3TB Western Digital Red WD30EFRX SATA HDD $149.99 + Free Shipping!
 

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Linky [newegg.com]

This post can and should be edited by users like you :)
 

Amazon WD 3TB RED PriceMatched! [amazon.com]

Storage Wars: NAS Roundup, Thecus, QNAP, Netgear [hothardware.com]


Explanation from Anandtech about what the WD Red line actually is, how these drives are optimized for NAS.

Quote:

Less aggressive head parking (no IntelliPark feature) Configurable Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER), with a default of 7 seconds IntelliPower disk rotation speeds (comparable to Green drives) Vibration reduction mechanism in hardware 3-Yr. warranty and 24x7 phone support

http://www.anandtech.com/show/615...he-premium

Newegg: Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower SATA 6.0 Bare Drive $149.99 FREE SHIP
 

Newegg Shell Shocker

Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower [newegg.com] $149.99 with free shipping

- 64MB Cache
- SATA 6.0Gb/s
- 3.5"
- Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
- NAS compatible
- 3 year limited warranty on parts & labor

Price should update soon.

Looks like DJ3xclusive beat you to the punch by a mere two minutes.

looks good $10.00 more then TD rebate deal.

Yeah I had a very frustrating fit of annoyance when I saw that lol....I apparently can't mod alert myself, so somebody else do it please.

Not hot because the 2TB is $80.

understand these are built for NAS, but what specically does that mean in terms of just using this in my desktop? not a good idea?

Do you think we will see them lower on Black Friday? I still debated buying 2 of them at $158 via Amazon, but now $16 less, decisions, decisions...

UPDATE:
Too late, I couldn't resist the price, If these do go down on Black Friday and from Newegg, we'll see what I can do to get a price match.

It makes no difference.
If you have an HTPC as a home server then a NAS drive system is recommended, and some slower large drives can't handle it and die quickly, these won't, that is all.

newegg Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive 149.99
 

:bounce:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6822236344

buy people buy

Kinda new to all this, but im building 2 computers.. a HTPC for the living room, and a desktop for the office.. Im going to have the HTPC stream movies from the desktop. So my desktop is going to play as a office computer/gaming/NAS (light gaming btw)... Does that sound ok?

Wow really?

where, how?

ditto ... where are you seeing $80?

if i am not mistaken, the answer is yes. like madblade said, these drives will run as a regular desktop drive but they are optimized for NAS use, made to be constantly on24/7.

These work great in a desktop PC or an HTPC. I have 4 of these drives. But beware, Newegg does a lousy job of shipping mechanical hard drives and you could easily get a dud from them. I got mine from US NCIX and they were packed with love and care and all of my drives are fine.

Good price, but the failure rate (look at user ratings) from Newegg scare me away. I'll stick with WD Black drives, thanks.

Wrong.

The 2TB is $129 on newegg.
There was a recent promo where it was $109 with a coupon. That was a hot deal.
The 1TB version is about $88.

$80 for the 2TB would be super slick. It also is grossly incorrect.

Just don't buy these at Newegg and you'll be fine. It's not the drive, it's the packaging/shipping.

Just FYI. Check out the review here.
It actually is more "Green" then the WD Green Intellipower 3TB (Less Power Usage and Lower Temps) and has a much quicker sequential read/write which is good for movies and such.
Perfect for HTPC's who may want to transform into a full NAS at some point.

http://www.storagereview.com/west...w_wd30efrx
http://www.tomshardware.com/revie...248-8.html

Wow, Amazon has this same deal going on right now.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Dig...rds=wd+3tb

:D

Yes, they just started price matching a few minutes ago.

Gah, I just purchased from Newegg...

Thanks. Just ordered 2.

Yeah, I love Newegg but I'd definitely buy mechanical hard drives from Amazon over Newegg due to better packaging and better return policy (no restock fees).

BF...so close...must...resist...

Nice! +2 Checked earlier today and they were still @ $170+

I know...not sure what to do here.....Amazon stock is quickly diminishing

I felt the same way, but just pulled the trigger on 6 of them. BF sometimes stresses me out too much trying to find best deals, out of stock, better deal coming around an hour later, etc. I'd rather pay the extra $ for my sanity this time.

