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Western Digital Red Review: Are NAS-optimized HDDs Worth the Premium?by Ganesh T S on 8/17/2012 4:20 PM EST
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- Western Digital
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haukionkannel - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI supose that RED allso did run in cooler temperatures than the reference drives? It should have meaning when using NAS 14/7...
Could you measure the temperature of drives and temperature of the air inside the NAS box. It would be interesting to read. Reply
ganeshts - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkThe temperatures inside the NAS should be roughly proportional to the power consumed at the wall. I have the power tables in the review. WD consumes approx. 15W when the Seagate equipped units consume 21W -- so the temperatures should have a corresponding decrease. Obviously, it is possible that the fans inside the NAS would be working at higher speeds to cool down the interior ; Say, with the Seagates, the fan operates at 3000 rpm, they might need to operate at only 2000 rpm with the WDs to keep the interior at the same temperature. I believe these external factors may result in skewed results and not properly reflect the fact that the Red runs cooler.
By the way, you might be interested in what WD claims as a cooler running drive in the marketing slide reproduced on this page : http://www.servethehome.com/western-digital-releas... Reply
amikey - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkFWIW, 2 3TB RED running in DS212J for the last couple weeks - 36/40C / 97/104F
Is that hot ? In truth, where they are could be better ventilated - shared space with a PS3.
http://imgur.com/EJepQ Reply
ganeshts - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkIf they hold stable at that temperature, you should not be worried. The usual 'cutoff' temperature is around 55C for most hard drives. If your HDD reports more than 50C itself, I would suggest taking steps to ventilate your setup better. Reply
Samus - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkI agree, anything under 45c is really good, anything over 50c I get worried. Reply
Zds - Monday, August 27, 2012 - linkRemember that per Google data, 37..46C is the optimal range; going either below or above lowers reliability: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_conte...
This means your drive is cooler a bit too well, if anything. Reply
Konraden - Saturday, July 13, 2013 - linkThat's not really accurate. Google mentions that temperature deltas "as low as 15C" affected drive reliablility.
They apparently were more concerned with the change in temperature of the drives than the average operating temperature. If your drive is being shocked, booting in arctic and being set next to an open flame, you're going to have a lot more issues than if it ran all day at 45C.
[Per cited research]"One of our key findings has been the lack of a con-
sistent pattern of higher failure rates for higher temper-
ature drives or for those drives at higher utilization lev-
els. Such correlations have been repeatedly highlighted
by previous studies, but we are unable to confirm them
by observing our population. Although our data do not
allow us to conclude that there is no such correlation,
it provides strong evidence to suggest that other effects
may be more prominent in affecting disk drive reliabil-
ity in the context of a professionally managed data center
Google's team goes on to say that drives showing SMART errors are very significantly more likely to fail, but most of their failed drives _did not_ show SMART errors prior to failing. Reply
sparks.nl - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI just bought 4x3TB WD Red drives. It's just too bad that the 24/7 number (from the WD site) doesn't exit. Ican't even call the number to report a defective drive (living in the Netherlands).
I would have thought that a big company had better support. What a bummer. Reply
Mixers - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkHad a look myself since I too live in the netherlands.
Found this and hope it helps.
Netherlands, The
9 am - 8 pm CET
9 am - 6 pm CET
This is the network support number however they will provide RED support.
I already had a go at them for not having a dutch number... They did say they were looking into it. Reply
cknobman - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkMy current server has been running 2 X 2TB WD Green drives since 2009 24x7 without a problem.
When one (or both) of those drives takes a dump I will definitely look at the Red line. Reply
bill.rookard - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI have to say, I've been running a 5 disk Raid5 using the WD Green 2TB's, and I had one die after 30 days (RMA'd and replaced no charge), but since then, been running it 24/7 since about 2009 as well. It's not an appliance NAS - it's a full size tower, AMD Phenom/Gigabyte board/5x2Tb WD drives running FreeNAS - and it's been (with the exception of the one failure) solid.
When it does come around to start looking into replacements, the Red series will be worth looking at as well as I expect NAS systems to become more and more prevalent. Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkThe GREEN drives are performing well for only one reason - they are not being subjected to extreme temp cycling. Constant temps increase hard drive life quite dramatically. That same drive would quickly die in a laptop that is not routinely monitored for operating temps, with cooling filters cleaned on a regular basis. Turning the laptop on and off regularly will kill a GREEN hard drive quickly.
It is all about extremes of temp cycling. I would not risk keeping the GREEN drives, when you could upgrade to RED at a convenient point in time, rather than be subjected to recovering from an actual hard drive failure. It is quicker, simpler, and less painful to do it now before they fail. Running 3 years on GREEN is one very risky business. Reply
Gr8Ape - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linki can not +1 this enough. Reply
dj christian - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - linkWhich i have done. Had no problems with the Green discs since i bought them and they've been running for 6 and 8-thousand hours respectively. Reply
pieterjan - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - linkAggressive head parking (5 seconds) probably adds to the quick failure. The wdidle3 tool lets you disable it, however. In fact, except for the anti vibration feature and 24/7 support (that doesn't exist outside the US), I see little difference between the red and green drives... Reply
Phynaz - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkPretty horrible article, charts are unreadable.
Actual writing is difficult to read, please be more concise.
Oh and crap like "IT departments have been tempted to use consumer drives". Absolute bullshit. If the author has done this he should be fired from his job. Reply
mwildtech - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkCut him a break man. If you don't like the article, then don't read it. Not bullshit on IT departments not tempted to use consumer drives. A ton on schools and S&L Gov IT Departments use consumer drives in their NAS devices. I know, because they buy them from me. Reply
Gigantopithecus - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkYet another useless comment from Phynass. The graphs are perfectly legible, the writing is fine, and if you've never seen an IT department use consumer drives, you've never worked with small businesses. Get a life you fucking nitwit. Reply
Azethoth - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkRAID: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.
Gosh, am I doing something wrong using cheap drives in a RAID? Am I going to get fired?
Do you scream when you type, because I don't want cheetos sprayed all over me. Does your Mom mind when you throw tantrums in the basement?
PS: you need to just turn on caps lock and leave it on. Reply
yyrkoon - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkLOL cheetos . . .
And yeah, I guess it was an accident that SAS controllers can interface with SATA drives . . . Reply
Sivar - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link"Pretty horrible article, charts are unreadable."
I find them easy to read, but if you are having trouble you can click on each to scale it up in size. Ganesh even saved them as PNG, and kept the colors simple (as is best to do with PNG/GIF), so the fine sizes are very small and the charts look as intended (no JPEG artifacts).
"Actual writing is difficult to read, please be more concise."
I found the writing to be of generally high quality. Perhaps you should offer some examples of overly verbose writing. I'm not claiming there aren't any examples, just that providing some will help make your criticisms more constructive. :)
"Oh and crap like "IT departments have been tempted to use consumer drives". Absolute bullshit. If the author has done this he should be fired from his job."
No, it is not.
Your experience may be limited to well-funded, large IT organizations. I have worked in both poorly funded (school / non-profit, etc.) and "by the book" well-funded companies, like the one I am in now.
