WD Red Pro 4TB help

Internal Drives WD Red
1

Hi,

I need to buy 2 new drives for my external cases they are NewerTech miniStack can be found here: http://www.newertech.com/products/ministack.php

I am looking to use them as storage for my music and movies and stand alone drives (no raid) would the WD Red Pro 4TB WD4001FFSX be ok to use as no raid? Or would they cause problems?

Thanks Matthew.

2

Welcome to the Community.

While the hard drives will work for what you want, I’d say the WD Red Pro line is a bit of an overkill if there’s no RAID or networking involved. What do you think of the WD Black family of hard drives?

3

Hi,

Thanks! But aint the WD Black for desktop performance? not so much as a storage drive.

4

For private non-RAID solutions where speed is not crucial, I would go for the Green series. They are cool and quiet, and works fine for sequential reading, like in playback of music and video files.

But always remember to make backups.

5

Hi, Thanks, so the Red Pro not good enough, just that i’ve read on a couple of different forums that you can use them in stand alone units (no raid).

6

The Red Pro is absolutely “good enough” in the sense that the build quality is very good, even better than the Green series. It’s just that many of it’s extra features are specifically for RAID and NAS setups. If you strip off these extra features you basically have the Black series.

Also, in the case of a bad sector, discs specifically for RAID setups (like the Red Pro) will stop trying to read very quickly, because a similar data is available in another disc in the RAID. A “standalone” disc like Black and Green will try much longer to get the data from that sector, reducing the chance for losing the file.

The reason I suggested the Green instead of black is the use you specified. When it comes to streaming music or video to you TV or stereo, the Black won’t make a practical difference, and the Green runs cooler and quieter. However in the case of harder workloads, like video editing, the extra power of the Black’s comes handy.

In you case I would rather spend the money on two Red (non-Pros) in a RAID 1 setup (mirror), this will save your data from a potential harddrive crash.

So, the bottom line is that you can use the Red Pro as a standalone disc, but it won’t help you more than a Black.