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Purchasing 1TB Hard Drives - Is WD Black a good option? Or is Red better?

M

Mac Pro 2009

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
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So I'm having a hard time deciding. The WD Black seems to have a 5 year warranty and a recording head that never touches the disk which sounds pretty good for durability. On the other hand people seem to be recommending the Reds more vs the Black. Which will be more durable in the end?
Thanks gents!
 
Mac Pro 2009 said:
So I'm having a hard time deciding. The WD Black seems to have a 5 year warranty and a recording head that never touches the disk which sounds pretty good for durability. On the other hand people seem to be recommending the Reds more vs the Black. Which will be more durable in the end?
Thanks gents!
Click to expand...

If you're using it in a RAID5 or similar configuration (eg redundant ZFS), Red is the way to go. Otherwise, go for Black.

The reason is simply that Reds are programmed to try for a very short amount of time to recover data which cannot be read in the usual way. This is very important because if the drive continues to try for more than a short amount of time to recover data, the RAID controller (whether hardware or software e.g. mdadm in linux) will mark the drive as bad and drop it from the RAID array.

Accordingly, it's better to go for Black if you're not using a RAID5 configuration as the drive will try for longer to recover any data which can't be read in the usual way, which is probably what you'd want in a non-RAID5 setup.
 
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Scissors said:
If you're using it in a RAID5 or similar configuration (eg redundant ZFS), Red is the way to go. Otherwise, go for Black.

The reason is simply that Reds are programmed to try for a very short amount of time to recover data which cannot be read in the usual way. This is very important because if the drive continues to try for more than a short amount of time to recover data, the RAID controller (whether hardware or software e.g. mdadm in linux) will mark the drive as bad and drop it from the RAID array.

Accordingly, it's better to go for Black if you're not using a RAID5 configuration as the drive will try for longer to recover any data which can't be read in the usual way, which is probably what you'd want in a non-RAID5 setup.
Click to expand...

I will use two of the drives for my Win and Mac partitions, one for Time Machine and one to clone the Mac Partition. So should I got for Black then? They're half the price of the reds too!
 
Go Red for RAID-0 and JBOD too!

It's better to use Red or better in any multi-drive cabinet, regardless of the RAID configuration.

The reason is vibration. No drive is perfectly balanced, and no two drives will spin at exactly the same RPM. This leads to "beating" when the vibrations get in sync, and can cause data errors and drive damage.

On the WD Red page, they say

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

3D Active Balance Plus

Our enhanced dual-plane balance control technology significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multi-drive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.
Click to expand...

Seagate say something similar for their NAS drives:

http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/nas-drives/nas-hdd/

- Specifically designed to minimize vibration effects typically found in multi-drive solutions, improving reliability
Click to expand...

And both these companies have drives with better vibration control recommended for cabinets with more than 5 drives
 
AidenShaw said:
It's better to use Red or better in any multi-drive cabinet, regardless of the RAID configuration.

The reason is vibration. No drive is perfectly balanced, and no two drives will spin at exactly the same RPM. This leads to "beating" when the vibrations get in sync, and can cause data errors and drive damage.

On the WD Red page, they say



Seagate say something similar for their NAS drives:



And both these companies have drives with better vibration control recommended for cabinets with more than 5 drives
Click to expand...

Agreed - but beware of old reds with early firmware! Blacks are best standalone drives run hotter but are faster so blacks for the OSX and windows volumes and red for the NAS. Though I could never go back to having a spinning top for my OS boot drive anymore of any OS bar perhaps Linux! Once you go SSD you never go back!
 
Why 1TB?

These days, the price of 2TB drives is not much different from that of 1TB.
In few years you may feel that 1TB is not enough, so I would buy 2TB.

I recently bought 3TB and 4TB Red drives for my NAS and USB3.0 enclosure.
I am satisfied with WD Red. They are very quiet but still fast.
 
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Gav Mack said:
Agreed - but beware of old reds with early firmware!
Click to expand...

LOL - but the real message is "beware of old <anything> with early firmware". There's a reason that "leading edge" is jokingly called "bleeding edge".


ytoyoda said:
I recently bought 3TB and 4TB Red drives for my NAS and USB3.0 enclosure. I am satisfied with WD Red. They are very quiet but still fast.
Click to expand...

I've been replacing the drives in my home workstation with Seagate ST4000VN000 4 TB 64 MiB cache NAS drives - have 16 of them now. No complaints.

I just can't buy Western Digital drives. I bought 8 of the 80 GB WD drives some time ago. Every one failed. Every replacement failed. Yes, I bought lemons and their later drives are fine - but I still can't buy WD after that experience.

That, and I really like the Seagate SSHDs. And all of the HP systems that I buy have Savvios.

----------
ytoyoda said:
These days, the price of 2TB drives is not much different from that of 1TB.
In few years you may feel that 1TB is not enough, so I would buy 2TB.
Click to expand...

QFT.

The most valuable things in a computer system are PCIe slots and hard drive bays. Second is DIMM slots. (edit: the first two don't apply to the new Mini Pro....)

If you don't buy the biggest that fits, you'll eventually send what you bought to the eWaste bin and buy the bigger.
 
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Well here the price on amazon is 120 euros for a Red, 70 for a Black. Here the black is much cheaper indeed. (Both 1TB)
 
Mac Pro 2009 said:
So I'm having a hard time deciding. The WD Black seems to have a 5 year warranty and a recording head that never touches the disk which sounds pretty good for durability. On the other hand people seem to be recommending the Reds more vs the Black. Which will be more durable in the end?
Thanks gents!
Click to expand...
For what use?black build for performance reds are slow and for 24/7 server use.
 
I wouldn't use Red in anything other than a RAID array. The drives themselves aren't much different - it's mostly the firmware.
 
Mac Pro 2009 said:
Well here the price on amazon is 120 euros for a Red, 70 for a Black. Here the black is much cheaper indeed. (Both 1TB)
Click to expand...

Woodshed time - the price on UK Amazon site for a red 1 TB with Prime is L 52.99 while the price for the WD 1 TB black is L 68.89 with Prime. Reds are not cheaper than blacks in same capacity.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Red-NAS-...TF8&qid=1390682390&sr=8-3&keywords=wd+red+hdd

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Dig...8&qid=1390682442&sr=8-1&keywords=wd+black+hdd
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Hitachi would be the only desktop drives usable in RAID because of non-crippled firmware.

I hope WD has not crippled the HGST Desktars now.
 
cube said:
Hitachi would be the only desktop drives usable in RAID because of non-crippled firmware.

I hope WD has not crippled the HGST Desktars now.
Click to expand...

Please describe "crippled firmware".

There's a fundamental difference in the requirements for a JBOD drive vs. a drive designed for a RAID-(1/5/6/10/50/60) volume. Calling a drive "crippled" because it is designed for the former vs. the latter is lame.
 
I was talking to someone who works for WD. He explained to me that the red drives are the greens with a different firmware. The greens are junk so that leaves little faith in red.
 
AVonGauss said:
The current HGST 3.5 drives still work well, but the 2.5 drives have the spin down logic embedded that can not be disabled to the best of my knowledge. Ironically the WD 2.5 Red drives also have the spin down on by default in the current firmware, but it can still be disabled.
Click to expand...

I understand that the Chinese regulator ordered that HGST still be managed independently, so I expected the Desktars to be still good theoretically.
 
cube said:
I understand that the Chinese regulator ordered that HGST still be managed independently, so I expected the Desktars to be still good theoretically.
Click to expand...

I forgot to mention that some Deskstars went to Toshiba to gain approval. These have some complicated name now.
 
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