Budget NAS rated HDDs - Is it worth giving 'new' WD Red+ drives a chance ?

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Allan74

Member
May 15, 2019
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To preface, this is for Home Media Storage. Nothing mission critical here.

With WD scrambling to save face over the SMR/CMR debacle, is it worth assuming that if purchasing the NEW WD Red Plus that seem to screaming CMR from the rooftops and dropping prices, that I will get a bit more for my money than simply buying the tried and true (for me anyway) corresponding CMR Seagate Models ?

The 2 candidates: WD 4TB SATA WD40EFZX (Red+, CMR, 128MB, 5400RPM) or Seagate 4TB SATA ST4000VN008 (IronWolf, CMR, 64MB, 5900RPM).

thanks.
Allan


TL/DR:
I am a caveman and still run (SAS2108) HW RAID5 per array. I always purchase at least 1 batch matched cold spare. I also don't mix/match drives, so when the 'spare' is deployed (depending on lifetime), it's time to shop for a new array, then sort leftovers for re-use elsewhere once replaced. This seems to have worked for me, so I will continue.
My current drives are all Seagate, including 10+yr old 2TB SAS Constellations, 7yr old 3TB SATA Constellations and 2yr old 3TB IronWolfs. Oddly enough, it's the 3TB SATA Constellations that I will be replacing, as the older 2TB SAS Models don't seem to want to die and I still have a cold spare for that array.
I like small drives/arrays. Once I make the move to ZFS and HBAs, I will deploy an array larger than 20+TB....lol
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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Is it worth giving 'new' WD Red+ drives a chance ?
In my opinion: no. These are actually 7200 rpm hdds, without the advantages that the red hdds used to be marketed (low noise & heat).
If you start looking at 7200 rpm drives you can find datacenter (for 24/7 enterprise workloads) drives sometimes cheaper than some nas or prosumer oriented hdds with the same capacity. (At least here in eruope/germany)

Slightly off topic/not related to your questions:
for Home Media Storage.
I would say get the largest hdds you can afford...
I like small drives/arrays
I don't know if you have seen this thread: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...drives-or-fewer-higher-capacity-drives.31990/
 

Allan74

Member
May 15, 2019
132
13
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I am the only user that actually writes to the array(s), so drive speed isn't a real problem.
Once an array is written to, the data doesn't really change. My traffic is 99% Reads.

With your point about the WD drives in mind, I will stick with Seagate and grab more Ironwolf drives, as I am happy with the current batch.

The used Enterprise market in Canada is not great. Unfortunately it's NAS drives or high priced Enterprise drives.

In regards to the small vs big HDD thread, I like all of the small HDD PROs and the CONs don't bother me.

thanks for the reply.
Allan