John Childermass
Dabbler
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2016
- Messages
- 34
I've bought a couple of 12TB WD Red Plus drives (model WD120EFBX) based in large part on the claimed noise levels (20 dBA idle, 29 dBA seek). They do seem to be pretty quiet so far, so I'm happy with them. I've realised I will need more space, so I'm thinking of getting a couple more, probably to make a 4-disk RAID-Z2 pool instead of the mirrored pair that I originally planned. My usage is going to be mostly just file storage and I would prefer to be resilient against the loss of any two drives, which is why I'm probably not going for two 2-way mirrors.
However, I read in this article on ServeTheHome that they say the WD Red Plus line is listed as Clearance on the WD website. I'd noticed some varying availability when I bought the first two, but assumed it was just general supply chain problems like with many other things nowadays.
Does anyone know whether the WD Red Plus drives are really being discontinued, and what the future might hold? Is there anything like them from another supplier? When I looked, it seemed that other options (WD Red Pro, WD Gold Seagate IronWolf, etc.) were all noisier than WD Red Plus. I'm a little concerned that if a drive fails I won't be able to buy a similarly quiet replacement in the future (unless big SSDs have become much cheaper by then!). Normally I'd assume that something bigger, quieter and cheaper will come along in time, but it seems that I might be falling into a gap between smaller SSDs and larger, noisier HDs.
However, I read in this article on ServeTheHome that they say the WD Red Plus line is listed as Clearance on the WD website. I'd noticed some varying availability when I bought the first two, but assumed it was just general supply chain problems like with many other things nowadays.
Does anyone know whether the WD Red Plus drives are really being discontinued, and what the future might hold? Is there anything like them from another supplier? When I looked, it seemed that other options (WD Red Pro, WD Gold Seagate IronWolf, etc.) were all noisier than WD Red Plus. I'm a little concerned that if a drive fails I won't be able to buy a similarly quiet replacement in the future (unless big SSDs have become much cheaper by then!). Normally I'd assume that something bigger, quieter and cheaper will come along in time, but it seems that I might be falling into a gap between smaller SSDs and larger, noisier HDs.