# WD Red vs WD Green -- for builds WITHOUT raid/nas



## EaquitasAbsum

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *boomstick1*
> 
> Is there an advantage to RED over GREEN when I"m NOT going to RAID. It will be in my silence-optimized desktop and used for movies and tv shows.
> 
> I want quiet, and speed enough to open folder of movies without delay and play 10gb files.
> 
> Here's two overviews
> 
> Green: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLzWB1wtpPI
> Red: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkmEFfCy-88
> 
> I hear reds are actually just as quiet as greens, but I'm skeptical.


I don't think there would be that much of a difference in noise between, the red and the green. I would personally go for the reds as they have better performance.


----------



## boomstick1

Better performance? Where are you finding this? The benchmarks on the review youtube vid that I posted suggest that the Greens do well.

I too am leaning towards the Reds.


----------



## Nitrogannex

Try one of these. Faster than a WD Black and still quiet

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178324


----------



## hammong

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *boomstick1*
> 
> Is there an advantage to RED over GREEN when I"m NOT going to RAID. It will be in my silence-optimized desktop and used for movies and tv shows.
> 
> I want quiet, and speed enough to open folder of movies without delay and play 10gb files.
> 
> I hear reds are actually just as quiet as greens, but I'm skeptical.


The WD Red is basically the same drive as a WD Green, with the important distinction that it has TLER and RAID optimized firmware. There's no reason you can't run it as a standalone non-RAID drive in a system. They are not exactly blazing fast, being variable rotation speed drives, they idle at 5400 RPM and only spin up to 7200 RPM when needed. Even at 5400 RPM, they can sustain enough bandwidth to play/record HD video streams though.

I've got 4 2TB WD Reds in my Windows 2012 media server here at the house, and they run cool and quiet. I'm using Storage Spaces combined with Mirror and Parity for various important data sets, and simple Striped (raid 0) spaces for unimportant things like backups of other PCs in the house.

Greg


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> The WD Red is basically the same drive as a WD Green, with the important distinction that it has TLER and RAID optimized firmware. There's no reason you can't run it as a standalone non-RAID drive in a system. They are not exactly blazing fast, being variable rotation speed drives, they idle at 5400 RPM and only spin up to 7200 RPM when needed. Even at 5400 RPM, they can sustain enough bandwidth to play/record HD video streams though.


Nah. Both Reds and Greens are fixed at 5400RPM. The "IntelliPower" thing does make it confusing but based on tests, they really don't budge from 5400RPM.


----------



## boomstick1

Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLzWB1wtpPI --- they speed on green (and I assume red too) are pretty good.

7200rpm means noise, so I don't want that.

The Seagate drives someone suggested can't be quiet. I'm very skepitical of the noise on those.


----------



## boomstick1

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> The WD Red is basically the same drive as a WD Green, with the important distinction that it has TLER and RAID optimized firmware. There's no reason you can't run it as a standalone non-RAID drive in a system. They are not exactly blazing fast, being variable rotation speed drives, they idle at 5400 RPM and only spin up to 7200 RPM when needed. Even at 5400 RPM, they can sustain enough bandwidth to play/record HD video streams though.
> 
> I've got 4 2TB WD Reds in my Windows 2012 media server here at the house, and they run cool and quiet. I'm using Storage Spaces combined with Mirror and Parity for various important data sets, and simple Striped (raid 0) spaces for unimportant things like backups of other PCs in the house.
> 
> Greg


Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that RED drives have a higher build quiality and features like 3D active the reduces noise. Also no parking.


----------



## boomstick1

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> The WD Red is basically the same drive as a WD Green, with the important distinction that it has TLER and RAID optimized firmware.


Not true! Where are you getting this info from? There are significant differences --- here's proof http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/wd-red.html


----------



## hammong

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Nah. Both Reds and Greens are fixed at 5400RPM. The "IntelliPower" thing does make it confusing but based on tests, they really don't budge from 5400RPM.