Yeah, Amazon says
"Only 7 left in stock (more on the way)."

Short of some limited rebates a few days ago, these are the lowest these have ever been. The Tiger Direct plus rebate deals put them at $138 the other day (dead), but many dislike TD and rebates etc.

Is it just me or is this a bunch of marketing BS? I've had several drives (Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Maxtor, WD Green, WD, etc) both SATA and IDE in file servers that ran 24/7/365 and never had a drive fail. Unless they're purposly making drives that don't last more than HHH hours in order to require buying a "special" drive that lasts longer.

Yeah, I noticed it changed to "In Stock on Nov 16", but now it says it still has a few in stock.

Hope I made the right move cancelling my 2 from Newegg (after reading packaging comments) and ordering from amazon. I got 2 of the 2TB of these from amazon a couple weeks ago and the bare drives were in the box left to bash around (see one of the amazon customer picks like that). I contacted amazon and made them aware of the issue and returned them. It looks like some of the other customer pics show these shipped in the WD boxes the way they should be. Crossing my fingers.

I see 4 available now on Amazon but it will not let me order them :(

There is no restocking fee from Newegg if the drive arrives DOA, or fails within 30 days. Amazon packaging is no better than Newegg - usually Amazon just stuffs it in a box, and stuffs some paper, or bubble wrap in (same as Newegg). I've gotten many drives from Newegg, and have never had a problem. Nor have I ever been charged a restock fee on other components I've returned.

The price just jumped to $174.99 on Amazon as I was about to order one.

I think you are right. I don't know what these red are, but after finding out the hard way that WD Greens (EARS) can't be RAIDed, I gave up on WD. Who in their right mind would put 2 Tb of data without redundancy. Even if it is useless piratebay movies, it still takes time to re-download the stuff.

Perhaps these Red ones have TLER feature enbled, which is what allows WD to claim that they are "NAS friendly"?


Link please! I need to buy 4.

Amazon - OOS
 

Amazon just ran OOS as I was trying to order! :mad:

If you click on other sellers, you can still choose Amazon for $150, but in stock 11/16.

Edit: and now that is dead as well.

Weird I seee $175

Ordered 2 from amazon.. ugh my poor credit card

I don't care about energy use, I just want the fastest, most reliable, and quietest 3tb. How are these versus Suckgates (seagates :) ) 3TB barracudas?

I'd like to know too... Tempted to get the Seagate 2TB 7200 RPM drives, they have been going for $80. But the reviews are mixed, and they are down to only a 1 year warranty now.

I believe the REDs are the cheapest you can get that have TLER (and a few other features) that make them great for 24/7 NAS /RAID use. They probably won't outperform the WD RE drives but def outperform the greens. Also they don't spin down so often so the response time is notably better for initiating transfers and /or reads and this leads to a longer life because of fewer spin down/spin up cycles.

NOTE: Be sure to verify that your motherboard will support the 3TB disks before you buy this though. Many older boards don't especially those that have been popular for HTPC and NAS builds. Some have released new bios that allow for the 3TB drives but I wouldn't assume - look it up before you buy.

I agree, it seems that not only the RED drives but many other drive reviews from Newegg has similar results where there are a tons of DOA, work for a few hours, etc...

on the other hand, the review from Amazon were 90% positive.

If that's the case, i rather not get these from Newegg and just wait for another vendor. i hate doing RMA's.

I'm a long time WD fan, but I'm with you. These red drives are just fixed so they don't exhibit TLER problems. I doubt they're providing an enterprise drive in consumer clothing.. Will they work? I'm guessing they will. Over priced? More than likely.

But over priced is the category all drives are in these days, just slightly less so compared to last month.

As someone mistakenly posted, $80 for 2TB should be the top price, and maybe $120 for 3TB. That's my opinion, doesn't mean it will happen.

In other words, it is NOT the exact same stuff as the western digital GREEN....

Ordered two of these puppies for my NAS, from Newegg since there's no tax here in TX.. thanks OP!

I just recently(last week) purchased a hd from newegg, and expected horrible packaging based off of what I read in the reviews.

But I was really happy with the way it came packed.
Packing paper top and bottom, smaller box inside with the hd wrapped in bubble wrap. And the hd itself sealed in an antistatic bag.

