Newegg | Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache Internal HDD -- $139.99 + Free Shipping (Starts 2/23)

Guys, please take a moment and think. Newegg reviews are full of DOA reports (157 reviews, avg 3 eggs). Amazon reviews are mostly 5star (233 reviews, avg 4.5 star). One could take this information and assume that Newegg's got damaged somehow in transit to them. Even Neweggs MOST RECENT reviews are still complaining about DOA drives...they havent burned through this bad shipment yet, or even possibly that a different plant made them.

WD replies to all Newegg reviews with their special number for WD Red drives. The question is, in the fairly likely event that you will get at least one DOA drive from Neweegg... 1) Does WD make you pay shipping to them, and 2) Will the drive you receive from WD be a new drive, or REBURB. In my experience, all warranty RMAs requests are replaced with REBURBs.

Has anyone gone through this process that could share this info with us? Thanks

I requested a PM from amazon, and it seems they lowered their price from $162 to $156 today... Here's to hoping they come all the way down to $140

Quote from greyphox : I requested a PM from amazon, and it seems they lowered their price from $162 to $156 today... Here's to hoping they come all the way down to $140

That would be great. They did do this on the WD Red 2TB deal Newegg had, and I bought from them. Mainly because Newegg in the middle of the promo, jacked the price up so the promo was pretty much useless.

The Newegg packaging complaints are outdated. The drives I've received from them in the past few months have been meticulously packaged.

Quote from Elpee : Still cross fingers until under $100.

3TB Greens don't even go under $100

is this drive overkill for using it as storage drive like viewing vid, photos etc? or should I get a cheaper green drive

Quote from Lemon.Tree : is this drive overkill for using it as storage drive like viewing vid, photos etc? or should I get a cheaper green drive

This drive has specific features that make it a bad choice for being a single-drive. It should only be used in multi-disk arrays in a NAS device or with a hardware RAID controller

Quote from myklup : This drive has specific features that make it a bad choice for being a single-drive. It should only be used in multi-disk arrays in a NAS device or with a hardware RAID controller

can you point out what the specific features are?

Quote from ordinaryman09 : can you point out what the specific features are?

Straight from the manufacturer:

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

Click on the NASware tab. For some reason the direct URL to it, does not work.

Quote from ordinaryman09 : can you point out what the specific features are?

The Red series seems to be designed to operate in RAID arrays, multiple drives interconnected to act as one unit. Some older WD drives were notorious for dropping out of the array and weren't recommended for this usage scenario.

You could absolutely use it as a single drive, but what he was saying is you'd be missing out on one of the features that it was designed for, not to mention its spindle speed seems to be around 5,400rpm. In single drive usage, I would wager that the Seagate 3TB 7,200rpm drive will be faster in most regards.

Quote from hieuhef : The Red series seems to be designed to operate in RAID arrays, multiple drives interconnected to act as one unit. Some older WD drives were notorious for dropping out of the array and weren't recommended for this usage scenario. You could absolutely use it as a single drive, but what he was saying is you'd be missing out on one of the features that it was designed for, not to mention its spindle speed seems to be around 5,400rpm. In single drive usage, I would wager that the Seagate 3TB 7,200rpm drive will be faster in most regards.

ah..got it..thanks.

Quote from hieuhef : The Red series seems to be designed to operate in RAID arrays, multiple drives interconnected to act as one unit. Some older WD drives were notorious for dropping out of the array and weren't recommended for this usage scenario. You could absolutely use it as a single drive, but what he was saying is you'd be missing out on one of the features that it was designed for, not to mention its spindle speed seems to be around 5,400rpm. In single drive usage, I would wager that the Seagate 3TB 7,200rpm drive will be faster in most regards.

Sadly this is incorrect. You should NOT use this as a single drive as at a hardware/firmware level this drive has been configured to "fail quickly" if it has an issue reading data from a sector, with the understanding that that sector is safe on some other disk. Regular consumer level drives are configured to continue to attempt to get the data off of the single disk for a longer amount of time with hope of getting past whatever the read issue may be, knowing that there is not another copy.

Quote from myklup : Sadly this is incorrect. You should NOT use this as a single drive as at a hardware/firmware level this drive has been configured to "fail quickly" if it has an issue reading data from a sector, with the understanding that that sector is safe on some other disk. Regular consumer level drives are configured to continue to attempt to get the data off of the single disk for a longer amount of time with hope of getting past whatever the read issue may be, knowing that there is not another copy.

In reviews such as the one linked to below, they highlight TLER as a feature that makes WD Reds good in RAID configurations but also test/recommend it for use in single drive NAS applications.

http://www.storagereview.com/west...w_wd30efrx

Do you have a reference to an analysis which says it is bad for single drive applications (rather than possibly overkill)?

Thanks.

Quote from myklup : Sadly this is incorrect. You should NOT use this as a single drive as at a hardware/firmware level this drive has been configured to "fail quickly" if it has an issue reading data from a sector, with the understanding that that sector is safe on some other disk. Regular consumer level drives are configured to continue to attempt to get the data off of the single disk for a longer amount of time with hope of getting past whatever the read issue may be, knowing that there is not another copy.

Been using the 1TB WD Red in a Synology DS213, and it's performing just fine, so yeah. I do plan on putting another TB for RAID soon.