I've seen no less than five reputable reviews on the Red that claim variable rotational speed, and the WD specifications on their own site don't list a fixed speed. Who knows, LOL.
Quote:


> Not true! Where are you getting this info from? There are significant differences --- here's proof http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/wd-red.html


So you're saying that the Red and Green have different mechanisms internally - and not just different firmware. I think the performance differences shown in the Xbitlabs review are more about performance optimization vs. power savings, and the fact that the Red is performance optimized (while still being reduced rotational speed vs. Black) and the Green is power consumption optimized.

Greg


----------



## BritishBob

I wouldn't use a WD green for storage. I would use blues or blacks. For silence I would go reds. My reds seem fine, but I am using them in RAID 0+1.

2 mins onwards for linus vid for my reasons.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> I've seen no less than five reputable reviews on the Red that claim variable rotational speed, and the WD specifications on their own site don't list a fixed speed. Who knows, LOL.


That's because those sites are just going by Western Digital's claims regarding IntelliPower (mind you, from memory, even the earliest Caviar Greens were "IntelliPower"). Here's an interesting snippet from Silent PC Review regarding IntelliPower taken from this article.
Quote:


> It's quite simple, really. Most of a drive's power is consumed by the motor that spins the disk inside the drive. Reduce the speed of the disk, and you reduce the amount of power required. However, *Western Digital doesn't want to say that they're selling 5,400 RPM drives - those became second class in the desktop market years ago*. Instead, they rate the drive's speed as "IntelliPower" and take pains to emphasize that there are other factors that affect performance.
> 
> *Western Digital has caught a lot of flak for withholding the rotation speed of the Green Power, especially when the product was first launched and the marketing material listed the rotation speed as 5,400-7,200 RPM. This led some to speculate that the rotation speed changed dynamically during use - which would have been an impressive engineering feat had it been true. The reality is revealed by a sentence that Western Digital added to the description of IntelliPower: "For each GreenPower™ drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM." In other words, Western Digital reserves the right to release both 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM drives under the Green Power name - without telling you which are which.*
> 
> We were able to confirm that our 750 GB Green Power had a spindle speed of 5,400 RPM by analyzing its sound spectrum. Why sound? Sound is vibration; the pitch of the sound corresponds to the frequency of the vibration. Hard drives vibrate at the speed of their motor, so they produce a noise at the same frequency as their rotation speed. Our sample had a sharp spike at exactly 90 Hz (cycles per second). Multiplying that number by 60 (to get cycles per minute) yielded a measured rotation speed of 5,400 RPM.
> 
> This little Frequency / Amplitude graph tells us the WD Green drive spins at 5,400 RPM.
> 
> It's possible that other Green Power models use a higher spindle speed - but we doubt it. Storage Review tested the 1 TB version of the drive and determined that that model also spun at 5,400 RPM based on a calculation of the drive's latency compared to a previous Western Digital model. That leaves the 500 GB model - which Western Digital says is even lower power than the larger capacity versions. With the majority of the Green Power's efficiency advantage coming from its lower speed, it seems impossible for the 500 GB model to use a higher rotation speed. It's possible Western Digital intends to release a 7,200 RPM version at some point in the future.


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> So you're saying that the Red and Green have different mechanisms internally - and not just different firmware. I think the performance differences shown in the Xbitlabs review are more about performance optimization vs. power savings, and the fact that the Red is performance optimized (while still being reduced rotational speed vs. Black) and the Green is power consumption optimized.


Both the Reds and the Greens are optimized for power consumption. The Red just happened to be using newer 1TB platters vs I believe 750GB platters on the Green. The 1TB platter is pretty much the same reason why the WD Blue 1TB WD10EZEX performs better than WD Blacks despite having the same rotational speed. If you compare the WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX with the WD Green 3TB WD30EZRX which also uses 1TB platters, performance is very similar. Another thing, if the WD Red had variable rotational speed and really did go up to 7200RPM, we should have seen performance that's the same as the WD Blue 1TB. The fact that we haven't suggests it still uses 5400RPM same as all the drives that came before it.

