Can WD Red drives be used in My Book Studio II?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

The manual says that only Green drives can be used in My Book Studio II.

But on the WD web site on Green drives, it says:

“*Desktop drives are not recommended for use in RAID environments, please consider using WD Red hard drives for home and small office 1-5 bay NAS systems and WD Enterprise hard drives for rackmount and >5 bay NAS systems.”

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=780

But on the WD web site on Red drives, it says:

“Specifically designed and tested for small office and home office, 1-5 bay NAS systems, small media servers and PCs with RAID.”

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

So it seems that WD is recommending Red drives over Green drives for RIAD.

Can I use Red drives in My Book Studio II? Would it accept the Red drives or reject them?

2

Just received a reply from WD Support.

“You are able to use a WD Red drive in place of the currently preinstalled green drives, but do note that opening and tampering of the enclosure will void the warranty of the drive.”

I think I will go for the RED drives. The price is higher but I hope that the reliability is better. Reliability is more important to me.

3

Got another message from WD Support.

“At this point we cannot confirm that the WD Red drives can be used in a My Book Studio II as we have not tested it out. Currently the confirmed models that can be used in a My Book Studio II is the green drives.
You are able to use a 2TB drive or a 3TB drive if you wish.”

So back to square one: not sure whether Red drives can be used or not.

If anyone has a Studio II and a Red drive, please plug it into the Studio II and see whether it is rejected. You can just insert one Red drive into Studio II and then use WD Drive Manager to inspect the status of that drive to see what the status is.

If the status is not “rejected”, then it may be possible to use it.

Drives which are not compatible would have a “rejected” status.

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