WD Black or WD Red?

Internal Drives WD Red
1

I am currently using a pair of WD Black 2TB drives in RAID 1 configuration as the main drive in my desktop PC (core i7, Win 7). I need to move to a larger capacity.

I run MS Flight Simulator and some data-intensive CAD applications. The PC also serves as a source for occasional streaming of video and pictures to a network-connected BD player and a laptop - i.e. internal NAS.

Q: Would I be better off using the newer WD Red drives for this RAID array, or should I stick to WD Black drives??

2

Are you booting off the RAID? If so, you may want to stick with WD Black since it is the performance drive. Although, Black drives aren’t really designed for RAID environments, I’ve saw other users have Black drives in a small RAID1 or RAID0 like you have without any issues. I personally use two VelociRaptors in RAID1. They are designed for RAID use and at 10,000rpm I get pretty good performance out of them.

WD Red’s are recommended for RAID use and should be fine if you are using them for storage and not a boot volume.

1 Like
3

Yes, it is my boot volume.

I’ve had no problems with the WD Black drives, except perhaps when I get an unexpected power interruption. The Intel Rapid Storage Technology software takes forever (hours) to check the integrity of the RAID array. The PC is very sluggish during that time…

If this process would be eliminated by the firmware in the WD Red drives, I would switch in a heartbeat!

4

The software is cheking all the data on the hard drive

maybe for your solution woukd be better buying a good SSD drive and continue using fhe blacks as storage volume.

if you want to stop that integrity check process i recommend you to buy an UPS :slight_smile:

5

The rebuild that the RAID does is something with the software validating the data on the drive, like DavidSucesso said above. Changing the drive to a different type wouldn’t prevent this from happening.

6

Red Drives are RAID Friendly, but they are really dedicated to NAS situations.   They are slow (5400RPM) and optimized for the close confines of a NAS box

I use them in my 12 disk NAS appliance.   They work well there, but I wouldn’t want them to be the boot volume on my home PC