I have personally used non-enterprise drives in 24/7 RAID arrays. I researched them first, of course. Some even support, or supported, TLER through special utilities. My own home server has eight Samsung F4s that have worked perfectly for almost 3 years (not that a single data point is very useful).
When you have a smaller budget than list of requirements, you make due, and document the reasons for the decisions made. It's part of real-world IT -- not everyone can afford a NetApp storage rack! Reply
Wwhat - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkTo be fair, if you compare the scaled and full sizes of the pictures and see how they don't employ the full available width (compared to the text) when scaled it does seem a bit poorly done, it would have been better to make the pictures slightly wider and slightly less tall and then have them unscaled I think, you'd have simplified things and have them sharp and clear and still not use more bandwidth or require more speed from the reader's internet. Reply
yyrkoon - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkWell Sivar, it is not even that simple. Which you probably know better than I.
Department heads for I.T. usually get a budget for different projects. As well as different criteria for every project. So if you need blazing fast access for a very large database for mission critical information. Then of course you're only going to use the best enterprise classed hardware, perhaps in a RAID10 configuration. But redundancy does not nor ever should stop here. There may be several single drive / array redundant copies after that. With probably tape backup as well. With at least one offsite copy to top it off.
Technically though. This drive is not dissimilar to the Consumer classed enterprise version that Seagate has been selling for years. So should be a cut above the rest. With better firmware, hardware, and Q&A testing ( hopefully ). So in effect. An entry level to enterprise drive. But whatever. Reply
cashkennedy - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkYes Phynaz's comments about the article are pretty dumb, but..
I dont think this article is very useful / and isnt fitting for anandtech because all he compares wd red drives to unspecified seagate drives that came bundled with a NAS.
Seagate has many different models, the ones that just came out are significantly faster then the models that had been sold for last 1.5 years due to a dramatic increase in aerial density.
Why arent these drives compaired to wd blue, wd green, and various lines of seagate drives... Reply
ganeshts - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkThe Seagate drives aren't 'unspecified' ones, but the one which came bundled with the unit we reviewed here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5838/lacies-2big-nas...
The exact model number is ST3000DM001, and Anand reviewed that drive in a standalone setting here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5042/seagates-new-ba...
That drive was released in Q4 2011. So, it is pretty recent (I guess no new internal 3.5" 3TB drives have been released by Seagate since then). Reply
ganeshts - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkForgot to mention, we can only do comparisons with drives already at our disposal. I unfortunately don't have access to 3TB Blues and Greens / other 3TB Seagate drives at my location, and if you actually look at the comments in Anand's review of the ST3000DM001, most people were actually planning to use that for a NAS. Reply
cashkennedy - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkThat actually is the "new" drive i was refering too. If its been out since november it must have been in very limited numbers till recently. It performs really very well as a single drive, but perhaps is not well designed for NAS use.
Thanks for the reply, I would still like to see a compairison to some other WD series's but i know that even anandtech is limited in what it can get its hands on, but perhaps you can use my comments to demand wd send some more drive your way. Reply
yyrkoon - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkSo what you're saying is that desktop classed systems in the IT department should use enterprise classed drives ?
" Stands for "Information Technology," and is pronounced "I.T." It refers to anything related to computing technology, such as networking, hardware, software, the Internet, or the people that work with these technologies. Many companies now have IT departments for managing the computers, networks, and other technical areas of their businesses. IT jobs include computer programming, network administration, computer engineering, Web development, technical support, and many other related occupations. Since we live in the "information age," information technology has become a part of our everyday lives. That means the term "IT," already highly overused, is here to stay."
Now if you mean data centers . . . they use all kinds of hardware.
Personally, I think it is crap. That you speak out of your backside as if you know what you're talking about. If the OP is currently working in "I.T.", *he* should be fired, and given a job at 7-11. Reply
fic2 - Friday, August 17, 2012 - link"Actual writing is difficult to read..."
Well, once you graduate 6th grade this year you will be able to understand the article a little better. Until then have your mom read and explain it to you. Reply
MrSpadge - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkSimple: use the right tool for the job. Reply
kmmatney - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - linkI work for a small company and we use consumer-class hardware fairly often for non-essential tasks. You have to, when working on a project with a limited budget. Reply
hsew - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI remember reading somewhere that Intellipower was unsuitable for RAID due to the fact that it is not a set spindle speed, rather a sweet spot speed determined in manufacturing. If it is in fact true that Intellipower is unsuitable for RAID, that would make these far less appealing as NAS drives. If I wanted to have a NAS I would want at least two drives in RAID 1. Why is WD shying away from 5400 RPM? It HAS a place, low power data storage! Reply
jwilliams4200 - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkWhy don't you read the article before you comment? Reply
hsew - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkBecause Ctrl+f didn't lead to any specific discussion on aforementioned issue... Reply
ganeshts - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkWell, that is marketing for you :) 'People don't like lower numbers, so let us just give it a name' must have been what the WD Marketing team must have thought.
FWIW, all concrete proofs of the spindle speed that I have seen online point to 5400 rpm for IntelliPower drives. Reply
Wwhat - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - linkI think you are wrong actually, WD has drives that they use the number 5400 for, it's no real issue these days because with high density 5400 is fast enough.
And I think they actually have changeable speed drives that probably max at 5400 but also ones that max at 7200 because they have a 'green' type and non-green types with the variable speed technology, so I'm prretty sure it's not some euphemism. And I also think people are more positive to numbers when it comes to HD's rather than the unspecified 'variable', it's more a risky move for WD I would say. Reply
EnzoFX - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkIs it me or was there no prices listed? or maybe a comparison for someone debating between reds and greens =P. Reply
ganeshts - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkPrices are all over the park. IIRC, the 3TB version launched at $189 [ http://www.anandtech.com/show/6083/wd-introduces-r... ], but it is at $240 on Newegg right now.. I guess I left it to the reader to do the price comparison at the time of purchase :) But, thanks for mentioning.. it really was an oversight :) Reply
adrianblack - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI must point out the WD AV-GP line which has been out for a while were designed for 24/7 continuous and high-temp operation. I have two of these drives in my server now..... (The older 1.5TB drive has been in there for 2.5 years)
WD says:
"24x7 reliability: These drives are designed to last in high temperature always-on streaming digital audio/video environments such as PVR/DVR, IPTV, and video surveillance systems."
The downside of the AV-GP line was they didn't have the idle-parking disabled, so you did have to use WDIDLE first to fix that problem. (I accumulated 245k cycles on my older 1.5TB drive before I disabled auto-park.) They have 1 million hour MTBF, some kind of optimization for better video streaming and PWL which they call preemptive wear leveling.
So pretty similar to the RED which add the vibration mitigation and a default disable on the IDLE-Park. (WD states 1 million hour MTBF on the RED drives, by the way.) Reply
Wwhat - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI think that you can't always compare drives made one year from ones made another year (or more) later, even when the manufacturer names them the same or claims the same capabilities. And I don't mean that they always get better. Reply
pdf - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkDisappointed that there's no mention of the fact that the rest of the WD range used to allow configuring TLER and APM, before WD purposefully gimped the firmware and disabled those options in what I can only assume was a move to force people to purchase their more expensive drives if wishing to use them with hardware RAID controllers. Reply
brshoemak - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkI know what you mean, I had some WD RE drives that I paid a huge premium for, but later I purchased a Caviar Black that I could configure TLER and the like. Good times.