The drive works with no problems. I wouldn't hesitate to order another hd from them again.

Has anyone actually seen any BF deals on these WD Red drives? I've looked through most of the flyers and not seen any HDs except for a few externals.

mechanically it could be.
the RAID features like TLER is controlled by firmware/software.

i'm speculating as I don't really know the answer.

Yeah, I'm just getting tired of hearing everyone compare these to the green. I don't care if the internals are identical. The fact is, this has a longer warranty, and has different firmware that provides a much needed function for people using them in a NAS. That makes a difference. Comparing these to the green is like tangerines to oranges.

thanks for this heads up. I had forgotten about this and was about to buy a Synology NAS on amazon. Ended up buying 3 of the babies as well as a new DS412+ (poor cc ;) ). No tax made the decision that much easier! :D

can anyone recommend a NAS for a complete newbie? I haven't even ever setup a RAID on a pc. thanks!

I agree. I've had the greens and the reds and they are not the same at all. The reds are WAY better if you ask me. I returned all of my greens.

NAS can get quite expensive. From what I've read if your going to do it, do it right and get a Synology or QNAP. The NAS's made from these manufacturers come with better warranties, better software, and are generally better performing. Synology DS212/DS213 are reasonably affordable and arguably the most popular for small storage 2 drives.

Synology DS213 is what I'm looking to buy by the end of the year and fill with two of these Red 3TB drives. That's a really solid setup for a noob that has a lot of functionality.

please explain how the reds are better than greens in your experience.

Maybe they got a red sticker instead of green, surely that is worth the price premium, lol.

RAID is not a backup! Stop using it as such or your ass is going to get burned. WD Green are awesome for masses of data. If it fails, and you don't have a backup, how is WD at fault? RAID is designed for uptime, ie. drive fails, my data is still available right now, it is not meant to replace a true backup.

Nothing beats the Superbiiz fiasco when they shipped my 2TB Samsung drive. It was shipped just in the cardboard clamshell that usually sits inside the multipack OEM shipping boxes. No padding whatsoever. Needless to say I ran the ESTool from Samsung and it had read errors. I got my RMA without much hassle though.

Does anyone one know if this would work in the Time Capsule (Apple)? I want to upgrade my 1TB drive.

thanks for your guys input.. I found a good review on another thread here on SD... I think I am going to order two of these WD RED drives, and set it up to give me 3TB of storage(mirrored incase one drive fails).. these things don't use much energy. I was always afraid of having these run all the time 24/7, but it has a fairly lower power consumption, the Synology 213+.

Here is the link I was referring to reviewing the Synology 213+:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/foru...tion-DS213

I know this isn't meant to be a true backup... but for me, it is just movie and music storage. I tend to keep movies I will keep on a separate external drive down the road. But the drive mirroring is great for not loosing stuff on there.

I honestly don't need to back up all of the movies and TV recordings that we have, as they are readily available elsewhere. Yeah, important stuff that can not be replaced is backed up, but to back up terrabytes upon terrabytes of literally digitized crap (movies, TV recordings, ect) is not necessary in my view.

However, if I sacrifice 25% of capacity to not to have to back it up, it is fine with me. In the worst case scenario where more than 1 drive fails, yeah, I am going to have to get all that digital crap back up, but chances of that happening are significantly lower than chances of 1 drive failing.

In other words, 25% loss in capacity is redundant enough for me to not to have back up and maintain a back up for stuff that can be replaced, however, I would rather not to have to replace it if I can minimize (not eliminate, but minimize) chances of that.

Hope that makes sense.

Well, I bought 4 3 TB Reds and they were all defect-free. They I bought 2 3 TB greens and 1 had dead sectors. I also had 2 3 TB Seagate drives and although neither were dead 1 was making a clicking sound.

I also felt that the Reds were quieter, which is huge for HTPC use, and a little quicker.

Someone always pops up in these threads defending Greens. That's because they bought Greens and they resent that fact that the Reds are a little better, have full RAID supports, are certified for 24/7 operation, have a longer warranty and have a dedicated 24/7 phone support option.