Edit:
Fixed links.


----------



## DuckieHo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *BritishBob*
> 
> I wouldn't use a WD green for storage. I would use blues or blacks. For silence I would go reds. My reds seem fine, but I am using them in RAID 0+1.
> 
> 2 mins onwards for linus vid for my reasons.


Long term storage is all about price. Since data safety should be achieved through redundancies and copies... not on MTBF or warranties.

Red drives cost significantly more than Green drives. If he's not utilizing them in RAID, more Green drives would be better.

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> That's because those sites are just going by Western Digital's claims regarding IntelliPower (mind you, from memory, even the earliest Caviar Greens were "IntelliPower"). Here's an interesting snippet from Silent PC Review regarding IntelliPower taken from page 2 of this article.
> 
> Both the Reds and the Greens are optimized for power consumption. The Red just happened to be using newer 1TB platters vs I believe 750GB platters on the Green. The 1TB platter is pretty much the same reason why the WD Blue 1TB WD10EZEX performs better than WD Blacks despite having the same rotational speed. If you compare the WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX with the WD Green 3TB WD30EZRX which also uses 1TB platters, performance is very similar. Another thing, if the WD Red had variable rotational speed and really did go up to 7200RPM, we should have seen performance that's the same as the WD Blue 1TB. The fact that we haven't suggests it still uses 5400RPM same as all the drives that came before it.


Has any reviewer done an acoustical analysis on the Red drives? I know some reviewers did so years ago to prove the rotational speed of HDDs even though the manufacturer didn't list it.


----------



## boomstick1

So, I assume everyone here thinks WD Reds are fine without RAID and without NAS.

Here's an objective test of the differences in all fields (incl performance) = http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248-5.html

WD Red 3tb drives have significantly faster read times that WD Green 3tb (which is what I care about, when I want to skip through movies / tvs shows like poker, etc). Write time is very similar.

info about the differences - http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4659-western-digital-red-drives-my-opinion-on-choice/


----------



## boomstick1

All this leads me to believe that for quiet storage -- WD Green drives are very good. WD Red drives a significantly better, but perhaps not worth extra for someone just storing pictures. For someone storing huge amounts of movie content, etc, I think it's worth the money.

If you want speed and noise go with a 7200 drive (like Seagates or other WD). But for QUIET and fairly dependable storage I think Reds are the way to go (even without RAID). I've decided not to RAID because RAID1 is out of my price range and RAID5 isn't very dependable. I'm gonna buy 3, 3TB reds and a 1TB external (to back up my precious pics, music and docs).

Thanks everyone.

Again, here is a great review http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248-5.html


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DuckieHo*
> 
> Has any reviewer done an acoustical analysis on the Red drives? I know some reviewers did so years ago to prove the rotational speed of HDDs even though the manufacturer didn't list it.


SPCR - Western Digital Red 3TB & 1TB Hard Drives
Quote:


> Both Red drives were incredibly quiet with the 1TB Red producing 12~13 [email protected] and the 3TB model emitting about 1 dB more. Furthermore, the seek noise of both drives was indiscernible from one meter or even one foot away - we had to place our ear inches from the drives to confirm there was any additional noise at all. The two Red drives produced a slight tone at ~90 Hz, confirming that their motors spin at about 5,400 RPM.


----------



## DuckieHo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *boomstick1*
> 
> Here's an objective test of the differences in all fields (incl performance) = http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248-5.html
> 
> WD Red 3tb drives have significantly faster read times that WD Green 3tb (which is what I care about, when I want to skip through movies / tvs shows like poker, etc). Write time is very similar.


The read performance won't really matter if only a few users are accessing the drive. A very high-bit rate 1080p video is 6.75MB/s. Either HDD can sequentially stream probably at over 80MB/s at worst.

