Best HDD drive for workstation environment in RAID, need recommendations!

Hi,

I’m building myself an x99 workstation which would mainly be used for content creation and 3D rendering. As you may know, 3D rendering is all about rendering frames by thousands, and compositing them before you even render out a compressed video file. 2 SSD would be used for OS, Apps, and cache. The main concern is to manage the project files both in speed and security. Other backups would be dealt on externals.

I want to choose my project drives for performance and security. Therefore, I would naturally want to build a RAID1,  5 or 10 setup (w/ motherboard RAID controller). Being limited on my budget, I would also consider a more balanced option.

Looking at the options available, I see a few working scenarios:

  1. 2 x Velociraptor 1Tb drives in RAID 1 (1 TB total): Super fast, but pricey for capacity, but suitable for RAID1?
  2. 2 x Caviar black 3Tb drives in RAID 1  (3Tb total): Fast, although not recommended for RAID use.  Really?
  3. 3 x Red Pro 2 Tb drives in RAID 5 (4Tb total): Fast, and reliable. Though, would it work in a 3x desktop config?
  4. 4 x Red 3 TB drives in RAID 10 (6Tb total): reliable but slow drives. Would data stripping compensate?

Is there any good option I would be missing? Otherwise, I would think that OPTION 3 (3x Red Pro in RAID 5) would be the sweet spot for budget vs capacity vs performance vs security. However, I can’t find anything on whether these drives are suitable for a desktop environment (as opposed to a 6+ NAS enclosure).

What do you guys think?

Thanks for reading and advising for the best solution to build this rig! Cheers!

Hi Remix78, the best option would depend on your needs. You can click on the following link to view all of the compatible devices with the Red drives. 

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810#Tab2&Tab10

You can also check the following link to compare the Red drives with other models that might interest you.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/nas/