# WD Red drives for OS?



## Eric_Cartman (Feb 20, 2013)

My hard drive in my computer is dying.

This morning when I turned my computer on it complained that there wasn't a boot drive and my hard drive wasn't showing up in the BIOS.

I turn the computer off and on a few times and it finally recognized the drive and booted.

It is still running and I'm typing this on it right now, but I'm afraid to turn it back off.

I ran HDTune on it and it reported several bad sectors.

So I want to replace the drive today.

I went to my local computer shop and they had a few drives in stock, I'm looking at 1TB drives.

My options are basically a Seagate Barracuda, another WD Green, or a WD Red.

Now there is no way I'm getting a Seagate because their trash, so that just leave the WD Green and the WD Red.

However, the shop owner said that the WD Red drive can't be used as an OS drive.

He said that WD put some kind of software on the drive that makes it only work as a data drive and it will only work in a NAS.

I also remember reading someplace, maybe it was even someone on here, saying that the Red drives don't have the normal error correction that normal hard drives have, instead it relies on the error correction of the RAID controller.

So if you use it as a standard hard drive and there was an error like a bad sector all the data would be lost but a normal hard drive would correct the error itself and keep working.

But the Red drive was actually $25 cheaper than the Green, so I'd prefer to get that if possible.

But I want to get the facts straight about them first.

The shop owner said if I bought the Red drive he wouldn't take a return if I couldn't get an OS installed on it and I don't want to risk data even if I did get it working so I need your advise.


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## brandonwh64 (Feb 20, 2013)

They will be fine for OS drive. We have one at work running in a machine that the OEM drive died. No issues so far.


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## Sasqui (Feb 20, 2013)

The drive is geared towards NAS and RAID:

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

Fine for OS, though it may have issues with Sata mode set to IDE.  Make sure to partition the drive with Sata mode to AHCI or RAID (RAID is probably better)


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## Athlon2K15 (Feb 20, 2013)

The WD Red drives have alot of power saving features and are designed to run 24/7. I dont see any issues using it as a OS drive.


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## cadaveca (Feb 20, 2013)

Choose red/green/black for desktop.



> This article does not apply to WD Red drives which are designed specifically to be used in a NAS enclosure.



http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...2LzEvdGltZS8xMzYxMzg2ODAzL3NpZC94eUFidWxqbA==

Any drive will work fine in any environment, but each has different firmware features and block size, dependent on the intended deployment. WD also has RE Edition drives for RAID use, again, with different firmware features.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 20, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> Choose red/green/black for desktop.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



^^^This

Western Digital Red drives are made for NAS and RAID storage setups on mind. Chose a blue or black drive for your system.

But looks like you only have Seagate, Green, or the Red for choices. Honestly I would get the Seagate, or the Green if its cheaper. But if your using it as an OS drive the Green will be slower since it only runs at 5900rpm, while the Seagate probably runs at 7200rpm.


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## cadaveca (Feb 20, 2013)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> ^^^This
> 
> Western Digital Red drives are made for NAS and RAID storage setups on mind. Chose a blue or black drive for your system.
> 
> But looks like you only have Seagate, Green, or the Red for choices. Honestly I would get the Seagate, or the Green if its cheaper. But if your using it as an OS drive the Green will be slower since it only runs at 5900rpm, while the Seagate probably runs at 7200rpm.



I tried Green drives for OS, and my son uses one. Not recommended, IMHO. Blue for cheap desktop, black for performance.

The RED will work anyway, just not it's intended platform.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 20, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> I tried Green drives for OS, and my son uses one. Not recommended, IMHO. Blue for cheap desktop, black for performance.
> 
> The RED will work anyway, just not it's intended platform.



Yeah, I wouldnt use a Green drive for an OS either haha. Thats why I was leaning more towards recommending the Seagate. Especially if its the same price or cheaper.


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## brandonwh64 (Feb 20, 2013)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> Yeah, I wouldnt use a Green drive for an OS either haha. Thats why I was leaning more towards recommending the Seagate. Especially if its the same price or cheaper.



Really the RED is the best choice since its build for long term usage.


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## cadaveca (Feb 20, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> Really the RED is the best choice since its build for long term usage.



That's not what WD told me. Anyway, Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB is faster than RED 3TB drives in some workloads(4k). The Seagate can also handle more IOPs per second, as can the Green drive. Not sure how the other Red drives perform, I'm sure paltter size and such will have an effect too.


http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review_wd30efrx


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## brandonwh64 (Feb 20, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> That's not what WD told me. Anyway, Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB is faster than RED 3TB drives in some workloads(4k). The Seagate can also handle more IOPs per second, as can the Green drive. Not sure how the other Red drives perform, I'm sure paltter size and such will have an effect too.
> 
> 
> http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review_wd30efrx



Maybe its just the added error detection in raid?