While I understand where you're coming when you say their tactics are shady, keep in mind in many cases there are differences besides just firmware that affect a drive. Although most drives in certain series were reliable to a degree (Samsung F4/WD Caviar Black/etc.) I wouldn't put them in an SMB environment due to hardware differences. That being said, when I need to setup another large RAID6 array, it's very likely I'll go with the drives. Reply
dealcorn - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkSAS/SATA controllers typically support 8 drives in SATA mode. Is there a design feature why these drives should be limited to 5 bay devices? I appreciate that there may be a marketing benefit. Reply
Watwatwat - Friday, August 17, 2012 - linkI know on green drives its somewhere around 8 seconds, because i've disabled it before using wdidle utility, how green is it if a drive fails early because of head parking vs the extra energy use..... I somehow doubt its really green once you add it up.. Reply
OCedHrt - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkOr Black, etc? Comparing it to the Seagate and all is nice, but doesn't really tell us if it's a better suited NAS drive versus WD's other offerings? Reply
email@example.com - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkAll these life cycle metrics I have found over the last 10 years are largely irrelevant. A single hard drive cannot even handle normal duty in a laptop that is used 12 hours a day everyday. The only aspect that is important and should be prominently displayed on your screen at all times is hard drive temperature. That is the only way to gain control of what is going to happen on your system. The other element and one you have no control over is temp cycling. It is cycling temperatures from 15C to 50C on a regular basis that will kill a hard drive, and there is no way around that simple fact which demands high quality drives be used whenever possible. All manufactures drives behave largely the same way, and are largely unfit for duty in an environment where temp cycling is the norm.
Servers running 24/7 at constant temp will last much longer, even with GREEN drives, but temp cycling will quickly kill it even when using BLUE drives. A GREEN drive in my laptop cannot last due to temp cycling. Laptop cooling design across the board largely sucks, and hard drives cannot consistently handle temps reaching 50C, if daily usage involves temp cycling. Laptops are turned off often which stresses the hard drive.
A Dell 1501 laptop with GREEN drive failed after 8 months, and the next one failed after 12 months. BLUE was not much better failing after 13 months and 18 months. Now I have BLACK and it has lasted 18 months so far but I will not hold my breath. Most times one is lucky and disk failure permits data to be recovered after it has cooled down,.but occasionally data recovery is not possible happened only once but painful). Backing up data every week is a pain as a lot of important data may accumulated in a week. Backing up daily takes too long and uses up too much space. Backups come at an extremely high penalty in terms of time and disk space. What we need is better hard drives.
Hard drive classifications are really fiction. GREEN (occasional use) means guarantied to fail in under 1y in a laptop used everyday all day, but at constant temp will last longer. BLUE means not much better than GREEN and likely will not last a year when subjected to temp cycling in a laptop. BLACK means better than blue drives but watch your temps closely, and clean out your laptop cooling filters twice a year, and try to keep temp under 45C. I doubt that RED is much better tan BLACK, even as a single hard drive in a laptop that will be subjected to temp cycling on a regular basis.
Scrap GREEN and BLUE drives as they are not fit for laptop duty where temp cycling will kill them quickly. BLACK and RED is all you need offer. All hard drive categorizations need to be able to handle extreme temp cycling before being offered to the public. Get out of the business if you cannot make such hard drives.
Hard drive metrics and marketing brooh hah hah is largely an attempt to distract us from the real issue of TEMP CYCLING. Hard drives are badly deigned devices no matter how you cut it, if they cannot be expected to last 5 to 7 years when subjected to extreme temp cycling. Laptop manufacturers too get a clue and make laptops that can be properly cooled.
Let us send a message to Western Digital, and refuse to buy anything other than BLACK and RED drives, especially when temp cycling is going to be the norm. The only systems that could possibly handle the crappier drives are servers which will be running at near constant temps 24/7. All laptops should have nothing in them except RED drives, but don't be fooled, even these RED drives are not particular good unless they can be made to last 5 to 7 years in a laptop.which I seriously doubt as evidenced by WD 3 year warranty
We need one more chart showing how a hard drive performs when subjected to heavy loads, with one temp cycle per hour from 15C to 50C. When Western Digital provides a PINK drive with 7 year warranty, designed for extreme temp cycling, then I will be impressed and not before.
Enterprise hard drives in a laptop will surprise you. They do not last as long as you think they might, when subjected to extreme temp cycles. There is no such thing as a laptop that does not provide an extreme temp cycling environment for a hard drive, which will greatly stress that hard drive and greatly shorten its life.
I agree with this article - buy RED - but I would qualify that statement with never buy GREEN or BLUE ever for any purpose. These latter drives have been expressly designed to skirt the fringes of mechanical failure as close as possible - they are designed to last on average no longer than they need too, which translates to - guaranteed to fail rather often. Yes the premium of the RED drive is worth it, but that premium exists only because the GREEN and BLUE crappy drives exist at all. There would be NO premium if the RED drives were the lowest quality drive offered.
kyuu - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkYeah! Let's only buy the manufacturer's most expensive products! That'll show 'em!
Anyway, any data showing these supposed super-high failure rates among the green/blue lines, or just ranting and anecdotes? Besides, in laptops, most people are getting whatever the OEM stuck in it. And there's no magical solution to notebook cooling, especially with the drive towards thinner and lighter. You just have to be prepared for the inevitable failure of an HDD. It's a sealed mechanical device -- it will fail. Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkThe original hard drive in the laptop can be replaced from the start and then every so often replace it before it fails (possibly if you are lucky).
There is data out there, but what I am talking about is my own experimentation and testing and experience. GREEN AND BLUE suck like you cannot believe. It is all quite logical really - 24/7 certification means the ability to provide reliability despite heavier work loads and temp cycling. All I did was to understand what lack of this certification means, and test under those conditions. It means marginal reliability by definition, but also this marginal reliability feature element is overtly engineered into the drive by designing for lower cost using purposefully minimalist mechanical constructions. They build for less and then charge less. The problem is they have gone too far, and are deluding themselves that it is an acceptable approach to achieve the bottom line, but in reality their definition of less is too low a level of quality causing a high turn over in failures. We fall for the lie, and believe we can live with less.
It is not about sticking it to them by buying their more expensive product, but rather about buying what you need instead of letting their marketing making you believe what you think you need. Savvy. Caveat Emptor - you take control of what you need to have, and stop them sticking it to you. Yes, and what you need definitely costs more. Then again one could just become a victim of failing trash, where one spends days recovering from a crash.
