[kwlug-disc] Wanted: help in refining presentation

[Behan Webster]

On 12-07-24 01:49 PM, L.D. Paniak wrote:
> "Green" drives in storage arrays tend to cause problems because they are
> always spinning down.  The Western Digital Black series is a much better
> choice.
Depends on the goals of the device you're using it with. A home NAS 
system like a D-link DNS-343 (quad drive RAID5 NAS) is designed to work 
with Green drives. (Runs linux, and supports running stock armel debian).

The whole point of that device is to provide lots of online storage 
without burning through a lot of power (they sacrifice performance for 
power usage). Green drives are ideal for this situation. Green drives 
are really not meant to be used in any kind of server room configuration 
(like in an enterprise storage array).

I have 2 DNS-343 with 2TB Green drives in them: one NAS for media, one 
for system backups. They spin down after a few minutes if you aren't 
using them, but otherwise they work fine for streaming media, and doing 
backups. And when they're in low power mode, they don't use much power 
at all (arm9 processor).

Western Digital used to have only 2 drives in their consumer line: green 
and black. Green was low power, black was high performance.

It appears they have now split it into 4 drives in their consumer line: 
Black is their performance drive. Blue is their "everyday" drive. Green 
is their low power drive. Red is their new NAS drive (low power, 
optimized for NAS work loads).

In desktops and laptops, I've always gone with a WD black drive, and 
never been disappointed.

Behan

-- 
Behan Webster
behanw at websterwood.com