I've seen 3TB Green HDD recently for $110... A 3TB Red/NAS HDD is $150.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DuckieHo*
> 
> The read performance won't really matter if only a few users are accessing the drive. A very high-bit rate 1080p video is 6.75MB/s. Either HDD can sequentially stream probably at over 80MB/s at worst.
> 
> I've seen 3TB Green HDD recently for $110... A 3TB Red/NAS HDD is $150.


The 3TB Reds also go on sale for around $110-120. So really, just need to wait for a good sale.


----------



## DuckieHo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> The 3TB Reds also go on sale for around $110-120. So really, just need to wait for a good sale.


Are you sure? I've been watching for the last month (rebuild a Windows Server 2012) and seen the 2TB for for $110 but not the 3TB.


----------



## lacrossewacker

If it's just for a media server, all you should look at is reliability and price. A 5,400 drive is PLENTY fast enough since it's still a 3.5' drive. The read/write speed is certainly not an issue.

Reliability and Price/Size - you wouldn't notice a difference in performance if you were using an SSD or a slow laptop drive if you're just watching movies from it.


----------



## DuckieHo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lacrossewacker*
> 
> If it's just for a media server, all you should look at is reliability and price. A 5,400 drive is PLENTY fast enough since it's still a 3.5*"* drive. The read/write speed is certainly not an issue.
> 
> Reliability and Price/Size - you wouldn't notice a difference in performance if you were using an SSD or a slow laptop drive if you're just watching movies from it.


Fixed.... they don't make HDDs near 3.5' anymore.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DuckieHo*
> 
> Are you sure? I've been watching for the last month (rebuild a Windows Server 2012) and seen the 2TB for for $110 but not the 3TB.


Scratch that. I just checked my emails and the drive I saw on sale was a Seagate 3TB ($110, Newegg Shell Shocker). Lowest price for the WD Red 3TB is ~$135 without rebate. However, the WD Red 2TB did drop to $100. I'm mostly looking to upgrade to 4TB drives so haven't really been closely monitoring 3TB prices.


----------



## DuckieHo

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> Scratch that. I just checked my emails and the drive I saw on sale was a Seagate 3TB ($110, Newegg Shell Shocker). Lowest price for the WD Red 3TB is ~$135 without rebate. However, the WD Red 2TB did drop to $100. I'm mostly looking to upgrade to 4TB drives so haven't really been closely monitoring 3TB prices.


Yeah, I've seen 2TB drives drop to $80 though.

I just picked up Toshiba/Hitachi 2TB (1TB platter) 7200 HDDs from MicroCenter for $85 each for my RAID1 OS drives.


----------



## lacrossewacker

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DuckieHo*
> 
> Fixed.... they don't make HDDs near 3.5' anymore.


haha thanks. That'd be one BIG disk.


----------



## BritishBob

My opinion on the previous page was based on this:
*silence-optimized desktop*

From the OP. The Reds have tighter tolerances in both heat and noise pollution.

Here the WD Reds are about £10 more expensive than the WD greens. So really not much in it.


----------



## lacrossewacker

not sure if you're exclusively looking at western digital, but here's a new comer

*Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM*

Newegg Price - $180
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338&Tpk=ST4000DM000&IsVirtualParent=1

Tomshardware Review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/desktop-hdd.15-st4000dm000-4tb,3494.html

Average throughput - 132MB/s (higher than WD Black and RED 3T models)
Quote:


> The Desktop HDD.15 is Seagate's first desktop drive boasting a massive 4 TB capacity. When combine that big storage space with conservative thermals and efficiency-friendly power use, you get an ideal target for user data on the desktop. Hook it up next to a 128 or 256 GB SSD and enjoy the best of both worlds. It's also right at home in external direct-attached storage devices (DAS) and NAS appliances.


Great for a media drive. Only 4 cents per gig.


