WD Red or Green with NAS

[wi11iam]

Hi,

I've done a lot of reading on these forums and still can't really find a definitive answer. I'm guessing that it's because there isn't really a definitive answer.

I bought a D-LINK DNS-320 to use for storing my movies, tv shows and that it has a built in torrent client that I can silently download stuff in the background. I'm now looking into HDDs and I want to know whether a WD green or red drive is best for a raid setup.

Here is what I've found so far:

1. It's like choosing a religion!
2. Green drives need a bit of tweaking to get them to work well.
3. Where I live, a WD Red 1TB drive is about $40 more than a Green one. I live in a developing country and there is no way to get delivery here, I have to buy from local stores and Reds are more expensive.
4. Reds have a longer warranty.
5. Reds seem the best choice.

I want to buy Greens and although $80 difference isn't really a problem, it's always nice to save money if I don't need to spend the extra. If I need to spend the extra on Reds, then so be it.

I'm not really a techie, but I could probably figure out how to edit the firmware on the Greens, but I would really like something that I take out of the box, plug it in and it works.

From my reading, Reds seem the better choice? But are greens (out of the box) just as good. I've seen some people say yes. Is it possible to get a definitive answer, red or green. My gut is going with Red! But wanted some advice before I went down to my local IT shop.

Thanks

William

 

[wi11iam]

Oh, I should have added that I'm not really fussed about noise and power consumption and that kind of thing. Also, the other discussion that I found (13 pages long), got quite technical and I didn't really understand some of it! So laymans terms please! Thanks again.

 

[cyberjock]

You had me at the first paragraph. There is no definitive answer. It's just like you said to... it's a religion, etc etc etc.

So instead of us all getting involved in yet another flamewar over what drives to buy and not buy, you should just pick the ones you want and go with it.

 

[DJABE]

From a marketing perspective, Greens => desktop drives, Reds => NAS drives (built for a 24x7).
But after recent RED's LCC "bug" I doubt more and more if there is any difference in those WD colours... Red, Green, now Purple...

 

[wi11iam]

So would greens work right out of the box? If I put them in my D-Link NAS they would work without any tweaking? I only have a laptop so I'm guessing any changes to the settings would be difficult. From the other threads I see that some people say that their Greens have been working for years in their NAS and others said that the reds gave up quite quickly. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw?

 

[sremick]

They'll "work" but they'll excessively park the heads, quickly exceeding the lifetime rated # of head parks (load cycle counts, "LCC") well before the warranty runs out. The "tweak" fixes this.

 

[Starpulkka]

I bought wd 3Tb red drive and it was cheaper than green. It had parked 300 times just some hours so i wdidle3 it and parking stopped now. One plus thing is that red drives has TLER as green ones dont have. And one negative is that you know only after few months of heavy use does your red drives last long or no.

 

[DJABE]

You could use official WD tool for RED series... It works even on Linux.
What is your MFG date? They should not park heads after some date this summer...

 

[Starpulkka]

You could use official WD tool for RED series... It works even on Linux.
What is your MFG date? They should not park heads after some date this summer...

By MFG i assume you mean date date is 02 AUG 2014 MDL:WD30EFRX-68EUZNO
As for that red tool, i dont want talk about it at all.