WD Red on My Book Live Duo

sikachu · October 15, 2015, 2:15am

Hi Guys,

I just bought My Book Live Duo 1 month and 3 days ago (dang!) and realized today that WDC just released a new line of drives called “WD Red” ( http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810.)) From the announcement, it seems like this is the more NAS-friendly drive than the green drive. Also, they even listed MBLD in the compatibility page: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

So here are the questions:

* Do you think newer MBLD will use WD Red instead of Green?

* Will the users that currently has MBLD can swap out the drives and somehow get the WD Red drive on it?

* Or, will WDC allow us to pay some $ for an upgrade to a model with WD Red inside?

Thank you.

WDTony · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

Good questions. The drives that are in current shipping products are all tested and certfied to work with our Duos so you should not need to upgrade. The WD Red drives will eventually get into all our NAS products as well as competitors products. You can’t just swap out drives as the NAS firmware has to be tweaked to support these drives.

Ripcord83 · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

well here’s hoping that the firmware will be updated for the Duo’s so if we wanted we could upgrade to the Red’s.

they sound pretty good so far.

Benzima · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

Of course, this comes out 1 week after I got my 6TB MBLD.

Like sikachu said, “it seems like this is the more NAS-friendly drive than the green drive.”

Are we gonna be missing out on much?

WDTony · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

It is - but we do a lot of work with our drive to to make sure the drives we use work in our system. Like I said, these will fold into our NAS’s in the future, but this is also helpful for the industry as a whole as many of our competitors sell zero configuration systems and to be honest probably don’t test out the compatibility with drives like we do. This makes their life a bit easier.

enigma28 · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

So at the moment we are unable to buy a couple of 3tb Reds and chuck them in the Duo system?

I just happened to buy a 6tb Live Duo and 2x WD Reds yesterday, and just got the idea to chuck them into the Duo and use the Greens that come in it as base storage drives internally and have the Reds doing all the heavy lifting in the Duo. Doesn’t really bother me much if I can’t do that but if possible I would like to.

sikachu · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

Ah I see. Sadly I’d love to be able to pop in the Red drive in place of Green drive for sure, with the promised of better firmware and NAS compatible.

I think it would be nice if WDC would give us an option to upgrade the drives in there though. I mean, for example if 4TB drive is out and we want to upgrade it, we can pay you some $$ and get the compatible drives shipped to us. I mean, in the marketing material we saw “Upgrade is easy” in it, but it doesn’t really seems that way after I read a lot of topics on here. (For example, has an OS on the drive instead of flash memory, so you can’t obviously just swap in any drive.)

WarrenFitch · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

Not meaning to harp on this any more, but I too just bought a Duo system, and it works really well. My one concern is, it runs almost 24/7 streaming to members of my household, who have different than normal time/work schedules. If the greens are not made to run 24/7, is this gong to be a problem? Would you comment please!

Thx!

Ripcord83 · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

well the Duo does go idle after a period time.

but I’m sure the Green drives have been tested enough to outlast anything, plus if a drive fails you can contact WD for an RMA replacement.

I use mine for backup files & streaming HD videos to my wdtv live and do it regularly.

the only difference for the Reds is they made them to be only used for NAS & are faster while the Greens can be used for computers and USB drives as well.

maybe with a future FW they’ll add the Red drives to the Duo then all we’ll need is the main drive for the OS.

well one can hope

Steven413 · October 15, 2015, 4:51am

Hi Tony - I’m new here and have learned a lot from the forums as I gather info on my 1st NAS unit for my Mac which will probably be the MyBook Live Duo 6TB unit. Curios as you posted this in July and we are 5+ months later - have the Red drives started to ship with these units yet?

Thanks - Steve