I was in the position to have either, I installed all of the drives above in my HTPC and I was only satisfied when I got the Reds.


Here are some reviews.
http://www.storagereview.com/west...w_wd30efrx

http://www.tomshardware.com/revie...248-9.html

You are lucky then that Superbiiz took them back. They have the worst return policy on the planet.

I installed two 3TB drives on my surveillance computer, running 24 hrs. Both drives died, I am not sure how long maybe, 2 years but both died within weeks of each other. It had read and write errors and failed,so I assume the read heads must have worn out or the platter.

Thanks for the info. one point of clarification, as long as you're using a a recent OS version (Windows 7, Linux, Mac OS X) all computers will be able to use a 3TB drive. I believe the issue is if you want a 2TB or higher driver as a boot drive, this is where the BIOS/mb not having support is the issue.

Sure, but it all depends on your home setup, you might not even need the living room computer.

Thanks for those reviews. It seems the 3TB seagate might be better for people wanting speed, i just hate idea of buying seagate...

I don't think there is any reason to get a 7200 rpm drive for storage. 5400 rpm or 5900 rpm is plenty fast enough.

I also hate Seagate! Join the club!

One thing that concerns me about the Red is in the TomsHardware review the mention a vibration sensor was removed from the Red vs. the green and black drives. Is this something I actually want as I am not using a storage device.

Amazon appears to have suddenly replenished their supply. In stock again for same price: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008JJLW4M/

Why wouldnt I need that? The living room is the main area we watch movies

excellent, I was waiting for that - thanks!

The price keeps dropping $10 bucks every single week. But I'm still waiting for Black Friday.

Wouldnt be surprised to see this drop as low $120 per drive for special sales on Thanksgiving weekend.

I have purchased several items with them all the way back to when they were eWiz with no issues. I never had a defective item. I was not worried about the return because I had pictures and would have just disputed the charge w/ my CC company. Apparently there were quite a few complaints on the packing, so I was not the only one affected. That probably helped the RMA and getting a prepaid label to send it back.

For internal storage, I wouldn't worry about it. For use in an external enclosure that you move around, maybe it's a concern.

This is not true. It depends on your controller. Some controllers will not recognize anything over 2tb.

If it hits $120, I'm buying a metric ton of these!

Make sure you format as a GPT drive for Windows to recognize it as 3 TB

I hope not. I would hate myself on this impulsive buy. I need the space but BF is so close and I can't make the call if it will go any lower. Hope newegg will allow me to get it at the lower price by issuing a partial refund.

I used to have a full-blown HTPC in the living room.

I've since replaced it with an Apple TV, which I much prefer. Smaller, lower power, cheap, no fan, and I've yet to experience any "quirks" - which I occasionally experienced with the HTPC. A HTPC is a computer, and it generally acts like one; occasional freezes or hiccups, or requiring reboots is not uncommon.

Other digital offerings like the Roku and Western Digital TV Live are good options as well. I just think that full blown HTPCs are best for very specific scenarios but not for the vast majority of cases. Most people simply want a way to take digital media and project it to their TV. A larger, more powerful, more power hungry PC is not the most efficient way to do that.

HTPCs are awesome, IF you put the time, energy and expense into them to make them awesome. They are definitely not plug and play by any means. You are right, a Roku/Apple TV/WD TV live is fine for most people.

Exactly. My HTPC was pretty awesome, but in the end, I didn't use it enough to make it worthwhile so the Apple TV works better.

I just think that a lot of people assume a big HTPC is objectively better, when the reality is that it might be much worse for a particular person than a little black box.

Won't help if your controller does not support it. For example, the Dell Perc5i and 6i are very common raid controllers:

http://www.overclock.net/t/359025...benchmarks

Neither of them support 3tb drives.

Most people who have built a PC themselves in the last few years are going to be fine. For example, P67 + Z77 and the like built in RAID controllers should be fine.

I thought apple tv couldnt stream my downloaded music/movies to the tv? I thought all your movies had to be purchased through itunes?

right now I use an xbox 360 to stream from the computer. Although it does the job, it often messes up. I was looking for a more reliable way to stream to my TV.. but has to stream all my movies/shows/music

3 TB would require 48-bit LBA support in order to work so if have this should be fine?

WD LIve Media player is the way to go. XBMC is nice, but takes some technical know how to setup and my wife can't figure out the navigation.