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DuckieHo*
> 
> Yeah, I've seen 2TB drives drop to $80 though.


*sigh* My first 2TB drives cost me $60 (or maybe $65) - Samsung EcoGreens. Limited to 5 per person on Newegg so that's how many I bought. Sad how $80 for a 2TB drive is considered a good deal nowadays.


----------



## BritishBob

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *rui-no-onna*
> 
> *sigh* My first 2TB drives cost me $60 (or maybe $65) - Samsung EcoGreens. Limited to 5 per person on Newegg so that's how many I bought. Sad how $80 for a 2TB drive is considered a good deal nowadays.


It is. It's £60-£85 for a 2TB in the UK... About $90-$130 at current conversion rates.

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=price+ascending&4=2000&cat=392&page=1


----------



## hammong

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lacrossewacker*
> 
> not sure if you're exclusively looking at western digital, but here's a new comer
> *Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM*


After I had 11 out of 12 Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives (ST31500341AS) fail in a SuperMicro server that I built, one at a time, over a 4-5 year period ... I'll never buy another Seagate drive again. Yes, I know, they weren't Enterprise drives, but they were in a light-load application in a clean environment. 90+% failure rate over 4 years is not acceptable. Seagate wouldn't even replace the 11 that failed, because the manufacturer dates on them weren't fresh when I got them - they needed individual invoices with serial numbers to honor the warranty, otherwise it was based on manufacture date.

WD hasn't let me down yet. I just took a server out of service after 6 years of stable operation with 12x WD 750GB AAKS drives and it experienced zero failures over the six years. In fact, I never had so much as a RAID drop-out in that time on that particular server. After the six years, I ran WD extended surface tests on them and only 3 failed because there weren't enough spare sectors. That's not bad.

Greg


----------



## rui-no-onna

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *hammong*
> 
> After I had 11 out of 12 Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives (ST31500341AS) fail in a SuperMicro server that I built, one at a time, over a 4-5 year period ... I'll never buy another Seagate drive again. Yes, I know, they weren't Enterprise drives, but they were in a light-load application in a clean environment. 90+% failure rate over 4 years is not acceptable. Seagate wouldn't even replace the 11 that failed, because the manufacturer dates on them weren't fresh when I got them - they needed individual invoices with serial numbers to honor the warranty, otherwise it was based on manufacture date.


Curious, did you update the firmware on those drives? Because I distinctly remember that specific model as having a critical firmware error.


----------



## latelesley

Off topic -
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DuckieHo*
> 
> Fixed.... they don't make HDDs near 3.5' anymore.


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lacrossewacker*
> 
> haha thanks. That'd be one BIG disk.


That got me curious as to whether there had ever been a 3.5' drive, and the biggest disk I could find in a quick search was the 2' IBM ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_305_RAMAC
Quote:


> The 305 was one of the last vacuum tube computers that IBM built. It weighed over a ton. The IBM 350 disk system stored 5 million 7-bit (6 data bits plus 1 parity bit) alphanumeric characters (5 MB). It had fifty 24-inch-diameter (610 mm) disks. Two independent access arms moved up and down to select a disk, and in and out to select a recording track, all under servo control. Average time to locate a single record was 600 milliseconds.


http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_350.html

Sorry for going off topic, OP.


----------



## Bootzonfire

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *lacrossewacker*
> 
> not sure if you're exclusively looking at western digital, but here's a new comer
> 
> *Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB Review: Big Capacity At 5900 RPM*
> 
> Newegg Price - $180
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338&Tpk=ST4000DM000&IsVirtualParent=1
> 
> Tomshardware Review
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/desktop-hdd.15-st4000dm000-4tb,3494.html
> 
> Average throughput - 132MB/s (higher than WD Black and RED 3T models)
> Great for a media drive. Only 4 cents per gig.


This drive is $27 off ends today! came out to 152.99 shipped. with EMCYTZT4822 Discount From Promo Code


----------

