Pair WD Red and Green in a mirror setup

[Xellvas]

Hi!

Just got my first freenas system running, and loving the challenge so far, with 2 wd reds in mirror. I bought 3 reds because i first planned on going raidz1 but changed my mind during configuration and went with mirror.
Mostly because it fits my upgrade pattern better and mirrors seemed more dynamic and faster than raidz
So i sit now with 2 reds in mirror now housing all the data from my synology, which has a green drive, and a spare red drive.
After hearing so bad rep about the green drive in raid 5 configurations i was wondering about mirrors? Thinkin about pairing it with my spare red and create striped mirror array, until i can replace it with another red or should i just not bother and wait for a new red?

Sorry about my english :) hope you can make sense of it.

Best regards

 

[jgreco]

What exactly is it that you think are wrong with WD Greens? Because a lot of people use them and they work about as well as any other inexpensive drive.

 

[Xellvas]

From what i can understand they i have a higher faillure rate in RAID 5ish configurations, so im mostly wondering what the situtation with mirroring? And will it play nice with a red drive?

 

[jgreco]

I don't think there's a lot of data pointing at a higher failure rate. Both the Reds and Greens are very similar drives, and WD is merely recognizing that NAS users have a slightly different featureset wishlist and are trying to extract money.

You can mirror two identical drives or two different drives. Those of us who are cynical old hands at data storage would suggest that mixing drives reduces the chances of certain types of "grouped" failures from drives obtained from a single manufacturing run or problematic model. So I'd say you are good to go.

 

[cyberjock]

The only downside to Green drives is the self-parking feature that occurs after 5 seconds if no activity on the drive. It makes Green drives a very bad choice for anything except single disk desktop applications(gee.. that's all WD markets them for too) unless you are "in the know". There's a tool called wdidle.exe that can fix your problems. Google it and use it. I have 24 Green drives in my FreeNAS server and have had no problems with using the tool. Set them to 300 seconds and put them in.

 

[Xellvas]

That probably the issue im thinkin of, will do the wdidle manuever. When ive created the new vdev and added it to my pool i would have to force a write of the data again to have it striped over both vdevs?
Should i mv everything to a new folder then back to the datasets again? or is there a better way?

 

[jgreco]

The only downside to Green drives is the self-parking feature that occurs after 5 seconds

Forgetful in my old age.

 

[russnas]

i read that wd ears green drives were the ones with issues,i had issues with read and write,the drive is still fine after the format. I read it has more disk platters which caused more heat,louder and a higher chance of fail.the newer ones earx (something like that) have improved use 2 platters,

the green drives standby may not wakeup fast enough to write aswell