WD RE4 vs WD SE Drives

[Fuganater]

I can't find any good articles that compare these 2 drives. Up front I will say that I have never looked into RE drives but I stumbled upon them reading on here and check Amazon. They are $23 cheaper than the SE 4TB models. Why is that? As far as I can tell, there are only 3 differences:

SE uses less power. (9.5W vs 10.4W)
RE is rated for 1.2 mil hours (SE rated for 800K)
RE is rated for 550TB/yr (SE rated for 180TB/yr)

Both have same read/write speed
Both "self encrypt"
Same drive speed
Same 5 year warranty

The power consumption of the SE is the only advantage I see over the RE4 but am I missing something? Or does the power consumption really mean that much to effect the price? I have 6 4TB SE drives and I am wondering if I should be buying RE4 drives since they are cheaper and seemingly more reliable.

 

[DrKK]

According to the datasheets, the Re is for "high intensity datacenter applications", and the Se is more "bulk storage" and "entry level servers". But, *BOTH* of these are from the expensive "data center" line of their drives. Do you have a reason for considering their data center drives? Backblaze (which of course is a datacenter, lol) doesn't even use data center drives. They use consumer grade drives, and on several occasions have laid out that they are getting vastly more value per dollar in this fashion.

In the FreeNAS community, we almost universally recommend WD Reds and/or HGST NAS drives, whether that's home or business. Either of these will be much cheaper than the "data center" models. I would encourage you to spend ~$140 on a 4TB WD red, rather than >$200 on these data center drives. In a NAS, "read/write speed" is not very critical, "self-encryption" is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and the "warranty" is kind of moot because you are getting three years with the WD reds, and you're unlikely to mind if a drive dies after three years...with the money you save by going with the WD reds, you'll be able to afford new drives anyway in 3 years, because the price will be down.

So I am curious as to why, if you are focused on price/value, you would be considering the 'data center' models anyway?

 

[Bidule0hm]

I'd even say: "self-encryption" is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and can create more problems.

 

[Fuganater]

According to the datasheets, the Re is for "high intensity datacenter applications", and the Se is more "bulk storage" and "entry level servers". But, *BOTH* of these are from the expensive "data center" line of their drives. Do you have a reason for considering their data center drives? Backblaze (which of course is a datacenter, lol) doesn't even use data center drives. They use consumer grade drives, and on several occasions have laid out that they are getting vastly more value per dollar in this fashion.

In the FreeNAS community, we almost universally recommend WD Reds and/or HGST NAS drives, whether that's home or business. Either of these will be much cheaper than the "data center" models. I would encourage you to spend ~$140 on a 4TB WD red, rather than >$200 on these data center drives. In a NAS, "read/write speed" is not very critical, "self-encryption" is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and the "warranty" is kind of moot because you are getting three years with the WD reds, and you're unlikely to mind if a drive dies after three years...with the money you save by going with the WD reds, you'll be able to afford new drives anyway in 3 years, because the price will be down.

So I am curious as to why, if you are focused on price/value, you would be considering the 'data center' models anyway?

Well the value just seemed better to me at the time. I bought the SE drives for my Windows server since they had a nice warranty and were extremely reliable. If I am going to spend hundreds of dollars on hard drives, I can afford to spend a bit more for better drives. I'm not putting junk into my servers because if I lose our pictures and home videos, I WILL be divorced. My NAS is using WD Reds but again, it is only 1 of my 3 backups. I have an off site copy at my parents house that and an external that I sync up frequently.

If what is being said that the WD Reds are good enough for my use that is fine, I just want to buy the best with it being crazy expensive. I guess I just didn't want to take a chance with WD Reds for my unique data.

Until I started reading/posting here, I never even heard of the HGST drives. I've only run WD drives for the past 10 years or so. in that time, I've had 1 of 10 Green drives fail. I have Greens, Reds, Black, Blue and SE.

I guess I also have to wrap my head around using a NAS box as my "server". I ran WHS for a while, then WHS 2011, then Server 2012 and now I'm just using Windows 7 because I didn't feel like fully learning Server 2012 right now. (I am a 2008 admin) I am building 2 new FreeNAS boxes, 1 for my primary storage and the 2nd to back up the first. (Important data only). Eventually I will set up a remote NAS at my brothers house to be my offsite backup.

Let me know if this makes sense or that I am just crazy.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Let me know if this makes sense or that I am just crazy.

You're not crazy, just more paranoid than me and I'm very paranoid... But as long as you keep proper backups (and you seem to do that and more, no problem) and you manage correctly your servers (setting up scrubs and SMART tests, replacing drives when they fail, not use RAID-Z1, ...) then you'll not lose any data. Even the greens are ok (after using WDIDLE3 to change the park delay), I don't think you'll gain much by using SE or RE drives. You can think like this: with the money saved from buying SE/RE you can buy one more drive and use RAID-Z3 instead of RAID-Z2 for example, far better reliability than any SE/RE can bring... ;)

 

[Fuganater]

You're not crazy, just more paranoid than me and I'm very paranoid... But as long as you keep proper backups (and you seem to do that and more, no problem) and you manage correctly your servers (setting up scrubs and SMART tests, replacing drives when they fail, not use RAID-Z1, ...) then you'll not lose any data. Even the greens are ok (after using WDIDLE3 to change the park delay), I don't think you'll gain much by using SE or RE drives. You can think like this: with the money saved from buying SE/RE you can buy one more drive and use RAID-Z3 instead of RAID-Z2 for example, far better reliability than any SE/RE can bring... ;)

Well you guys here are industry Pros so I greatly value what you say.