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## cadaveca (Feb 20, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> Maybe its just the added error detection in raid?



Honestly, I'm not exactly sure. But, what I can say is what WD told over the phone, and note what the website for these products says.

The black and Velociraptor drives have the longest warranty, 5 years. WD red is 3 years, and others are 2 years. So to me, this says that Black and Velociraptor actually have the highest build quality.

WD also recommend the Red under desktop RAID, and others for single use, and this separation is why I gave Phenom a hard time, since he was buying a board without RAID support(plus he planned RAID since day one).


A drive is a drive, and any will _work_.







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


As linked above by me, WD will not warranty Black, Green, or Blue drives used in RAID. They will with the RED. It's kind of a hybrid drive, almost, in that regard.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 20, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> Honestly, I'm not exactly sure. But, what I can say is what WD told over the phone, and note what the website for these products says.
> 
> The black and Velociraptor drives have the longest warranty, 5 years. WD red is 3 years, and others are 2 years. So to me, this says that Black and Velociraptor actually have the highest build quality.
> 
> ...



And then I sold the board I did get, and got a H77 board, and now running the 2 red drives I got in Raid 1 via hardware.


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## brandonwh64 (Feb 20, 2013)

Ahhh that is a good point dave. I have two blues with the 5yr warranty and I have a black as well.


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## Sir B. Fannybottom (Feb 20, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> Really the RED is the best choice since its build for long term usage.



Also, everyone knows that red means its fast.


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## cadaveca (Feb 20, 2013)

TacoTown said:


> Also, everyone knows that red means its fast.



Doesn't green mean go, and red, stop?

Oh, right, no license.


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## thebluebumblebee (Feb 20, 2013)

Eric_Cartman said:


> My hard drive in my computer is dying.
> ...
> Now there is no way I'm getting a Seagate because their trash, ...



Ironic, huh?


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## Eric_Cartman (Feb 20, 2013)

I have a green drive now and it isn't slow.

So I'm not opposed to getting another green drive for my OS.

But it sounds like the Red is going to be fine.

So I'll go ahead and go with that since it is cheapest.



thebluebumblebee said:


> Ironic, huh?



It would seem that way.

But the drive I'm using now was originally in an emachine.

It is a first generation Green drive and it is date stamped 2007.

That makes it 6 years old at this point.

It has also been dropped off of a table and still worked perfectly.

I've never had a seagate last more than 6 months.

The last seagate I had had to be sent 5 times before the warranty finally ran out.

And that drive had a 2 year warranty.

Now that they've drop to a 1 year warranty their drives are even worse.


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## Sir B. Fannybottom (Feb 20, 2013)

cadaveca said:


> Doesn't green mean go, and red, stop?
> 
> Oh, right, no license.



Why do you hate me?


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## lilhasselhoffer (Feb 20, 2013)

I'm currently running a 4 drive RAID 5 array of red drives.  I'm in the middle of encrypting them using true crypt.  Now the bad part.


A new 2 TB drive, 64 MB cache, on an Intel Z77 chipset (SATA II) maxes out at 15MB/s in the array.  The highest access speed I got was about 20 MB/s.  I'm looking at 4 days to fully encrypt the array.


Note two things.  It's supposedly a SATA III drive. Z77 obviously doesn't offer this configuration (in RAID at least).  The second is that I'm running a stock clocked 2500k.   More than enough arse to do all the heavy lifting and remain below 28C on each core.


Can I recommend red drives for your OS; no.  Can you get away with them; probably.  Has having a SSD spoiled me terribly; absolutely.


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## Eric_Cartman (Apr 20, 2013)

I don't know why you are getting such bad speeds lilhasselhoffer.

I bought the Red drive and am now using it as my OS drive with no problems.

It is definitely faster than my old WD Green drive I was using, but that drive was a first generation Green.

Here is my ATTO benchmark I ran on the drive.

It seems pretty respectable for a hard drive.





Maybe the onboard RAID isn't as up to the task as you think it is.

I don't think having SATA III would matter at all.

These numbers for this drive are barely going past SATA I and aren't even close to the limit of SATA II.

So unless other drives are way way faster SATA III is useless with a hard drive.


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## AsRock (Apr 20, 2013)

If i was going get another WD drive i would get a Black hands no question about it.. With buying SSD's over the last few years i only use any of the 7 WD's as backups now but i did have a 2 blues to before switching and they suck ass although good for backing data on them and disconnecting them for a later date...


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