I guess, but the point is, it's not just about being a boot drive, or how you format it, or any of the other wrong information that was being put out. The reason why I know this is that I just built a Nexenta ZFS server using a Perc 6i and ran into this issue.

I feel anally violated because I paid $165 at Amazon last week.

I guess XBMC is the main reason why im building a HTPC.. I think it looks fantastic.. I dont have any experince with it, but from what Ive seen it takes alot to setup. But once setup, looks pretty easy to navigate and use, but like i said, i have no experince with it.

The Apple TV just requires your videos to be in a single format: MP4, with AAC audio. iTunes does the streaming and it doesn't care where you got the media, as long as it's in an acceptable format.

While I wasn't very happy about that (I had a huge batch of movies and TV shows that I converted from all my DVDs), my movies were all x264 so all I had to do was change the container format and audio, which didn't take all that long. You can batch convert movies using the application XMedia Recode, which worked very well for me. Or you can use Handbrake, but it's not as friendly to batch conversions.

I went with Apple TV instead of Roku because my girlfriend's iPad can stream NFL Sunday Ticket and Amazon Instant Video straight to the Apple TV, and you can use the application AirParrot to do desktop mirroring. Generally, I would have preferred the Roku but the desktop mirroring was something I couldn't pass up.

What is XBMC? Everyone is talking about it these days.....

Interesting.. as if I wasnt confused enough already lol!

I don't own any greens or reds, so I have no horse in this race.
I'm just trying to make an informed decision, and I wanted something more than "reds are way better than greens".

XBMC is pretty awesome, I've been running it for years, but it's not that easy to navigate.

Some of that depends on what skin you are using.

Let me clarify, it's not hard to navigate if you know what you are doing. There are just a lot of options and menus. I could some how set it up so it goes right to the Videos folder/directory for my wife, it would be my primary media player. Until I can do that, WD Live is my media player of choice.

Are these drives good for HTPC storage? I'm looking for a larger drive primarily to store movies, recorded shows, music, etc.

Thanks OP, I pulled the trigger for 4 of these drives that will reside in my Iomega NAS.

Stupid Newegg limiting us to 3, I had to use a 2nd account to order the 4th drive.

If you sell items for a NAS you shoudl expect people to buy 2-6 of them!!!!

You can software RAID the Green drives since it doesn't use TLER. However, RAID shouldn't be the only form of 'backup' since it is just for drive redundancy.

I was able to software RAID Wd Green EDAS but not EARS using the same software.

They would just keep falling out of RAID. I gave up, and moved on Samsungs. But, that was 2-3 years ago. This time, there are really only 2-3 players in town, WD, Seagate, and Hitachi.

If you do that, you MUST disable/change the head parking on the greens. If you do not, it will park the head every 8 seconds of inactivity. This will greatly increase the load count.

Instead of going the HTPC route, I used one of my old P4 computers, loaded it up with WD 2TB Green drives, and installed a program called TVersity to act as a media server (supports DLNA/UPNP). For each TV in the house, I have a WD TV Live/Seagate I-forgot-what-its-called-but-its-the-same-as-the-WDTVLIVEPLUS. Once you publish the library in TVersity, you can watch all you movies/pictures/music from any TV with a WDTVLIVE box attached to it. I think some TVs can stream from it directly too, so long as it can decode the movie (TVersity can decode the files as it streams as well, but I have a P4 running it... I set it to stream the videos straight to the WD, which decodes and displays it on the fly). Both MP4 and MKV (and some others, but all I care about are MP4 and MKVs) are supported by TVersity.

When I first tried TVersity, it was free (beta?), now, there's a small charge for it. Not trying to peddle this product, but it's nice to have a centralized media library where you can stream from anywhere in the house.

Western Digital owns Hitachi now, but Toshiba should be releasing their consumer drives if they haven't already.

I use TVersity to stream to my xbox 360. I also have the free version, it wants me to update it, but to a retail $$ version. It usually works ok, about once a month I have to goto the pc and click restart sharing when my xbox cant connect to it.

good deal, amazon price match is better if you live in hi or ak because shipping is actually free. i already prematured on the td deal a few days ago.