24/7 certification means the ability to provide reliability despite heavier work loads and temp cycling. Is there any reason for settling for less - I don't think so. Even a laptop needs his level of reliability as user data really is that important. Reply
Watwatwat - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkwhats for certain is that even their greens need cooling, i've had green external drives, and running seatools tests on them they get toasty, i popped the plastic usb case off after running the test and guess what, the drive was almost too hot to touch. thats a green drive!
sold with 1 year warranty by western digital, in a usb case with no ventilation, again, its not so green if its made to die early.
they couldn't even be bothered to include a few holes n the plastic case for even a little air flow.. Reply
Peroxyde - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkSorry for the silly questions, but can you please explain if there would be any harmful effects if the WD Red is used in the following scerarios? If not suitable, what would you advise to use instead? The goal is good reliability, storage capacity, performance is desirable but not the highest criteria.
1. As standalone Hard drive (the only HD in the computer)
2. In external USB enclosure, USB 3.0
3. As second HD, just for storage
Thanks in advance for any advice Reply
email@example.com - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkGood reliability and low power consumption is my first criteria, but the latter cannot be used to sacrifice the former. Both criteria lead to longer life cycles. The lower power GREEN and BLUE drives are designed with an eye towards rather low cycle life, and therefore low power as a criteria for these drives makes no sense whatsoever. It seems the only way to get reliability is to stay away from cheap low end consumer hard drives which is most of the drives out there.
To me I do not differentiate between standalone, external storage, second hard drive, desktop or laptop, as these all demand good reliability and low power consumption for the best possible price. Performance is the next important criteria, but it is a fallacy to expect good performance from a 5400 rpm low power drive, and I no reason why the minimum spindle speed should not be 7200 rpm. Lower spindle speeds appear largely in the realm of low end consumer drives where reliability is very poor. Hard drive crashes plague the computer world because the majority of products are bad in the extreme, long lasting cheap consumer drives in some configurations notwithstanding. Just because someone says that they obtained a 3 year life span with cheap consumer drives, does not make them good drives generally, because that long life example is not typical for the majority of real world usage conditions. I now have a lower boundary criteria - "if it does not last in a laptop then it is not good for any purpose bar none".
So all this translates to never buy anything less than 7200 rpm to ensure a good shot at performance, and search for good drive designs with the lowest power consumption to have a good shot at longer life spans in any situation. Picking a low power drive simply to achieve low power drain, is more often than not the same thing as purposely selecting a LOW quality drive in terms of performance and cycle life, and such a definite requirement is very rare indeed. Why bother - extremes of low power means low performance, and often also very short cycle life.
There is very rarely a situation which does not demand extremes of temp cycling of the hard drives, which is what will lead to shorter life spans and hence poor reliability. I have come to the conclusion the classifications of standalone, external storage, 2nd drive, laptop, etc are not particularly useful if reliability and performance are important - and since when are these never important. These classifications have become justifications by the manufacturers for designing - "only as good as needed" devices. It is an excuse for designing crap product
Western Digital BLACK or RED is a minimal consumer drive quality level to be used in any application, and anything less reliable should never be graced with your dollars. Less reliable drives lasting for years in some particular situations is largely a myth - it happens only if certain criteria are meet, namely, low loads and small temp cycling, which rarely occurs in the real world of consumer computing. When looking at Western Digital drives, always stay away from GREEN and BLUE drives, simply because components are designed to last only under certain special conditions, and I believe these special operating conditions in practical terms are just a myth. In essence these manufacturers (marketing honchos) give credence to conditions of "LOW THERMAL CYCLING", which they then decree is a significant portion of the market place, when in reality it really does not exist, and only gives them an excuse to design "only as good as needed" devices. The existence of the low quality drives permits them to charge more than they normally could for the better drives. Don't believe the hype, the more expensive drives are required for good reliability and performance. apparently good news about GREEN and BLUE drives notwithstanding.
Don't ever buy too cheap, if you want to avoid repeated disk crashes, and there is nothing wrong with periodically replacing working drives with new ones periodically to avoid the inevitable disk crashes. Even good drives eventually fail. If the manufacturer specifies a 3y warranty, then replace the drives every 2 years.
You asked for advise on selecting drives, but what I am giving you really reads as a recipe for spending more money. You will not regret it.
What does "Drives certified for 24/7 really mean?" It means better able to handle temperature cycling arising from inadequate cooling or heavier loads, while still permitting reasonable cycle life. Reliability comes from 24/7 certification, with drives designed to handle extremes in both peak temperature and temp cycle, and drives not so certified belong to the mythical world of operating conditions where thermal cycling is less important. I have to realize all situations require 24/7 certification and to believe otherwise is a risky business.
So buy BLACK drives for all your applications as a minimum and occasionally you will need RED for better reliability. Personally I reckon RED only for me after prices have settled in the months ahead. I wonder if they make 2.5" RED drives. Reply
Peroxyde - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkThank you very much for the thorough explanation. With too much emphasis on NAS usage with the Red, I am still wondering if technically they can still function as a single drive outside of a NAS. Should people who don't have NAS device avoid buying the RED drives?
Let's try a real example:
USB 3.0 External Drive: I hesitate between Caviar Black 1 TB, 5 years warranty, $100 et WD Red 2 TB, 3 years warranty $140. I am torn between the 5 years warranty of the black and the 2TB of the red. Reliability is the most important. This external drive will travel often and will be frequently powered on/off. What would you choose? Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkBLACK is cheaper but quality is a lot better than GREEN and BLUE, and BLACK may well be a good choice reliability wise.
If RED is good for multi-drive RAID.operation, then it is definitely very good in terms of reliability in single drive applications. The 5 year warranty on BLACK seems a better deal right now. RED is new and needs time to unravel its true nature. BLACK has 300,000 load/unload cycles while RED is rated at 1,000,000, but the BLACK drive draws a lot less power. I would go with BLACK's 5y warranty instead of RED's 3y warranty
Make sure you have enough cooling and you know the drive's temperature during heavy loads.
Peroxyde - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkCool thx. BTW, In the example above Black is not cheaper. It costs $100/TB while the Red is $140 for 2TB. I'll follow your advice, will buy the 1TB Black for now. Reply
email@example.com - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - linkI have just read the SPCR review of RED drives, and these may well be a better choice all round over the BLACK drives, especially given the energy efficiency numbers, and the fact that 7200 rpm drives are not able to consistently outperform these 5400 rpm RED drives.
Note that the 1T RED drive performance is quite a lot less than the 3TB drive, but is more energy efficient. The 3TB performance is good.
That RED 3y warranty is likely based on a NAS configuration (a harsher environment), which means a standalone drive is likely approaching a 5y warranty equivalent. I am beginning to change my mind on that BLACK drive purchase even with that 5y warranty.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/WD_Red Reply
Watwatwat - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkOf course they function like any other drive outside of nas.
worrying too much about reliability misses the point, you should buy two because one will fail with your data, its just a given, you need backup. don't buy yourself a false sense of security. Reply
email@example.com - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkI agree. Use that 2nd hard drive to replace the 1st drive BEFORE the warranty runs out, regardless of whether the 1st drive still seems OK.
When you buy higher reliability drives this is not false security, just good business. False security is when one fails to also use backups.
Using backups, and hope that cheap GREEN and BLUE drives will be mitigated is a false hope. Recover from a failure is invariably always a very expensive proposition.
