WD Reds worth getting if not using in raid setup?

[Savas]

As my title asks, are they worth it if you're not going to use them in a raid setup within your NAS?

I have a dual-bay NAS and prefer to not use the drives as a raid, because one drive I've used as storing basic backups, docs, program tools etc, while the other drive stores my constant accessed tv series, etc. Makes sense to me to try and avoid unnecessary usage on both at least.

So I was wondering if there's any point to going with the reds, however possibly might go with buying an old buffalo 4bay NAS going cheap on eBay, and they seem to only accept WD reds due to their tech on byte sector sizes.. At least to be compatible if I go that route?

What's your thoughts and while I'm here, if anybody recommends any drives currently going cheap at this current time?

[kalniel]

Hard to talk about worth without talking about budget. If they're the same price as competitors, then it might be worth at least consideration. If they're more, then probably not, but you're the only one who can judge worth.

As for a NAS only accepting a specific model.. I'd never heard of that before - would seem to fly in the face of hardware standards.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So with the 4 bay NAS are the drives going to be arranged for redundancy? If so make sure the drives are from different production batches.

[Biscuit]

IIRC, the "red" signifies reliability with 24/7 use, so RAID isn't necessarily a particularly relevant factor. If it's online 24/7, then perhaps it's a worthwhile consideration.

FWIW, I have a few Samsung drives from long before "NAS" drives were a thing for consumers and they're still going strong, so you can use normal drives in NAS, you just don't get the supposed guarantee based on the planned usage.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You also have to be beware of certain types of HDDs,ie,like those for CCTV,etc. They are designed for 24/7 uptime,but at the expense of letting more errors through.