'm comfortable doing it again. However, I'm not 100% set on it...but I need to order the drives now. I'm likely going with a pair of 2 1TB drives. After reviewing all the product specs, and speaking with Western Digital, this is what I've come up with so far...

Common factors: Same sustained transfer speeds at 150 MB/s, 64MB cache.

Reds: Have been tested and promoted for Raid setups. 3 Year Warranty, Higher reliability listed at 600,000 load/unload cycles, less noise, and power consumption. According to the WD rep I spoke with, the IntelliPower drive speed runs the drive from 5400RPM to 7200RPM, as demand increases.

Blacks Are promoted for gaming/higher demand use, BUT I have used them in Raid 0 before. They carry a 5 year warranty, but a lower reliability at 300,000 cycles. They spin at a constant 7200RPM, but come with higher noise/power consumption, which isn't as much of an issue.

So, in closing...I'm trying to find the drive that will give me top performance, in both a Raid 0 setup, as well as a non Raid setup depending on which I choose. After speaking with the WD Rep, he seemed to think Reds were my best choice, since they will spin at 7200RPM when needed, and pretty much have the same specs as the Black as far as performance, with less noise and power consumption, while being built for Raid setups. I'm a little skeptical however on the IntelliPower, and it meeting the demand of speed when needed.

Has anyone used Reds in a desktop, and can compare them to Blacks in non-Raid? I'm leaning towards the Blacks, since I know them well, and have used them in Raid 0. I'm just wondering if the Reds can provide the same performance when used as basic drives, and not in a Raid array. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

-TJ

Ghastlyone
Premium Member
join:2009-01-07
Nashville, TN

Ghastlyone

Premium Member

If all you're looking for are 1tb drives, then I'd just go with a couple WD Blues. You can get them for about $50 each.

Krisnatharok
PC Builder, Gamer
Premium Member
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit

Krisnatharok to staticwinter

Premium Member

to staticwinter
Never use Greens. Ever.

I'd use Reds or Blues. I have Reds in a NAS and they've been great (so far).
asdfdfdfdfdf
Premium Member
join:2012-05-09

asdfdfdfdfdf to staticwinter

Premium Member

to staticwinter
If you really need performance get the blacks.

Having said that I don't see any reason to do a raid array or buy the blacks (which are more expensive and generate more heat). You are getting an ssd. If you need the performance put it on the ssd. Blacks in a raid array aren't going to be in the same ballpark as the ssd. Worrying about your secondary drive's performance is unnecessary.
Also, for hard drives, going with 6Gbps is a waste. If your present drives are functioning properly I would simply reuse them and not buy any additional drives beyond the SSD.

staticwinter
join:2001-03-15
Ronkonkoma, NY

1 edit

staticwinter

Member

Are you suggesting I maybe go with a higher capacity SSD, and put any programs or games on there that need serious performance? I'd love to work more with them in the future as I do understand that a Raid 0 array will not compare to an SSD, but I am trying to work on a budget. I have to replace a video card as well. I just don't have the money for the high capacity SSDs right now.

Raid 0 on my secondary drives, or just WD Blacks in general, would be for programs like Photoshop and Lightroom and Sony Vegas which I prefer to have faster write times with when editing multiple photos at once, especially with Lightroom. Also for gaming; the decrease in load times for benchmarking, as well as online gaming is quite noticeable. An example would be loading textures for a map for a FPS, and being in the game when the round starts, as opposed to waiting for my textures to be loaded slowly and getting in a minute after the round begins.

And my drives are nearing 7 to 8 years, mostly in constant use...I generally run F@H most of the day, so the drives don't always get to sleep. I've gotten a bit of clicking from most of them at some point, and in general, I just think it's time for new drives. HD Tune Pro is starting to show a few warnings.

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

aurgathor to staticwinter

Member

to staticwinter
I have some blacks (3 - 4), blues (2 - 3) reds (4 - 5) and greens (2) and the blacks run circles around the comparable reds. Much faster seek and access times.
BlitzenZeus
Burnt Out Cynic
Premium Member
join:2000-01-13

BlitzenZeus to staticwinter

Premium Member

to staticwinter
On a budget a drive like a wd black is great, I use them in my gaming builds as they have boot times similar to a ssd, good performance, and a good warranty giving me more money towards a good cpu and gpu. There are some uses you need a ssd, other times it's nice to have, but since the black isn't much more than the blue it's not a big price difference even when only used as a storage drive as they will spin down after being idle.

Red are great for a nas, it's what they were designed for.

It's your choice, if you get a ssd I'd start with a 256GB, and keep your large media files on a storage drive. Some games require more than double their install to patch, so keeping at least 35GB free on that drive would be a good idea.
asdfdfdfdfdf
Premium Member
join:2012-05-09

asdfdfdfdfdf to staticwinter

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If you are getting a 250 or 500GB ssd I would think that would be plenty. The trick is to not get sucked into thinking everything has to be maximum performance and to move things when they no longer need the performance. Your apps like photoshop and sony vegas should be able to fit on the ssd and you only need to move clusters of photos or videos to the ssd when you are working on them. Then move them to the hard drive. How many games are you intensively playing at one time? When you no longer play a game much move it to the hard drive or just uninstall it.

If you are on a budget I would tend to stick with the blue drives rather than paying the premium for the blacks and put the money into the graphics card. That is likely to give you more gaming benefit than buying multiple blacks and setting up a raid array.

My key point would be that dribbling away money paying a premium worrying about hard drive performance differences in an age of $100 120GB ssd drives isn't good value for money. Save as much money as you can on the hard drives and put it toward ssd space or your graphics card. You probably don't need as much ssd space as you think.

Thane_Bitter
Inquire within
Premium Member
join:2005-01-20

Thane_Bitter to staticwinter

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to staticwinter
On my home server I have the OS on a black drive and red drives (via raid) for data storage. For the OS I wanted a drive that would just work (no power savings enabled) for a long period of time. The reds are a cost compromise, in a perfect world they would be RE4 drives of large capacity, unfortunately reality of costs is a factor. After hearing lots of shit about green drives I would only use them in perhaps an external drive bay for backups (and then have more backups for the backup, backups).
Morris0
join:2011-05-14

Morris0 to staticwinter

Member

to staticwinter
with a 500-GB SSD, why are you even thinking about rotating memory for launching programs and/or games?
IamGimli (banned)
join:2004-02-28
Canada

IamGimli (banned)

Member

said by Morris0:

with a 500-GB SSD, why are you even thinking about rotating memory for launching programs and/or games?

Hell, for the price of two WD Blacks you can get a 1TB SSD and never have to worry about performance.

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

aurgathor

Member

If you two have read to the first post, the OP states there that he plan to use an SSD for a boot drive and a traditional HD for data storage. While SSDs are nice and make good boot drives, they are not cost effective for sequential data storage.
IamGimli (banned)
join:2004-02-28
Canada

IamGimli (banned)

Member

Actually if you also read the OP he says he's using WD green for his media storage which doesn't require any performance. SSDs are perfectly fine for games, apps, etc. As a matter of fact that's what they're designed for.