Isn't buying two the point about satisfying that worry? Backups are always a pain, cost money and time, and are painful when you have to resort to using them. Changing drives early invariably affords less pain. Reply
SunLord - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkWD Red is un-gimped Raid friendly version of Green drive just like the RE drives are un-gimped raid friendly versions of Black drives. The only real differences between Red and Green is the firmwares they ship with having different settings the internals are all identical just like it is with Black and RE drives. I will admit the I've not taken apart a red drive but I have taken apart a Black and RE 1TB drives made with in 3 weeks of each other and they were 100% identical save for the stickers any Reply
email@example.com - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkAnd yet experience under load yields a different result, despite the fact that they look the same inside. There is something else afoot here besides firmware. Reply
Dzban - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link1. Any good recent 7200 RPM drive
3.same but you could use "green" type drive if you would store
not frequentlyu used files like media Reply
email@example.com - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - linkThe term "not frequently used drive" reveals nothing about usage. A single usage event could last for 30 minutes. Doing this once a day qualifies as not frequently used. However during that single event power dissipation could cause temperature to rise very high, and this extreme thermal cycling dramatically reduces hard drive life cycle. The low power drive causes peak temperature to be high due to inadequate cooling due to the drive's physical construction in part. So what does "low power and not so frequently used drive" really mean. Typically it means low quality, low reliability and dubious low power capability.
Just focus on good quality drives from the start in all situations and spend the money to make life more simple. GREEN OR BLUE drives are just not worthwhile for any application. Open one up and take a look. BLACK is better so use it everywhere. RED appears to be better yet, so maybe we should use that one in every situation instead.
ECO drives are not worthwhile. Reply
probedb - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkOdd, I had a Blue running as the OS drive in a server for 2-3 years without failure before I replaced with with an SSD.
Open one up? What would that tell us exactly? Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkYip it happens - depends on temps and temp cycling. Proves nothing, except that you likely did not drive them particular hard. One guy got 3y with a GREEN in a server.
I ran two Blues in a laptop and these only lasted approximately a year each. All depends on what these drives are being subject to on the one hand, and how well they can take on the other hand.
I monitor drive temps all the time - like watching the fuel gauge on my car - and I know at all times how hard they are being driven. I make sure they always have the best possible environment to operate in because they will be driven hard. I have far less trouble with BLACK drives. Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Monday, September 03, 2012 - linkA Blue drive for an OS drive in a server with low temp cycling will last that long. The thermal environment is what makes it last. The drive is not however designed for temp exceeding 45C with extremes of thermal cycling.
Good drives consider elements such as: Stiffness of components; thickness of magnetic coating on the discs; cooling design, electronic design, firmware. To the trained eye you will see a big difference in design between say a BLUE drive and a BLACK drive. Reply
_niko_ - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkAccording to WD since i mailed them asking a few questions regarding this straight after the pressrelease.
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is Michael.
The WD Red drive is designed to fit into a particular niche in the market. These drives were designed to be compatible with RAID enclosures of 2-4 bays. The list of tested and supported RAID enclosures are included below.
1. Synology, QNAP, D-Link, Drobo, Netgear, and Thecus.
2. It would be best to contact these enclosure makers for a list of specific models campatible with WD Red drives.
The WD Red drive is built on Green technology, this is not a RE or Enterprise class drive. There is no TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) enabled on this family of drive. TLER is used only in our RE or Enterprise class drives. These drives are not designed to be used in Enterprise environments.
The drive has four means of error recovery:
1. ECC On-the-Fly
2. Preamp Thermal Asperity (TA) Compensation
3. Read/Write Retry Procedure
4. Extended Read Retry Procedure
The heads do park after 8 seconds using our No Touch Ramp Load Technology.
Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off.
This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term
reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.
If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com Reply
email@example.com - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
And what did you learn from that WD response? Not a whole lot. A RED drive is certified for 1,000,000 load cycles, while GREEN, BLUE, BLACK are significantly less, so how could they possibly be based on the same so called GREEN technology. Pure marketing hype nothing more is what WD sprouted forth.
Ipso facto the RED drive cannot be built on GREEN technology. It just sounds nice. 1,000,000 load cycles is a lot different from what the GREEN drive is capable of, and it certainly has much more to do with hardware technology than just plain firmware tweaks.
The Enterprise RE4 and XE drives are rated at only 60% of the load/unload cycles of the RED drive (600,000 as compared with 1,000,000). RED is not GREEN technology - sorry WD - at least not in terms of what's in the GREEN drive per se, and as much as WD would like us to believe RED is not suited to ENTERPRISE loads, they are simply just lying. Warranties differ 3y as against 5y between RED and Enterprise, and what enterprise drives are paying for is the higher warranty and commitment WD offers (plus slightly better hardware).
I suspect RED would do just fine in an enterprise environment, just need to change them out more often in line with the 3y warranty, and you would still be saving money. I bet that 5y warranty on BLACK is going to be phased out pronto.
These companies think we are stupid, and in reality these drives jockeying for different markets is sprinkled with a lot of marketing effluvia. I would rather listen to the engineers but they are not allowed to speak.
Comparing RED to Enterprise RE4 specs I would take the RED anytime despite the lower 3y warranty, where the latter offers 66% more load/unload cycles, draws much less power, and offers 70C operating temps rather than 55C. Imagine lower power and 15C higher operating temp limit. Looks like a good Enterprise drive to me. What WD really meant by RED drives not being designed for enterprise environment is really this: "You have not payed the premium for 5y warranty therefore we will not support it in that application". Who cares, we intend to forcibly replace them before the warranty is up anyway.
I like these RED drives from what I can see at first blush, and I fully intend to use them in Enterprise environments without asking for WD permission. I am a programmer, so my NAS drive is always operating in an Enterprise environment loading scenario. My servers will be upgraded to RED.
I hope they make 2.5" RED drives so I can replace my BLACK drive with a RED drive in my laptop.
DLeRium - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkComparing a RED drive against any other drive is pointless unless its the WD Green. What you're trying to establish is whether a new "NAS" specific drive has any benefits.
The Green drive already represents a 5400 rpm storage drive that's popular in NAS applications. YOu could compare against other drives such as the Seagate or Hitachi or Samsung green drives, but differences could be attributed to how good the drive is to begin with. A WD Green drive is the correct benchmark.
What the hell did I learn when you benched against a 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda? NOTHING. You could've benched a WD Green against a 7200rpm Seagate or Samsung 2TB against a 7200 rpm drive.
I realize HD reviews aren't AT's specialty, but if you read StorageReview's WD Red review, at least it makes sense. You need to be making logical comparisons.
I'm sure people look for BMW 335 reviews are also comparing it heads up against a Prius. Ugh. Reply
DLeRium - Monday, August 20, 2012 - linkbetter yet you could've compared Red vs Green vs Blue vs Black. Reply
andersenep - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - linkI've been using the WD green drives in my file server for over 4 years now. Initially, I did not know to disable the intellipark feature with the wdidle utility, and racked up some ridiculous load cycle counts (about 150k) on my first four 1TB drives. Despite this, the drives lasted over 2 years before I replaced them with 2TB drives for more space; not because the drives had problems. I still use those same drives in a RAID 10 two more years later on my desktop.
