WD Red or Black?

[NirHahs]

which one of em give the best performance? both 7200rpm and 64mb cache.
everyone talks about NAS, what is NAS?

 

[Elixer]

Neither. Best performance is a SSD.
Reds run at a slower RPM than blacks, not sure why you think they both run at 7200.

 

[tweakboy]

Listen to the guy, Do it right. You need a SSD cuz black or white or red WD doesn't matter SSD is 1000x faster. thx gl

 

[Blain]

which one of em give the best performance? both 7200rpm and 64mb cache.
everyone talks about NAS, what is NAS?

If you're unfamiliar with "NAS" you need to buy the Black.

 

[Red Squirrel]

NAS = network attached storage.

That said, I think the blacks are actually better anyway. The reds are kind of a compromise between greens and blacks, I think. Blacks are going to be more expensive but are geared towards higher performance. I have 8 blacks in a raid 5 array and they work great. So far I only had one fail. (had them for like 2-3 years now at least)

You just want to make sure that whatever drives you get don't have any kind of sleep function. That wrecks havoc with raid.

If you want a drive just for the OS, nothing beats a SSD. For mass storage, multiple spindle drives in raid or similar solution.

 

[Charlie98]

If you're unfamiliar with "NAS" you need to buy the Black.

What is it about NAS that makes the Red that much different from a Black (or any other standard 7200RPM drive?) I have a Red, along with 2 Barracudas, in my HTPC... I can't tell a difference in real world performance. 😕

 

[mikeymikec]

Without comparing the specs, I'd guess that the Red probably lacks the cache that the Black has, and it may not need the dual processors either. If one designs it with the intention of connecting it to a pipe that's about twice as slow as the Black and introduce a load of latency, why bother with the extra bells and whistles designed with a high performance SATA bus in mind.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Both are great drives, but if performance is important to you, an SSD is your best choice. If you can't get an SSD for whatever reason, get a WD Black if you're booting from it or running applications on it.

 

[Darknite39]

You should buy the red drives in pairs. For a single drive, go black or ssd.

 

[lehtv]

What's wrong with Blue?

 

[Skott]

Excluding SSDs... Black is best IMO. The Blues and Reds are of lesser quality and different purposes IMO.

 

[npaladin-2000]

What's wrong with Blue?

What isn't wrong with Blue?

• Shorter warranty
• Lower performance
• You're not saving much

Seriously, performance is almost down to the level of a Green, but without the power savings, and only $5 cheaper. They're only usually around $20 cheaper than a Black, which performs MUCH better and has a longer warranty.

Blues basically exist to be the cheapest drive in the lineup. They exist mostly to sell to OEMs, who actually care about saving $5 per drive, since they're buying thousands of them. That's about it. I never recommend individuals buy a Blue. If you don't care about performance get a Green, if you do, get a Black. If you're building a NAS get Reds. And make sure you buy an SSD to boot off of, regardless. 🙂

 

[Cerb]

What is it about NAS that makes the Red that much different from a Black (or any other standard 7200RPM drive?) I have a Red, along with 2 Barracudas, in my HTPC... I can't tell a difference in real world performance. 😕

1. Reds are 5400 RPM.
2. Reds won't park their heads of their own accord quickly, like Greens. Non-aggressive power saving feature implementations are what the "24x7 operation" marketing means.
3. Reds are made for lower vibration than greens, blues, or Blacks. On average, I have found this to be true.
4. Reds support TLER, like the RE and SE RAID drives, so are suitable for traditional hardware RAID.

An HTPC should not be limited by disk performance, even with slow disks.

Seriously, performance is almost down to the level of a Green

They're about 30% faster than a Green, and about as fast as a Black. Until recently, they were faster than the Black, as the Black series had not caught up to using 1TB platters.

and only $5 cheaper.

It's more than $20 cheaper. Or, >30% more expensive, as another way to look at it.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd10ezex
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd1002faex

You are right on the warranty, though.

 

[Blain]

If you're unfamiliar with "NAS" you need to buy the Black.

What is it about NAS that makes the Red that much different from a Black (or any other standard 7200RPM drive?) 😕

Point being that if the NirHahs isn't familiar with the term "NAS", it's not worth a Pro/Con/debated explanation on the differences between the two drives.
The expedient route is simply... "buy the Black"

 

[lehtv]

What isn't wrong with Blue?

• Shorter warranty
• Lower performance
• You're not saving much

Seriously, performance is almost down to the level of a Green, but without the power savings, and only $5 cheaper. They're only usually around $20 cheaper than a Black, which performs MUCH better and has a longer warranty.

Blues basically exist to be the cheapest drive in the lineup. They exist mostly to sell to OEMs, who actually care about saving $5 per drive, since they're buying thousands of them. That's about it. I never recommend individuals buy a Blue. If you don't care about performance get a Green, if you do, get a Black. If you're building a NAS get Reds. And make sure you buy an SSD to boot off of, regardless. 🙂

Not sure what you're talking about. A difference of $20 is pretty huge for a 1tb drive. Also, blue 1tb uses a single 1tb platter and performs better than wd1002faex which uses dual 500gb or red which runs at slower rpm. I don't get why you say the black performs MUCH better. The only reason to get black is if you care about the long warranty or need a drive bigger than 1tb.

 

[razel]

NAS is Network Attached Storage. Instead of plugging in your external storage via USB, it is attached to your network, making it available to many more computers simultaneously.

WD Black will have more performance over Red, but reds are recommended HDDs for NAS to avoid certain issues.

As with what most have already posted. If you are interested in performance I wouldn't waste any money nitpicking between HDD performance, just save up the cash and go SSD. At current sale prices, you can pick up 250GB for ~$120.

 

[npaladin-2000]

Not sure what you're talking about. A difference of $20 is pretty huge for a 1tb drive. Also, blue 1tb uses a single 1tb platter and performs better than wd1002faex which uses dual 500gb or red which runs at slower rpm. I don't get why you say the black performs MUCH better. The only reason to get black is if you care about the long warranty or need a drive bigger than 1tb.

Hands on experience and testing. I support an office full of about 50 PCs and have used Blues, Blacks, and even a couple Greens in them. Blacks perform the best of the WDs in day to day desktop use. Greens are dogs. Blues don't really come close to Blacks. Though an SSD performs even better, as all of us have noted.

 

[tweakboy]

WD Black and secondary and a SSD OS drive. gl

 

[Bearmann]

... Also, blue 1tb uses a single 1tb platter and performs better than wd1002faex which uses dual 500gb or red which runs at slower rpm. I don't get why you say the black performs MUCH better. The only reason to get black is if you care about the long warranty or need a drive bigger than 1tb.

That's the old drive. The new Black WD1003FZEX has a 1 TB platter. The 2,3,&4 TB models all use multiple 800GB platters. These are all faster than the old Blacks.

...WD Black will have more performance over Red, but reds are recommended HDDs for NAS to avoid certain issues....

Exactly. WD doesn't recommend using the blacks for NAS. They recommend the Reds for this.

By the way, if you are interested in the new Black 2TB drive, Tigerdirect and B&H are both currently selling it for $140 + $5 shipping, but the TD is a bare drive and the B&H is the boxed retail version (which I prefer because I assume that it's less likely to be damaged in shipping. I'm not sure how TD is packing their bare drives these days.) The retail version of the new Blacks are called Performance drives, not black. The first digit after the WD in the bare drive model numbers denotes the size of the drive. The 2TB would be WD2003FZEX.