hard drives: WD Red vs WD Red PRO

[jgreco]

No, shiny != rational

 

[rogerh]

No, shiny != rational

The machine in my sig. does everything I need; but it is well boring. Hopefully, it won't run 10.

 

[Ericloewe]

The machine in my sig. does everything I need; but it is well boring. Hopefully, it won't run 10.

You don't have a sig, what're you talkin... Oh, wait, there's a button.

 

[DrKK]

The machine in my sig. does everything I need; but it is well boring. Hopefully, it won't run 10.

I like the machine in your sig. This was exactly the kind of system that marbus used to recommend for someone trying to make a penny scream.

 

[rogerh]

I like the machine in your sig. This was exactly the kind of system that marbus used to recommend for someone trying to make a penny scream.

And it gives one answer to the question in this thread. It will only take 4 drives (unless I want to download a binary file from an unidentified person on the Internet and replace my BIOS with it) and reds (or the greens it started with) run about 37-41 degrees in our climate (which is too cold for air conditioning but a bit hot for computers for a week or two in summer). Using red pros would give me no practical improvement in anything I actually do with the NAS, but almost certainly mean I had rig up an external fan or air conditioner for it for a few weeks a year. This would cost more than the hardware cost me apart from the drives. It would make no sense at all. A longer warranty would probably not be used, if only because I probably wouldn't want to use a reconditioned drive.

 

[Ericloewe]

(unless I want to download a binary file from an unidentified person on the Internet and replace my BIOS with it)

Gotta love binary blobs.

BIOS, ME firmware, PCH microcode, CPU microcode, GPU microcode, network adapter firmware (which interacts with BIOS and ME).
And those are just the ones that run before any OS is even booted, at a level so low that they could be doing * anything * and you'd never know.

 

[solarisguy]

On the original question of WD Red vs WD Red PRO :)

I would have bought the Pro version, if it was not noisier and not running hotter, reasoning that then I can stay with RAID-Z2 and not go to RAID-Z3.

I am a home user with a fairly quiet FreeNAS machine in our living room, so I am expecting replacing my hard drives with higher capacity ones every 2-3 years.

Please read my later post in the thread. My statement above is erroneous and misleading. @Ericloewe, thank you for pointing that out!

Edited 3 days after the original post.

 

[Ericloewe]

reasoning that then I can stay with RAID-Z2 and not go to RAID-Z3.

Why would you arrive at that conclusion? Their quoted error rates are identical, apart from deceptive advertising.

 

[jgreco]

Why would you arrive at that conclusion? Their quoted error rates are identical, apart from deceptive advertising.

Quoted error rates have very little to do with anything. The actual experience tends to be that faster storage runs hotter and burns out more quickly. The irony is that RAIDZ3 is slower than RAIDZ2, so while you might try to combat potentially increased risk of failure that faster drives might be at risk of by increasing the redundancy, you're also reducing the performance.

 

[jgreco]

Gotta love binary blobs.

BIOS, ME firmware, PCH microcode, CPU microcode, GPU microcode, network adapter firmware (which interacts with BIOS and ME).
And those are just the ones that run before any OS is even booted, at a level so low that they could be doing * anything * and you'd never know.

Don't worry @Ericloewe , the NSA has already pwned your box ...

 

[Ericloewe]

Don't worry @Ericloewe , the NSA has already pwned your box ...

Next time I need something 100% secure, I'll just write something in Motorola 68k assembly for my calculator. That might just be the most recent device I have that doesn't depend on some mysterious binary blobs.

 

[jgreco]

You realize Motorola's a US defense contractor, yes?

 

[Ericloewe]

You realize Motorola's a US defense contractor, yes?

Sure, but it's a 68k and the thing only has a simple audio jack-like interface. I think I'd be fine.

 

[jgreco]

Sure, but it's a 68k and the thing only has a simple audio jack-like interface. I think I'd be fine.

Don't underestimate your adversary.

 

[Ericloewe]

Don't underestimate your adversary.

If I'm at that level, I'll build my own CPU. With blackjack. And hookers. With SN74LS00s.

 

[jgreco]

With blackjack. And hookers.

In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack. Ah, screw the whole thing.

You realize he's got a 6502 for a brain, right?

 

[Ericloewe]

In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack. Ah, screw the whole thing.

You realize he's got a 6502 for a brain, right?

Now that you mention it, yeah. Missed joke opportunity.

 

[jgreco]

Now that you mention it, yeah. Missed joke opportunity.

People are starting to look funny at us.

 

[solarisguy]

Why would you arrive at that conclusion? Their quoted error rates are identical, apart from deceptive advertising.

My apologies. I was thinking about one hard drive model and wrote about another. I will edit my erroneous misleading post.

In my mind, I was comparing model WD60EFRX (WD Red™) against WD6001FXYZ (WD Re™), and not against WD6001FFWX (WD Red Pro™), for an at-home-NAS.

The PDFs with relevant information are
Red http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800002.pdf , non-recoverable read error rate per bits read (URE rate) < 1 in 10^14, MTBF 1000000h
Red Pro http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800022.pdf , (URE rate) < 10 in 10^15 = 1 in 10^14, MTBF 1000000h
Re http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800066.pdf , (URE rate) < 1 in 10^15, MTBF 2000000h

Background story. As a family, we commit lots of GBs into our appliance-based at-home-network-storage. It started almost a decade ago with D-Link DNS-323, using mirrored drives at a capacity that I do not recall, but upgraded to 2 x 1.5 TB (in RAID-1) as soon as 1.5 TB drives from Seagate were available in 2008. Rewind to FreeNAS 8.0.2. It seemed like a good idea at the time to use WD Black drives, the best idea ever... They delivered the performance and at the time allowed to look at the AF (Advanced Format) transition from the sidelines, but the noise and temperature issues did not make WD Black drives good tenants in our living room. Toyed with WD Greens, however WD started advertising that for NAS, we should use drives designed for NAS... Thus WD Reds became my favourites. Today, for us, both WD Red Pro and WD Re are too noisy and too power hungry (as WD Blacks are). I had carefully looked at the warranty, AFR (MTBF) and non-recoverable read errors per bits read for WD Re. However, at almost a double of power dissipated as compared to WD Red, to me they are only a living proof that Western Digital can make drives with better parameters.

When would I recommend Re or Pro models? If the network connection is better than a single Gigabit Ethernet. If there are two pools in the server and there are copies being done between them on the server itself. If there is some disk intensive processing being run on the server etc. And, at the same time, heat and noise are not the limiting factors. Then one should consider those ($$$$) models. Re and Pro models also give a benefit of faster scrubs and faster disk replacement. And most importantly, deploying WD Re gives one a 10 disk RAID-Z2 with probability of a failure that is less than 10 disk RAID-Z3 with WD Red or WD Red Pro.

P.S.
When we were buying WD Green drives model WD15EADS, they were being sold with a 3 year warranty, and in their specs URE rate was 1 in 10^15. Nowadays, finding a PDF with the original WD15EADS specification on the Western Digital site is next to impossible...

 

[jgreco]

... idly wonders why a NAS would be in your living room ... ;-)