I really don't see any reason to spend $50-80 more a drive for a "feature" I can enable/disable myself. I've read so much negative stuff on using WD green drives in RAID/NAS, but I haven't had any issues personally.
Seriously, $50 (2TB) to $80 (3TB) more per drive for what?? No thanks. I'll take the cheapest, low power drives and regular backups any day. Hasn't done me wrong yet. I also have a bunch of Samsung green drives that have performed just as admirably as the WDs for even cheaper (on sale). Reply
email@example.com - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - linkThis works fine as long as you can control drive temperatures, and minimize excessive thermal cycling. One important element of the RED drives is that they are rated to 70C operating temperature instead of the usual 55C, so these drives are going to be more reliable.
It is possible this higher temp capability may trickle down to future cheaper drives making your approach even more viable. Reply
andersenep - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - linkAn 80mm and 120mm fan keep them idling at about 36C (and they are pretty quiet about it) in a relatively cramped case. Even under extreme prolonged load I would be surprised if they ever got over 55C. My thermostat stays at 25C/78F.
As for thermal cycling, I admit that I leave the thing running 24/7 which probably costs me a pretty penny over the long haul. I keep meaning to plug it into my killawatt out of curiousity.
I wouldn't mind paying a little extra for the 3 year warranty, but for what these things cost I could buy a couple green hot spares and still come out $150 ahead (using 2TB drives).
For a home NAS, green is the way to go. Just turn off intellipark. If you're leery of all the bad hype with the WD green drives, samsungs cost the same price and I've had good luck with those for about two years as well now. If you are using any sort of mass storage without a reasonable level of redundancy and regular backups you are just asking for trouble.
I was moderately interested when the red line was announced, but I can't see any added benefits that justify the premium price. Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - linkYour sentiments will be shared by others, thus keeping RED drive volumes low, and this will lead WD to drop prices to where they are supposed to be.
Just wait a while and watch.
Hard drives exceeding 45C start to fall off rapidly in terms of cycle life, while the RED drives may perform as well with temps reaching as high as 55C. The RED drives below 45C are likely to last a very long time with load/unload cycles of 600,000 matching Enterprise drives. Reply
quanta - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - linkIt isn't so much the testing methodology is flawed, but the reviewed drive model for the Seagate drive. Seagate has been making 7200rpm Barracuda with 1TB platters (non-XT) for quite some time, yet only the 500GB platter version of Barracuda XT is used in this review. If Barracuda XT must be used for the test, it should be the 3TB version, which has slightly higher density (600GB), or the Seagagte Constellation ES.2 counterpart. Reply
quanta - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - linkNever mind the 2TB claim, the test did use the 3TB drive. But still, the tested Seagate drives have such huge density disadvantage, it's disappointing that Barracuda XT/Constellation ES don't have the new terabyte platter models. Reply
stoked - Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - linkJust ordered 14 of these for a Supermicro 24 drive bay chassis. Crossing fingers we won't have any issues with the LSI 2108 controller and these drives. Reply
firstname.lastname@example.com - Monday, September 03, 2012 - link
The secret is in the technology.
WD's exclusive NASware technology improves NAS storage performance by reducing common hard drive concerns in NAS systems including concerns for things like compatibility, integration, upgrade ability, reliability and cost of ownership that are experienced with a hard drive designed for desktop computers. Our exclusive technology, NASware™, makes WD Red thrive in the demanding small-NAS environment.
NASware Enhanced reliability.
Your NAS systems is always on, a highly reliable drive is essential. With a 35% MTBF improvement over standard desktop drives, the WD Red drive is designed and manufactured to be a more reliable and robust solution.
NASware 3D Active Balance Plus.
Our enhanced dual-plane balance control technology significantly improves overall drive performance and reliability. Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multidrive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.
================ WD speaks with forked tongue ====================
So now we have a better balanced drive to reduce noise, vibration and improve drive life cycle. Are we made to believe this requirement of RED drives is only needed in a 24/7 NAS environment? This is rubbish, balanced drives are needed everywhere.
Desktops running for 8 hours every day is certainly ON for a long time and qualifies as 24/7. But is it not also true that unbalanced drives in a desktop will also reduce drive cycle life? So why is it OK to put such unbalanced drives in desktops which are expected to last just as long as NAS systems? Why is it OK to put a lower quality drive in a desktop and insist a better quality drive is needed for NAS.
Pure Crap. Desktop drive cycle life is just as important. Why is it OK to increase the risk of a drive crash on a desktop, while one goes to great pains to reduce this risk on a NAS system?
Western Digital is admitting that GREEN and BLUE drives are CRAP and not suitable for desktops, in part because they are not suitably balanced. Or put another way, they have designed the cheaper drives to be less balanced by design, and dictate that desktops will be subjected to higher reliability risks in terms of disk crashes. By their own admission inadequately balanced drives lead to reduced cycle life. In reality there is no difference between NAS and DESKTOPS in terms of needed cycle life, and what is plainly obvious is that RED drives really constitute a MINIMAL quality for desktop too.
MARKETING BROO HA HA - just another fancy term for Corporate lying.
DRIVE BALANCE IN A SINGLE DRIVE SYSTEM IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS IN A MULTI- DRIVE SYSTEM FOR THE PURPOSES OF IMPROVING DRIVE CYCLE LIFE. Marketing not withstanding.
What we need is a way of measuring drive balance quality in hard drives, and stick it to them when reviewing these hard drives. We need to be able to measure the WOBBLE FACTOR to gain control over drive quality assessments. Reply
Hot_Jane - Thursday, October 11, 2012 - linkIf these "red" drives are so much better, and more durable, than their "black" drives... why do the "reds" have a 2 *YEAR* shorter warranty????
(anandtech foolishly compares warranties only on the drives that are even LESS than the "reds".) Reply
Casper42 - Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - linkhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Sale today on Red
Limit 3 Reply
andrewket - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - linkI followed your link. I'm showing $169/ea. Is there a coupon code I need to use? Reply
Brian Carter - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkAs a photographer I'm concerned at the low throughput of the NASPT photo album. Why is the throughput so low? Reply
No Saint - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkHow reliable is RED for use as an OS drive (Main drive). I got to ask cause, where I live to most shops warranty means squat as they still charge me for RMA of drives over 1 year.
There is only 1 shop where which doesn't charge me for RMA for hardwares over 1year period. I would prefer to get Black Caviar 2tb but its out of stock and their supplier told them they are unable to get new ones since for now, I am seriously think of getting RED 3tb as its about same price range.
I do download a lot, plenty of drives in past died quickly under a year. That includes Seagates, Maxtors, even Western Digital Blue and Western Digital Externals. Only drive that is reliable so far is Caviar black surviving over 2.5 years. Could I go for RED as an OS as I am going to install Windows 8 or should I bite the bullet and spent more cash on RE drives which IMO are rather expensive right now for 2tb. Reply
cyriouslydylan - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - linkAs of this posting, getting a 2TB Red drive is only about $10 more on amazon than getting a 1TB black drive. Would there be any problem using a Red drive in a standard desktop environment? Reply
nico82 - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - linkHi,
would you recommend this HDD also for "normal use" (second HDD in a desktop system)? I'm looking for a internal HDD to save multimedia files (OS running on SSD), and I was oriented on a WD Green, then I saw this one.
