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WD Green or Red?
jayzee786
Posts: 918
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I've currently got 2 D-Link ShareCenter Pulse NAS Enclosures with 4 WD 2TB Green HDD's fitted in them both. The NAS Enclosures are on constantly but are only accessed when backups are running between 12am and 2am and when Streaming media using a WD Live SMP.
I'm thinking of getting another 2 enclosures but the updated version which supports 3TB drives.
Should I get 2TB/3TB Green or Red?
I've researched a bit and found out that Red are optimized for NAS use but are they any good for MY NAS use?
I'm thinking of getting another 2 enclosures but the updated version which supports 3TB drives.
Should I get 2TB/3TB Green or Red?
I've researched a bit and found out that Red are optimized for NAS use but are they any good for MY NAS use?
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I'd say the only real benefit of the Reds in your case is the longer warranty period (unfortunately 3 years seems to have become a rarity these days). Whether that's worth the premium to you i don't know.
I'm currently building out my second Microserver file server. 6x 2TB (WD Reds) and 8GB RAM with FreeNAS running from a USB stick in the internal port.
Which are very commonly available, nothing rare about them.
After the cashback how much is the total cost for the server?
What's the limit of the green drive? At the time I bought the drives I was looking for the cheapest highest capacity drive?
I would assume no?
Only time they are used are for backups around 12am til 2am per night. Streaming media for around 3 or 4 hours a day and for syncing files using all way sync. These files are only small word docs and pics etc.
£119.54 (plus any shipping) for the base unit.
Around £4 for a decent 4GB flash drive to hold the OS.
Another £53 if you want to fit 8GB of RAM. There are reports that it'll take 16GB but it's prohibitively expensive for me to try at the moment.
The server comes with caddies for the 4 internal hard drives, so if that's all you want to fit that's all you need.
The server also has an internal SATA port, ostensibly for fitting an optical drive, but with a 45cm SATA cable, a molex to SATA power adaptor and a 3.5" to 5.25" mounting bracket you can fit a fifth HDD in there.
Some people have also looped the e-SATA port on the back of the Microserver back into the server for a sixth drive.
Rather than do the e-SATA loop i opted for a cheap PCI-e SATA card, a molex to 2 SATA power adaptor and a Nexus Doubletwin to mount 2 3.5" drives in the optical bay.
All in all it works out cheaper than buying an off-the-shelf NAS while being far more powerful and flexible.
I'm unsure if this is a problem with FreeBSD's support for the card, or a hardware problem somewhere, and i couldn't be bothered trouble-shooting it, so i opted to pull the card and just have a 5 disk array using the included bays and the spare SATA port for the optical drive.
Been running fine since yesterday and hasn't experienced the lost drive problem again.
Currently rsyncing data from my first Microserver (Debian Squeeze-based) to my second (FreeNAS) and averaging between 55MBps and 60MBps.
So my recommendation if you're going the Microserver route is to stick with the onboard SATA ports and a 5-disk array max.
Think i'll spend some of the £90 saved from not buying a sixth disk on my next project; a Raspberry Pi-based PBX.