I am currently running RAID 1 for my OS and RAID 5 for my data. About twice a year my built in RAID controller tells me that one of my drives are degraded. After running a hard drive test I find out that the drives are fine. I rebuild the RAID and everything is fine for about another year or so. I am using standard WD hard drives. Western Digital is now making hard drives specifically for NAS and data centers. They have built in RAID error detection. Would switching standard hard drives over to hard drives that are meant for RAID in a NAS or enterprise data center make a difference? Does anyone have an REAL LIFE experience with these?
I have 2 4TB WDRed drives in my NAS now and they have been running 24/7 for about a year with no issues. They are a little louder than the Blue/Black drives but since the NAS is on a shelf across the room I never hear them. I usually run a test on them once a month and they always come back working perfectly. I don't know if they are actually better in the long term but I have a lot of important stuff on them so I didn't want to take the chance. WD drives have always been very reliable for me too.
two 2TB RE's here in my NAS. staying in the WD cosmos, anything from blacks over reds to RE's will be fine for NAS. just don't put in greens or blues they are not really built for that many spin ups over time. value is at about halved compared to reds, blacks, re's
