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

One feature that might be interesting is the vibration reducing 3D Active Balance Plus.

Sounds good; the old Greens used to have trouble with hardware RAID controllers (dropped from stack for whatever reason it was). Sound wise I have high hopes, as home NAS' shouldn't require desktop-like performance, and hence the drives could be calibrated towards quieter, smoother operation - low spindle speeds and power consumption jump to mind, dunno about this balance, but I'm sure we'll see about it very soon.

On a different note. I see you have the define mini case. Do you have your drives suspended? If so can you post pics? Im thinking of getting it and wondering if its possibel to suspend the drives in lower 3,5" cage.

Could have just PM'd me instead of going off topic.

I did not suspend my drives, didn't feel there was a need for it (link, some pics in the mobo review I did). The case and trays are insulation enough with my drives and for my needs; only a very quiet hum (no throbbing) on the left side of the case, nothing on the right. If you want to discuss this further I would go to the namesake thread in Cases and Damping, http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=61080. There's also other people who have recently done builds with the D-Mini, I'm sure the search can find them.

Tank you, i forgot about PM.

Can they be used as internal hard disks without problem?

They have TLER, right? So, for RAID 1, are they a better choice than two WD Caviar Green, for RAID 1?

"Internal" like in a desktop computer? Sure, why not. They're just regular 3.5" SATA drives tweaked towards (small) server applications.

3 TB StorageReview review: http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review_wd30efrx. Good numbers, no serious red flags, random access probably consequence of seek logic tweak. Perfect for NAS, doubt any great improvement over Greens for desktop use.

TLER is a big plus for RAID, adds compatibility with hardware, not a requirement though. WD state that their consumer drives are approved and tested for consumer RAID applications (meaning 2-drive RAID 0 and 1). Search their FAQ for "Support for WD desktop drives in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration", "Difference between Desktop edition and RAID (Enterprise) edition drives" for example. The performance figures you can find in reviews.

I can't see the Reds offering much over Greens for typical desktops, where storage access tendencies and other conditions differ from server applications. RAID wise it's just a matter of compatibility, bar any performance gains that may or may not exist and would most likely disappear with next-gen Greens. To verify the silence claims, we'd need an SPCR review.

Anyone got a spare $200?

Hmmm. Seem to claim slightly better specs over Green. Tom's Hardware notes the Red line uses 1 TB platters; higher density than Green. Warranty is 3 years instead of 2. Presumably a casual user wouldn't notice the difference. If the reviews are okay and I were choosing between the two, I guess Red would be slightly preferable.

As I write this, NewEgg has 1 TB but not 2 or 3:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236342&Tpk=WD10EFRX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236343&Tpk=WD20EFRX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236344&Tpk=WD30EFRX

How is it with the new greens? Does the WD20EZRX also have 1TB platters?

Yes, it does.

True, I got one yesterday. Transfer raters is 20-30MB/s faster than EARX but access time has increased from about 15.4 to 17.

Can somebody please verify the quietness of red drives comparing to green drives? WD doesn't really tout it as a feature but if they were truly quieter, they definitely should!
I don't use raid and for media storage the less audible the drive the better - except money it is all that matters to me. With my scythe quiet drive it could be closer to inaudible than ever!

From Western Digital's website:

RED WD30EFRX drives acoustics:
Idle Mode 23 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 24 dBA (average)

GREEN WD30EZRX drive acoustics
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 29 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 3 25 dBA (average)

So specs list it 1db quieter. I am not sure what's this Seek 3 mode and how loud it is on the red drive because they don't mention in.
Real tests with proper equipment would be appreciated but at least someone who have both drives could comment with subjective tests. 1db is pretty close.

Quote: Can somebody please verify the quietness of red drives comparing to green drives? WD doesn't really tout it as a feature but if they were truly quieter, they definitely should!
I don't use raid and for media storage the less audible the drive the better - except money it is all that matters to me. With my scythe quiet drive it could be closer to inaudible than ever!

---------
Can't speak directly to the comparison issue (no green drives here), but I've got a 2 Tb WD red running 24-7 in a 2-bay Buffalo NAS box located about 5 feet from my right ear here at my console. At this distance, the drive is completely inaudible, even during active update writes. Only way I can tell anything is happening is to check my system stats.

One caveat: The previous post gave me the impression that the poster was considering the red and green drives potentially application-equivalent except possibly for sound and price -- they are not! WD clearly states that the red drives are designed and intended for NAS on-all-the-time applications, NOT for use in a PC on-and-off environment. WD advises that repeated on-off use will result in greatly degraded drive life, due to landing-zone wear, etc. The green drives, on the other hand, are intended for PC use in situations where energy use is a significant consideration.

For performance-critical mass storage in-PC applications, you might want to consider the WD2003FYYS, which is an enterprise-grade 2 TB, 7200 rpm, 64 Mb cache SATA-300 drive, ruggedized for commercial use, and including special mechanics which prevent the r/w heads from EVER contacting the platters, even at full stop. I have one of these sitting in a SATA cradle abt 2 feet from my left ear; I can barely hear it, even during defrag runs. A little careful shopping can deliver you one of these (as a white-label, bulk-pack, 1 yr guarantee) for a C-note or a bit more.

Hope this has been useful. Regards, the Geezer

Thanks for good feedback.