Shipping with Amazon is free.. and supposedly much more protected.

Read the newegg reviews.. half of them are from people who received a DOA drive and blame it on the poor shipping package. Then read the Amazon review.. only 1 bad review.

Now to find a good deal on DS212J or DS213!

There has been a lot of confusion on SD lately about what these Red drives actually are and how they differ from the rest of WDs line. I added a comprehensive review from Anandtech to the wiki, please check it out as it will answer most of your questions. I also suggest looking into unRAID if you are new to building a NAS

I'm waiting for a deal on DS413...come on Amazon, Newegg??

I do not understand how Apple TV could be easier than XBMC, the idea of reencoding my media to make it work is infuriating.

GUYS GUYS let me say this out loud: XBMC on a jaibroken Apple TV2 + NAS = AWESOME!

Seriously, I need the NORCO DS-12D!!! I keep waiting but so far...

man.. I wanna bite.. but I am gonna wait till BF. I think this may get lower. And, I want a synology 213+... they are still kinda expensive as they are relatively new products.

With the rate that SSDs and HDDs are dropping in price, anything think 3TB's will reach the $100 range by say... Easter 2013?

Well I can see how it would be more convenient, but if you're a minimalist, and you just have one place to view movies, you might want to save the cash by just using one of your main rig's video outputs to your TV.

I did consider that, but I want a seamless HTPC that went you switch to it, XBMC is already on. I dont want it to feel like a computer at all.

I also didnt want to tie up my desktop in case I want to watch a movie while my wife is doing work related stuff on the desktop

I woud love apple tv jailbreak or added app ability. Would negate any need for htpc!
Sigh been waiting for apple 1080p jailbreak :(

Interesting point. Though tests show real performance differences between green and red..so something is different

Don't wanna start a war here...but WD does quote a higher MTBF and a lower error rate, so unless they are lying in their advertising...they must be using something of higher quality vs what's in Greens?

I'd say this is a very nice deal...I doubt you'll get a better deal on these. You can also order it now and return it a week later - if you don't open the package.

This is incorrect. The risk of losing data in a green drive RAID system is greater. Here is a brief description:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Stor...ull-Review

More incorrect information.

"The ability to continuously and dynamically self balance is a feature unseen in even their own enterprise lines, and is a sure contributor to the 1 Million MTBF rating."

Yet even more incorrect information.

Ummm. no.

Agreed. These drives work fine in RAID. If you are buying a NAS box you are 99.9% going to RAID the drives. I am actually buying 6 of these and doing RAID10 with a Netgear Readnas Ultra 6 I just bought from Fry's. Go with RAID10 if you are doing consumer based drives, not RAID5.

3x1tb seagate 7200rpm vs this?

2x drives raid 0 and one for backup?

You are assuming that the only thing that can go wrong is a drive failure. A lot more can go wrong in RAID to cause a rebuild and total failure. I've personally been through a LOT of rebuilds and a couple complete failures where the drives tested fine afterwards.

I've been using unRAID since 2008 without any issue. That or FlexRAID is highly recommended. Stay away from hardware RAID for consumer use. unRAID is made for consumer mass data storage. Traditional RAID is for enterprise where there is an actual real backup and was never designed for drives this large.

Typically drives just don't die completely all at once. They start to have issues and then you usually have time to get all our most of your data off of them. In traditional RAID small errors can lead to catastrophic loss of all your data. This doesn't happen with modern software "RAID" where you can remove and read data on individual drives if you have any issues.

I highly recommend everyone planning a large RAID5 to at least research these software options. Losing a massive RAID5 or even RAID6 array will break your heart, and you will be even more confused when all the drives test out fine.

Oh, and you don't have to worry about TLER our other anomalies in unRAID. And you can buy different sized drives and drives with different speeds and different manufacturers. And the kicker is its easy to expand over time, so you can taker advantage of price drops over time instead of trying to buy a ton of drives all at once (which is another big no-no to avoid multiple simultaneous drive failure).

If it turns out my bios can't do 3tb, can I still use this drive partitioned into a 2.2tb and 800gb partitions?