If you recommend it, does it need to be configured by internal/external tool? How?
Thank you very much
Nicola Reply
CambridgeAudio - Thursday, February 28, 2013 - link
What does it mean "time to complete transaction" in the article. Time for the transaction of 4kB?
How can you tell by just looking at the numbers on top of these disks if they run 1 tb or 750 gb platters?
Btw WD tech support is useless. I ask a well defined question. All you get back is their marketing talk. What horrible tech-support is that? Reply
Shiitaki - Wednesday, April 10, 2013 - linkWhat I am most interested in isn't raw performance, anyone interested in raw performance would build their own nas using real computer parts, not the toy atom cpus found in Nology/etc. The question is will the drive be reliable 3 years from now? Does the hard drive vibrate? I'm not talking about a fussy nit picky thing, I'm talking about will it shake my entire tower and desk like the last pair of Wester Digital Black drives I had did? I'm using WD blues atm and I can reach over and feel them vibrating the side panel of a 30lb steel computer case, despite being mounted using vibration isolators. When drives used to cost 200 and up, seems they were much better made. It's great to buy a drive for 100 bucks, or is it? Maybe the 150 bucks that a Red costs is the price of a well made drive, or is it a 100 dollar drive with a fat profit margin? That's what would have been interesting to find out. Reply


text:
Linux and the Desktop Pentium M: Uncommon Performanceby Kristopher Kubicki on 12/24/2004 12:00 PM EST
- Posted in
- Linux
47 Comments
Back to Article
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BullCreek - Thursday, January 13, 2005 - linkDoes anyone know where I can buy socket479 dothan core pentium Ms online? Newegg and various other places stock the socket 478 variety, but I haven't found anyone that has the socket 479 type. Reply
vl - Thursday, December 30, 2004 - linkIf you are using an IDE drive make sure DMA was enabled. To check you can use the hdparm command. Reply
Lynx516 - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - linkSomething is disasterously wrong with your setup. Have you tried using a live CD and try compiling with that?
What command are you using to compile the kernel? Are you sure you have GCC installed correctly? What do you get if you type gcc-config -l?
Are you sure nothing else is running (well major tasks)?
Have you tried running it as root? Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - linkCorrect they are "user". Here are the results with GCC 3.4.3 on the same system on the second run.
real 20m42.192s
user 16m39.148s
sys 1m21.287s
dave:~/bench/gcc/linux-2.6.4 # cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz
cpu MHz : 2105.068
... Not sure what is the problem here. The CPU clock is correct. If anyone else has any ideas as to why only the GCC benchmark would be affected I am all ears.
Kristopher Reply
Yozza - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - linkResults with gcc version 3.4.3 20041125 on the Banias 1.7GHz (DDR266/400FSB).
run 1:
real 4m40.758s
user 3m58.039s
sys 0m20.060s
run 2: (after "make clean")
real 4m24.759s
user 3m58.409s
sys 0m19.978s
run 3: (again, after "make clean")
real 4m27.728s
user 3m58.233s
sys 0m20.161s
Of course, this is with gcc 3.4.3. I'd rather not install 3.4.1 on this system only to rollback to 3.4.3 straight after.
I assume the kernel compile times you showed in the article were from "user" (or user + sys), rather than "real", as the latter is affected by other things happening on the system whereas the former gives the actual CPU time taken by the process.
The results are impressive to say the least. It's certainly extremely puzzling that your results with Dothan were so disparate. One would expect it to do very well indeed based on my results with 1.7GHz Banias + DDR266.
For comparison, my 3GHz NW P4:
run 1:
real 4m50.687s
user 4m19.365s
sys 0m25.261s
run 2:
real 4m46.675s
user 4m23.775s
sys 0m24.567s Reply
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - linkYozzo, Can you please do kernel 2.6.4 like we did in the benchmark?
Kristopher Reply
Yozza - Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - linkDevelopment on the 3.4 gcc branch has only recently stabilised, and the pentium-m cflag was indeed quite buggy/broken in earlier releases, hence why I stated that gcc 3.4.1 is "pretty old". Not in the absolute sense, but rather in terms of the amount of development work that has gone into the 3.4 branch since.
Some quick benchmarks with gcc version 3.3.4 20040623:
System was P-M Banias 1.7GHz, 768MB DDR266, i855PM; on a Dell D600.
# time make
real 9m36.940s
user 8m40.395s
sys 0m39.643s
2nd run:
real 9m35.056s
user 8m40.515s
sys 0m39.664s
For comparison, my 3GHz NW P4, 1.5GB DDR400, i875P:
1st run:
real 10m0.508s
user 9m0.929s
sys 0m46.210s
2nd run:
real 9m58.564s
user 9m3.107s
sys 0m45.658s
Kernel was 2.6.10-ck1-nitro1, with custom .config (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/yaoyaoliu/.config).
I didn't have gcc 3.4.3 available on my laptop to test, but gcc 3.3.4 clearly shows the expected performance and hence that there is nothing inherently wrong with the P-M architecture that makes it slow at compiling -- indeed, the 1.7GHz Banias P-M (DDR266, 400FSB) is slightly faster than my 3GHz Northwood P4 (dual DDR400, 800FSB).
I was also interested to see how much faster gcc 3.4.3 was compared to 3.3.4, and so decided to do a compile on my 3GHz P4 desktop machine (same kernel):
real 6m34.443s
user 5m52.910s
sys 0m33.019s
Interesting results indeed. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Monday, December 27, 2004 - linkThe GCC we used is the same GCC bundled with SUSE 9.1, our test platform. I don't think 6 months is too old for a processor architecture that has been available for close to 2 years. However, we will get a chance to revist these numbers in the very near future, and i will redo the tests with GCC 3.4.3 and GCC 3.4.1
Hope that helps,
Kristopher Reply
vaystrem - Monday, December 27, 2004 - linkFrom
The GCC Homepage:
3.4.1 released July 2004
3.4.3 released November 2004
If you look at the changelist there have been a lot of improvements even between these few releases. Reply
Lynx516 - Monday, December 27, 2004 - linkWhat yozza says is true gcc 3.4.1 is old especially a pre release. As yozza said it has some bugs in it with respect to the pentiu_m march flag.I have been running gcc 3.4.3 for atleast 2 months and i definatly was not one of the first to use it Reply
KristopherKubicki - Monday, December 27, 2004 - linkYozza: I made some corrections. Saying GCC 3.4.1 is "pretty old" seems pretty hard for me to swallow, but the rest of what you say seems correct. I would be interested in seeing your P-M compile time benchmarks.