I run a 3TB green drive in a 5.25" scythe quiet drive silencing enclosure and it is far from inaudible - at least not in a small living room at night. It would be perfect to find drives that are inaudible. For now I have to move the storage to another room. I was thinking of stacking couple of drives in silencing enclosures and connecting them with a SATA port multiplier (e.g. http://www.addonics.com/products/ad5esapm-e.php), then converting to USB so that I can make a long cable connection. Bandwidth doesn't matter because I store music and movies mainly. I have no use for RAID solutions because I don't see its benefits in this case. RAID would make all my drives run and produce noise, draw electricity, make them more susceptible to failure, and RAID can't really serve as backup because it is simply not.
The only problem is that I can't find an enclosure for multiple drives with 5.25" bays. I really like this silencing enclosure because it really makes the drive very quiet. I guess I will have to build my own case and connect the drives with the SATA multiplier.

I can put all data on some drives that won't need to be backed up regularly because the data doesn't change. I greatly use the spin down feature because I need some disks spinning only when I watch a movie which is like 2 hours a day. For this purpose it would be ideal to just stay with the green line for everything and keep one RED drive spinning 24/7 for torrents and stuff that gets read or written often.

It is very interesting topic you started about the RED drives being only good for operation without spinning up/down the drives. The question is how much risk of failure there is spinning it down more often. Any detailed information would be welcome.

7200RPM drives seem just useless for anything I can think of in a home environment. One fast SSD seems just enough, or (subjectively) soon will be when the price of 500GB gets cut down to half.

I plan on rebuilding my whole HTPC, workstation, server ecosystem based on just one haswell rig (i need low idle power because this thing must run 24/7). It will be a mITX fanless computer in a streacom case that would do everything running multiple virtual machines with hypervisor (I hope its not just my wishful thinking that I can virtualize everything - I will probably have to add another graphics card outputting to my TV for example and of course gaming is not possible with this right now).

I've got eight of the WD Red 3TB drives in my server. Sitting next to them (ear -> drives is about 4ft), I can barely hear them spinning, but it's so faint that any other noises drown them out - even my own breathing. I've never heard seek noises from those drives , even when I know that there's heavy disk activity (my 1TB Greens are a different matter).

I had a pair of WD6400AAKS drives in my desktop for quite a while as my scratch drives when ripping/encoding videos. They were definitely louder than the WD Scorpio Black drives that I've got now, but not offensive at any point.

If you're really serious about silencing your storage, your best bet seems like some sort of NAS solution in another room. I haven't dealt with it myself, but I believe that FreeNAS will allow the storage drives to spin down when not in use. If that's not an option, the WD Red drives are definitely the quietest options at the moment.

Can my WD RED 2TB be faulty or something? I am using it as secondary drive and usually it's just idling.
It's by FAR the loudest component I have in my setup.
During the nights, then everything around is quite, it's fairly noisy sitting 1m away from it.
I have even made this

Here is some measurments (not perfect of course as it's android app) ~1m away. Was taking pics during the day so there was some little noises from around
System idling with WD RED
System idling with SSD

I bought the 3TB RED drive and got it today. Big disappointment. It sounds pretty noisy especially when there is activity. I cannot really test it because it is faulty. When I turn it on it is giving strange noises and it looks like it repeatedly tries to access some block, it gives this periodic sound. Smartmontools selftest reports error. I am shipping this drive back as soon as possible and probably getting a proven GREEN version together with the quietest WD 500GB 2.5" 1-platter drive which will be enough to store mainly music+downloads and other data that should not create noise when accessed.
This is the first time i bought a bad drive and it has to be from the manufacturer i never had issues before.

For what it's worth, I have two 3TB Reds (30EFRX) and I can't hear them at normal working distance (and I tend to be picky when it comes to noise from computers). Even putting my ear next to the case it's hard to say if there's any drive noise over the hum of airflow, and a faint clicking that one of the fans seems to have developed (wonder if I should have that fan replaced)

I haven't put them through heavy use yet, though, and I mount all drives suspended - with rubber cords running UP from horizontally mounted drives, and another set of cords down for stabilization - works much better in my experience than cords running sideways in the direction of the drive's platters, which tends more easily to carry vibration along the cord and to the mounting structures. When installing and running with the case open, the Reds seemed to have so little vibration though that I considered if I could do away with the suspension and mount them directly with rubber grommets.

They are definitely much better than my old 2TB Green (20EADS) which runs silently but does have audible seek noises. But that drive has been through some 22000 hours of use and is failing with a load cycle count in the 170k range, so it's perhaps not a very useful data point.

Regarding the 2003FYYS mentioned earlier in the thread - a.k.a. RE4 - that's a fine drive no question about it, but note that it consumes more than twice the power compared to the Reds, and also has operating noise specified 10 dB higher.

It's of course possible that I was lucky and got drives quieter than average, and it's also possible that some posters got bad drives. It's always worrying if drives exhibit much variation between individual units, and with the Reds being fairly new and early into their production, variation could be more likely than with an older and more mature model. But if I needed more storage today, then out of the models available I would still buy another Red.

Just my two cents, and some other drive could be better for someone else with different needs.

I expect my drives to be really silent. I run them in a fanless atom server/htpc with a picoPSU, the drives are the only components producing noise. Using silencing enclosure the noise gets down but is still noticable even from a distance - and I keep things inside a small rack enclosure.
I believe dustless and fanless design is the future even for workstations, after intel's haswell it will be easy. hard drives will be the only things generating noise.
Gamers will perhaps drive the last generation of noisy computers with nvidia producing hot but powerful graphic cards connected to those expensive UHD displays.