Western Digital Red HDD for HTPC - Page 2

You might consider starting simple with 2 drives in RAID1 that is a mirrored config. Avoid starting and stopping the HDD motors frequently also helps prolong HDD lifespan, this means avoid spinning down the drives or powering up/down frequently.

Separating the htpc and the disks into a small NAS is also a good option.

The 3tb parity WD green drive in Goliath server failed about a month ago( 4 months old) . Just wanted to toss that out there for no other reason than to say that hdd (s) do fail ! They are a mechanical device so failure at some point in time is inevitable.
First hdd failure in 21 years of WD computing. PRETTY DARN good if u ask me .

That failed drive had a three year warranty . I never registered it. Went on the WD support site. Registered the drive , answered a few questions on line and with in minutes I had an rma sticker . I had to pay one way shipping but WD paid the "other way" back to me . All tolled , it took about 8 day's to get this resolved . What an excellent warranty program that was quick and as painless as possible. High five to WD !!!!

The original drive was not available any longer so WD replaced it with a red drive .

Whats the point ?

Mechanical drives will fail . Green drive , black drive , blue drive ... what ever . So I see no need or advantage to purchasing a Red drive and do agree that it is mostly marketing hype . I also wanted to point out that WD has an excellent warranty service that involves absolutely no human contact during the process which removes the stupid factor that usually gets injected into these types of situations.

BTW ... The cause of the failure was never formally determined ?? The unusual thing was that 1) Fex Raid never warned of an issue and 2) The drive would not quit spinning During the P.O.S.T. segment of a boot , the drive would spin up right away and not stop so most likely the spindle got hot over time and warped which in turn caused " disk wedging" and eventually a failure .

Would I purchase more WD green drives ? Absolutely . With that said though, if I continuously see a trend toward failures then a reevaluation of that position would be needed .
Edited by flocko - 10/31/12 at 4:28am

agree. its all luck sometimes.

mechanical hard drives will fail. its inevitable. the question is whether today's drives will fail within the average user life time?

space has increased exponentially over the past 5 years, so everybody upgrades drives within a 2-3 year window.

i think its a telling sign that WD/Seagate have reduced their warranties to 1 year on green drives.

it may be a marketing ploy to incentive consumers to purchase higher model lines that have lengthier warranties in combination that they truely know that there are quality issues. ive never read so many reviews on amazon/newegg with DOAs compared to 5 years ago with 750g was the largest size drive. i dont think anybody can blindly say there arent quality issues with these drives compared to just 5 years ago.

personally for me, if you can find a deal that my cost you a small amount to purchase the model line with a longer warranty, i would willingly pay the extra $$$.

Hmm. Who to believe? A few reviews on amazon/newegg (which are much more likely to be written by people with bad experiences vs favorable experiences) or actual trusted people from AVS who have used the product.

In any event most mass produced electronics fail right away or usually outlives its warranty otherwise in my experience.

This isn't true - I just registered a WD 3TB Green drive less than five minutes ago. It has a 2 year warranty listed on the WD web site.

Basically , I purchase electronics ( or most anything) based on reputation and what statistical reliability would dictate. Yes, price matters to .

Do folks purchase a product based solely on it's warranty ? As if to say .... you purchase on the preface that you plan to use the warranty ? Interesting !!

I am always shocked by reviews on New Egg and sometimes they are down right comical . Half those reviews , people did not even purchase the product from New Egg , do not or did not use it for it's intended purpose or simply have no clue.

The funniest review I ever read was the guy who gave a htpc intended case a "one egg" due to the fact that he could not fit his water cooling set up inside the case REALLY ?? I still laugh at that one . If you put a lot of stock in theses types of reviews then you probably are clueless as well

I haven't installed my new red drive yet. As a bit of a study of my own , I have installed a WD 2 TB Green Drive that I had as a spare as a parity drive in the server and will see if it fails around the same amount of time the first drive did . Certainly not scientific but we shall see .

Either way , I still like the Green drives from WD

stand corrected, but 2 years is still not the standard 5 year warranty all drives had up till recently.

i also understand that newegg/amazon reviews arent statistically significant or anything like that. typically most users only submit reviews when their experience is negative.

however, i've been building servers/desktops/HTPCs with 2 other builders and we have all had multiple failures with all drive manufacturers recently. its a noticable difference in >2tb drives in comparison to smaller drives from a few generations back.

between 3 of us we've had a high number of failures with seagate 2 tb green and wd ears 2tb drives.

i can only go by what i've experienced.

i've never shopped with drives , where warranty length was one of my criteria before , but i certainly do now.

take it for what its worth...

This is so 100% accurate and true.

+1.

You will always see a negative review versus a positive review. Someone with a bad product is ten time more likely to post a negative review than someone who has an ordinary and expected experience.

Additionally-

Many of the negative reviews list problems that are basic "noob" problems that later get corrected with a bit of wisdom and experience- but the original negative review lives on forever.

I can't count how many new egg reviews that post basic issues - with simply solutions and post a negative review. It's obvious to me the problem gets corrected with the simple answer and well known solution after the review is posted.

And,

Most of the higher end or "enthusiast" products tend to have a better review not because they are more reliable but because the typical buyer is better suited in proper set up and expectation. My experience with newegg reviews is that the lower the price or the more attractive the product to "noobs" or ordinary consumers less technically skilled and knowledgable then the more tendency that product has to have negative user reviews.

It does not mean those main stream best sellers are any worse - it just means more people complained about them. The ratio of "happy" and "unhappy" alone would suggest this since it's far more likely for a complaint to be posted than a glowing review.

I've seen terrible reviews on some really good mainstream products. I think a professional review is a lot more appropriate in determining a products performance/capabilities/reliability than a user review on newegg.

I've had far more trouble with 2TB and 3TB WD green drives than Seagate drives recently.

I always had been a WD guy... for years and years too.

Now- I generally think Seagate and Hitachi are just as good if not better options and just buy the drive that has the price and capacity I need.

I don't think buying one brand HDD over another will significantly change your chance of RMA or failure- so I choose to buy on the ratio of performance/price/capacity given the appropriate application.

Yup. Basically that. On an individual basis or for a couple at a time in a consumer application I doubt it changes your chance of failure significantly.

If your Google running 10,000 of them in a server center - then that might be different. But I just tend to think for an ordinary consumer your better off with a Green or normal drive.

RED might make sense if your running RAID- Otherwise I'd save the cash to just buy a replacement or another.

increased HDD reliability- weather it's actually true- or just a perceived or created mental reality because the person wants to believe that sense of security - Is never a proper back up solution.

Thus - I choose to buy good products for good prices, and employ an appropriate back up solution.

The cost saved on 10 green drives versus 10 red drives could be spend on cloud back up- software raid backup- or even an extra parity drive or external drive "just in case" Money better spend there for extra reliability insurance than on a RED drive for an ordinary HTPC/PC or basic cheap non RAID server build.

my .02cents

How much more are you paying for a RED drive?

I've seen RED drives 2TB on sake 109$ this week.

I'd be tempted to go that route if my alternative same capacity drives are $99+

But then again is take a 3TB for $130 probably