I also have an OCD issue with using different drives together. Like the 6x WD SE drives I have, I would feel strange to pair them with WD Red drives. IDK why... I can't explain it, but it bugs the eff out of me.

I used to run RAID-Z1 but with the purchase of 4 more 2TB WD Red drives, I will run RAID-Z2. I may end up selling the SE drives and buying all new Reds since they are $60 cheaper a pop over the SE I have.

 

[DrKK]

Every single pool I've ever built for anyone in my entire life has been RAID-Z1.

The rumors of RAID-Z1's death are a bit premature. Sure, I don't recommend it for 6x6TB, but for three or four 2-3TB drives? Totally fine. Don't believe the hype.

 

[Fuganater]

Every single pool I've ever built for anyone in my entire life has been RAID-Z1.

The rumors of RAID-Z1's death are a bit premature. Sure, I don't recommend it for 6x6TB, but for three or four 2-3TB drives? Totally fine. Don't believe the hype.

Duly-noted. Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

Every single pool I've ever built for anyone in my entire life has been RAID-Z1.

The rumors of RAID-Z1's death are a bit premature. Sure, I don't recommend it for 6x6TB, but for three or four 2-3TB drives? Totally fine. Don't believe the hype.

Sure.. and it'll take just one for you to lose everything for you to realize it wasn't worth the cost of one drive.

By large and far, more than 50% of corrupt zpools I've had to work with were RAIDZ1s.

 

[DrKK]

Sure.. and it'll take just one for you to lose everything for you to realize it wasn't worth the cost of one drive.

By large and far, more than 50% of corrupt zpools I've had to work with were RAIDZ1s.

Well first of all, I can't lose my pool barring a stellar mass black hole passing in the vicinity of Earth. I obey a proper 3-2-1 backup solution.

Second of all, I think it's probably fair to say that the majority of shredded pools that we deal with tend to have incompetence/laziness as a serious contributing factor. I am neither lazy nor incompetent with the management of my pools.

To my knowledge, we do not have very many instances of 3 and 4 drive pools of 2TB and smaller drives, competently and fascistly maintained, running RAID-Z1, that have gone in the shitter. I am the last one to recommend RAID-Z(1) for large capacity drives, or for pools containing 5 or more disks. But I do find it sufficient, mathematically, for a small vdev.

I am not claiming that RAID-Z2 isn't better/safer. Of course it is. But, I do maintain that a reasonably well backed-up pool, containing 3 or 4, trustworthy/newly bought/fully examined moderate-sized drives, that is competently and fascistly maintained by the owner, is a very low risk surface under RAID-Z. For example, I have a 3-drive pool of 2TB's. (That's all I need). In practical terms, my risk surface is negligible. Of course, my drives exist under ideal circumstances: Ideal temperature, SMART data monitored by a human every single day, the owner knows a lot about the software and hardware, etc. Most people are not ideal custodians for file servers :)

And in any case, I have anything I can't afford to lose backed-up as per the 3-2-1 strategy.

But, I hope @Bidule0hm and @cyberjock can find it in their hearts to stay friendly with the heretic DrKK, who preaches that RAID-Z is alive and well under the right conditions, in contradiction to their axiom set.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I'd say you're not wrong but as you're on the risk limit of using RAID-Z1/not using it it's debatable so of course we post many posts on the subject :)

I'd say RAID-Z1 with 3x or 4x 2TB drives is ok if your are very careful in your management but personally I prefer (and so recommend) to do the less risky way.

I'm friendly, no problems :D

 

[cyberjock]

I will cut you @DrKK.

Ok, I won't cut you. I just don't think very many here are going to argue that RAIDZ1 is safe. Most users aren't going to check their system daily, aren't going to be very diligent like you, so the advice you give really isn't appropriate for their situation (imo).

And while many may argue that they plan to check it every day, they will certainly do so for a while. But the vast majority won't live and breath FreeNAS away from work, so they're not too likely to continue to do so for the long haul, despite the fact they may want to. So they get comfortable with not checking it, and then suddenly one day they find out they've got serious problems. ;)

 

[Fuganater]

Thanks for all the input guys.

I will have a total of 17x 2TB WD Reds (once they all get here) for RaidZ2/3. I will probably run my 4TB WD SE drives in RaidZ1 only because I only have 4 or 5.

@DrKK, I wish I could check my system daily but with 3 kids running around, who can. I also need to figure out how to get the emails working while I am in China since they block all Google services, I can't use Gmail. But this is or research another day and another thread.

 

[j_r0dd]

I can't find any good articles that compare these 2 drives. Up front I will say that I have never looked into RE drives but I stumbled upon them reading on here and check Amazon. They are $23 cheaper than the SE 4TB models. Why is that? As far as I can tell, there are only 3 differences:

SE uses less power. (9.5W vs 10.4W)
RE is rated for 1.2 mil hours (SE rated for 800K)
RE is rated for 550TB/yr (SE rated for 180TB/yr)

Both have same read/write speed
Both "self encrypt"
Same drive speed
Same 5 year warranty

The power consumption of the SE is the only advantage I see over the RE4 but am I missing something? Or does the power consumption really mean that much to effect the price? I have 6 4TB SE drives and I am wondering if I should be buying RE4 drives since they are cheaper and seemingly more reliable.

I bought the SE's because they were cheaper at the time or I would have bought the RE's. One good reason to pay that few extra dollars to me is the 5 year warranty. To me that is worth every extra penny. Not to mention the red spec sheet states the reds are recommended for 1-5 bay NAS'.