You have to have both - an OS that supports 3TB and a motherboard / controller that supports 3TB drives. You may find yourself with one and not the other.

They MAY be physically identical although I haven't found any reputable evidence of that, but the fact remains that even if the only difference is firmware, that difference is significant. You can't get the firmware in question and apply it to a WD Green in practice the point wouldn't matter. Are they priced higher than they should be? I think so. Can you do anything about it besides complain/boycott? Nope.

I have 7 WD Greens and 2 WD Reds. The Reds run MUCH cooler. The Reds have no spinup on my NAS whenever I bring up a file/folder from a client PC - the Greens have a noticeable lag and spinup noise.

That extra spinup every time you have to access the Greens will degrade the life of the drive. There are some tweaks that you can do to lower that but not to the point that the Reds are at.

As for RAID, the Reds are perfectly suited to RAID use while the Greens are very unsuitable for it. The Reds are not Enterprise class drives but are much closer than the Greens.

No, but as was mentioned by others, if you have a modern mobo, you will be fine.

I have a dell from 2009 -- core 2 quad. Is that modern enough?

good find OP. dont need one at the moment and it is good to see the storage drives are slowly entering the affordability range.

need more 3tb drives for my Windows Home Server N40L Proliant...what would you guys recommend? these? or rip open the $99 Black Friday Costco external drives?

not waiting getting, my 2TB drives are filling up dangerously in my Synology....

Gonna need to sell these 2TB green power drives now.

I'd guess it's iffy but you should look it up and/or call Dell.

"Modern" is a pretty relative term. I have a 2010 Asrock board that will not support them.

Absolutely no documentation that details this, and dell support has been wrong when I asked about things in the past -- for example, AHCI mode is available once I set the motherboard to RAID.

Hmm, crucial's web site lists 3TB as being compatible upgrade so it looks likely...

no iron egg guarantee? not a deal..

what the hell, they cancelled my order................
Someone else in my company ordered one and they cancelled mine just because we're shipping it to the same place

Stop with the nonsense. You do not know what you are talking about.

gawd. I'm so freaking pissed at newegg right now. Their order system is driving me nuts. They keep on voiding my orders for no reason because they perceive I'm going over the limit.

Yay back in stock at amazon. Newegg can suck it.

Wow, you must be l33t with all your lingo. I do this for a living. I've set up over 50 customers with various RAID systems. I have large clients that use SANs and enterprise drives with hardware controllers, etc, and I have SMB clients that can't/don't need to spend 50k on a SAN or NAS. A simple ZFS system with 6 storage drives in Raidz2 serves them just fine. Never had a single bit of lost data.

Since you are so all knowing, tell me what the advantage of using enterprise drives is with a ZFS pool?

There are many people that can benefit from raid without enterprise drives. It's not an all or nothing. If you're building mission critical systems you'd be right but there is an in-between ground. I agree that many people that set up RAID don't need it, don't understand it, do it wrong, and probably would be better off using non RAID and spending more effort on configuring/maintaining backups. It's not all pron junkies either.

I think that the Reds are at a point where the cost / value is questionable but not a certainty in either direction. I think that they do buy you something over the competition in the near price range. Is it worth the price difference? I think that's still very dependent on your actual use.

Im going to open up that $100 seagate. A couple of them actually. I gave up on NAS raid a long time ago, now I just run a low power desktop with 2-3 of SD's cheapest HDDs synced together and compare hashes periodically.

Yeah, that sucks. I don't know what to tell you on that one. I thought about it after I posted that - I wouldn't trust the helpdesk tech on that one either.

What crucial website gives compatibility info on HDD's on a Dell?

In other words, you have no idea. Got it. I couldn't care less if you believe me. I just don't want anyone to be misled by your nonsense.

If you are doing ZFS (which you should be) then using most features of enterprise drives is a NEGATIVE. You want to use a dumb controller in IT mode, and let ZFS handle the data integrity. But you already knew that, right?

Who said anything about faster? You are flat out wrong and too stubborn to admit that this has gone to an area where you have no experience.

Crucial.com

That makes no sense at all.......
I've had single hard drive failures plenty of times. RAID prevents you from LOSING all your data because of it regardless of the drive

that's a pretty big site - got a link to something more specific where crucial.com shows compatibility lists for Dell computers and specific HDD's?

