WD EARS drives, did I make a mistake?

[MagickMan]

I came across an excellent deal on a pair of open box WD15EARS, $65 each, I'll only be using them for video storage and Fraps recording, and I figure they'll be fine for that in RAID 0. Anyone else here using them? Have you had any reliability issues? I'm seeing so many complaints now and wondering if I shouldn't have bothered.

Oh, this is with Win7 64 btw, I know that they're gimped in XP.

 

[Soulkeeper]

check out the benchmarks at storagereview.com
the wd blacks are among the best on the market

 

[Blain]

WD15EARS are 1.5TB WD Green drives with 64MB cache and 3 year warranty.

* Newegg "Open Box" items are warrantied for 30 days. You may be about to get more warranty service from WD, but you'll need to check the serial numbers of the drives on the WD Warranty Check page.
* The Green drives do have a 64MB cache, which is nice, but being they're slower drives, a RAID 0 configuration is kind of a waste on them.
A RAID 1 array would be completely fine for their usage.

 

[Emulex]

they are fine for video. no point in raid-0 just jbod them.

 

[taltamir]

jbod gives you all the risks and problems of a raid array with none of the benefits.
you are better off just having them as two completely independent drives than jbod.

 

[MrK6]

I've been using my WD Green 1TB for storage for 6 months anyway (got a Black Friday deal on it) and have had no issues yet. This is on Windows 7 64-bit.

 

[MagickMan]

I don't think RAID 0 is a waste, they seem more peppy this way. Besides, 3GB of contiguous space is really nice. Mostly I was just wondering if there were reliability issues.

 

[Blain]

I don't think RAID 0 is a waste, they seem more peppy this way. Besides, 3GB of contiguous space is really nice. Mostly I was just wondering if there were reliability issues.

Yes there are reliability issues running two returned HD's in a RAID 0 array for video storage.
They may be snappy, but if one of the previously returned HD's dies, there goes your whole storage system.
Unless you don't care about losing the videos or make regular backups somewhere else, a RAID 0 array isn't a good idea.

 

[taltamir]

Yes there are reliability issues running two returned HD's in a RAID 0 array for video storage.
They may be snappy, but if one of the previously returned HD's dies, there goes your whole storage system.
If you don't care about losing the videos or make regular backups somewhere else, a RAID 0 array isn't a good idea.

excellent point.

 

[amdhunter]

I've been using my WD Green 1TB for storage for 6 months anyway (got a Black Friday deal on it) and have had no issues yet. This is on Windows 7 64-bit.

I have been using the same drive on my HTPC in a very cramped slim case running 24/7 with no issues either.