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I need to replace a failing hard drive in a server which uses software RAID1, and am looking to understand the differences between drive "colors" for possible drives. I'm intending on purchasing a 6 or 8TB disk, and have a preference for WD over Seagate (unless someone can provide convincing evidence new Seagate drives are more reliable - I've had bad experiences with them)

My server is 1u, with 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs - the HDD's are used mainly (but not exclusively) for backup storage.

Can anyone advise what the differences are between RED Pro, Black and Gold drives, and what would make them more-or-less suitable.

  • Why are BLACK drives not targetted at servers?
  • If I'm not doing heavy writes is there any advantage (in terms of reliability, performance) in getting a Gold drive?
  • How do RED drives perform relative to black and gold drives?

I'm aware that -

  • All drives have a 5 year warranty, 7200 RPM and 128 Meg cache.
  • Black drives use more power then red drives, have dual core processors.
  • Red Drives claim "multi-axis shock protection".
  • WD Gold use "RAFF" to corect vibration, and are targetted at servers
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  • @Ramhound - WD begs to differ - from wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-black-desktop.html "The WD Black drive featurs a dual-core processor that offers twice the processing capacity as a standard single-core processor to maximize drive performance". Also, I think WE does not make a secret of the information I'm asking, but they don't make it particularly clear either.
    – davidgo
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 23:07
  • For the fun of it I removed the controller circuit from an old WD blue drive, and it has a Marvel 88i9045 chip which I believe will be a processor.
    – davidgo
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 23:15
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    MTBF on the gold is 2,500,000 hours vs 100,000 on Red Pro and undocumented with the black.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 23:19
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    Hard drives have had processors for a while now. You're not going to implement the fancy parts of SATA with just glue logic.
    – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 23:21
  • Well it calls itself a controller. suppose processor had a broader definition then I place on it.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 30, 2017 at 23:22

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