I only thought it was odd since crucial is a memory/ssd company.

I don't know where you're getting this from. Raid is a viable option for home users that want to 'backup' their data to be slightly safer from a drive failure. It's not a full backup solution, but it is damn nice to have if a drive fails on you. People can want to have some non mission critical data be redundant across multiple hard drives at home even if it's just movies, and there isn't something wrong with that.

Memory selector tool will display all options for systems including storage as they sell hard drives now

Wrong you're thinking of a WD Green

Wrong there are mechanical differences, in addition to the firmware difference even differences in RAM cache. You missed the point with RAID it's not merely about preventing data loss, it's about fault tolerance so one bad drive doesn't take down your application or business.
The Reds are rated for hardware Raid 24/7, the Greens are not.

Amazon still has it for 150. Newegg jumped back to 190.

Let me ask you RAID experts a question: If I have multiple separate backups, each of which fits on a single hard drive, is there any reliability advantage to a RAID configuration at all? (Since these drives are only used for backups, I don't care about speed/performance issues, just data reliability.)

Well, your backups are only a point in time. Daily? If your drive fails, you can possibly lose 23 hrs worth of work. Not a big deal for some, huge disaster for others. With RAID, if one drive failed, you could continue to work with no loss of data while you replace the disk and rebuild the array. Note, with disks of these size, I would not use a single parity solution like RAID5. There is too high of a chance of a 2nd failure while you are rebuilding after the first. The stress put on the drives while rebuilding the array is very large and can result in a 2nd disk dying. This has happened to me twice so far, but luckily I had double parity.

I am real old school. Using Windows 2000 Server RAID5 Software RAID.

You are right about losing the array will break your heart. I was a little stupid early on, at the time when 200 Gb hard drives were "high capacity" and ran 12 of them as a stripe... I learned my lesson. Even though I had everything backed up on DVD-R's it was still a pain to restore. So, I decided that I am going to protect my self from 1 drive failure, and only back up what I can't replace. If a catastrophic event happens and the whole array is gone, I will most likely have other things to worry about than restoring the media on the hard drives, i.e. food, shelter, safety of my family...

Thanks, didn't know their memory selector did that. That's pretty sweet if they keep it relatively up to date/accurate.

So is it possible this drive may not be compatible with certain desktop computers/mobos/etc?

Correct. That is an issue with all 3tb drives.

I bought my computer in 2008 and just checked with Crucial, and my HP Pavillion Elite can apparently support 3tb drives. It also shows up on the website as recommended upgrades.

So am I in the clear?

that must have been a long time ago. I bought many hard drives from them and still using them all today. Great packaging. Of course the 4 640GB blacks I bought on BF a few years back from Newegg are still working too. I think the trick to newegg is to buy more than will fit in an envelope. :)

$158, in for 1. Should 1 get more but I'll wait.

Packaging wise which one is/are good...Amazon, TigerDirect, Newegg?

Link in the OP now directs to: SEDNA - Desktop 10 Ports USB 2.0 Hub ( with 5V 4A AC/DC adapter)

I used to get really bad packaging from Newegg for hard drives but the last 4 drives I got from them over the past 6 months were packed very well. I still see negative reviews on them for packing poorly though so I may have just been lucky.

The deal was like 2 days ago. Please familiarize your self with how Newegg's Shell Shocker deals work.

I guess I missed the part of the subject line or OP where it said it was a DOD or Shell Shocker. I'm not a noob, Mr. Oct 2007.

I didn't call you a newbie. Seniors have their moments too. :D

I received my drives from Newegg today.

They were packed well, had an OEM box that the drive was in with normal side's and packing to boot(cheap packing paper), but still pretty solid compared to what others have complained about.

Ordered 6 of these last week

1 from TD = Good packaging, drive works fine
3 from NewEgg = Great packaging. Came in factory cardboard "tray". All 3 work fine.
2 from Amazon = HORRIBLE packaging. Box was 3x the size it needed to be. Drives bouncing around loose in box with a few inflatable plastic things. 1 drive DOA, other drive dropped out of array after a few hrs.