Kristopher Reply
Yozza - Sunday, December 26, 2004 - linkThe march=pentium-m flag was pretty broken on earlier gcc 3.4 releases, and it seems that you're using quite an early "3.4.1 (prerelease)" version, which could explain a few things, especially your TSCP benchmarks, where the Pentium-M is the only one to have its performance _decrease_ with optimised (march=pentium-m) compiler flags. This clearly indicates some issues with pentium-m optimisations in your gcc revision (3.4.1 is pretty old these days).
The extremely slow kernel compile time is especially surprising though. I did some test just now on my 1.7GHz Banias P-M, and the kernel compile times do NOT appear to correspond with your results. So I guess something seems amiss with your system configuration.
There was certainly some pretty impressive performance in the integer-dependent tests such as the database one -- we already know that the P-M's fp performance isn't that great, which explains some of the more fp-dependent benchmark results. I for one was pretty impressed by its performance in the majority of the benchmarks and by its scaling possibilities, both wrt FSB/memory and core freqs. If only Intel would upgrade the platform to 800MHz FSB with dual channel DDR400; such a configuration would be appear to hold a lot of promise.
The argument that "Dothan is adherently a linear processor" doesn't hold water either (it should be "inherently" too), since the kernel compile uses one thread by default. Regardless, it should have been possible to test different CPU schedulers to determine how well Dothan deals with multi-tasking loads, particularly wrt compile times by comparing different "MAKEOPTS=-jX" settings. Behaviour under such loads is as dependent on the CPU scheduler as it is on the CPU itself anyway.
Hence, clearly, the comment "When we stack multiple jobs on the processing queue, Dothan spends a huge majority of its time swapping around" is flawed and incorrect. The implication that the CPU 'swaps around' somewhat like memory paging to disk is rather inaccurate to say the least. Reply
larson0699 - Sunday, December 26, 2004 - link"...The only additional offering that the 855GME feature provides is a 64-bit PCI-X (not to be confused with PCI-Express) bus..."
PCI-X is a "feature" of the 6300ESB ("Hance Rapids") southbridge, NOT the 855GME northbridge.
Other makers used the standard ICH5 southbridge, hence no PCI-X slots.
Such a system would be awesome for a mini RAID server. An adapter from 3Ware would be the perfect utilization of the PCI-X slot provided. Ahh... Reply
vaystrem - Sunday, December 26, 2004 - linkWhy not Gentoo?
You could do two boxes - compile the entire OS optomized for the Pentium M with latest GCC revision and do the exact same for the Athlon 64 Box.
That would be a lot more interesting comparison and useful than doing these benchmarks on top of Suse whose default optomizations are certainly hurting the PentiumM.
bhtooefr - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linkBTW, I mean that maybe Intel shut them down... Reply
bhtooefr - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linkHmm... maybe you're right... After all, it seemed that PowerLeap was dodging my questions about their P-M adaptor (and then tried to pimp the PL-AXP (basically a golden fingers card for Socket A) - if I wanted to unlock an AXP, I'd get a pencil ;-))...
Here's the chat: http://cpu-museum.de/forum/download.php?id=334 Reply
sprockkets - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linkOh well, I just looked at SuSE 9.1 again and 9.2 has the ability with kpowersave to select easily the profiles it will use to run, and will say what processor speed it currently is throttling to. Reply
ElFenix - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linki'd like to point out that 'heat sink' is actually two words. thanks. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linkbhtooefr: I am pretty sure intel wont let them do that.
Kristopher Reply
bhtooefr - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linkProblems on the John the Ripper section:
DES: Where's the 755?
MD5: Where's the 400MHz FSB 765?
Blowfish: Where's the 533MHz FSB 765?
Also, for anyone who wants to know what the heatsink IS, x86-Secret reviewed this before the heatsink was available, and they used a MicroCool northbridge heatsink.
FWIW, I don't know why nobody's coupled this thing to an i865/875. It's definitely possible, as Shelton (0K L2 Banias) has been coupled to an i845, and Banias has been coupled to an E7501. And, the fact that Alviso is "i915GL" says a lot. Mobo makers should be able to simply rework the traces leading to the socket, and reuse their P4 board designs for a P-M board design. Or, if they're REALLY lazy, they could just make an adaptor - put the processor in it, and drop it in the socket. Reply
ImSoHighRightNow - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - link"Encode rate, more are better"? Some encoding rates can't be "more" than other encoding rates. They can be HIGHER, but not "more". I would suggest "Encoding rates, higher is better"
You know what you need? A grammar handbook. Nothing annoys me more than someone who can't conjugate "to be" correctly. I learn conjugations for other languages, the least you can do is learn conjugations for one verb in English. Thanks Reply
ImSoHighRightNow - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - link"Rendering time in seconds, less are better"
Shouldn't that read more like "Rendering time in seconds, fewer is better" or "Rendering time, a shorter amount of time is better"? At least something remotely grammatical would be preferable. Thanks Reply
miketheidiot - Saturday, December 25, 2004 - linkdothan will need work before its ready for desktop. Simple as that. And make it cheaper two, that would be good. $500 + $250 for a mobo is quite a bit, even if it does OC well. Reply
DrMrLordX - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkLooks like the Dothan falls flattest when it's faced with multiple concurrent threads. Dual-core Dothan solutions might alleviate some of that problem, but, perhaps this is one of the reasons why Intel has been rather shy about pushing multi-core Pentium Ms for the desktop? Reply
Googer - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkIt seemed to me that the extra performance 133mhz that the 533 bus provides is rather small. My suggestion is couple this with an 875 or 865 chipset @400mhz and let dual channel memory add the needed performance boost. Its probably the cheapest and most effective way to increase the performance of Pentium M. Reply
Pannenkoek - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkI believe that the price of the processor tested should have a more prominent position in the whole test. It's, after all, about the price/performance ratio for most of the consumers.
If you plan on testing GCC vs ICC then I recommend to visit http://www.coyotegulch.com (though the site is "temporarily unavailable"), where you can find comparisons between the compilers, compile settings and more.
The focus of the tests on the site is on scientific applications/algorythms which fit in cache, and is therefore more about how many micro-optimizations are not missed. Which explains why results can vary so much; and also why the ICC compiler, made by Intel for Intel processors, can be sometimes a lot faster than GCC, which does not share the intimate knowledge of the inner working of those processors and targets a zillion other architectures as well... Reply
sprockkets - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkI wish though you included pics of the fully assembled system. I would like to see that HSF, since it appears AOpen simply uses a 478 type heatsink bracket. But looking at the board at newegg.com, the Aopen board comes with the heatsink, and has DUAL Marvell Gbe, plus it has a SATA controller on it as well, and costs $14 less. Reply
MDme - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkAnand and co: when will you guys do a full review of this chip against P4 and A64 across the different applications, games, etc? that would be a great gift to your readers at AT. Reply
JustAnAverageGuy - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkPage 6:
"We also took the same POV-Ray benchmark and ran it against the Pentium M clocked at speeds from 1.0GHz to 2.4GHz."
Should read 1.6GHz
[shake 3.5c]"Although it holds up well against an Athlon 64 3200+"
Doesn't seem like it. It took over 12 minutes longer. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkphaxmohdem: these were just linux tests, but i do believe we have all of those render benchmarks coming up in the Windows analysis.
Kristopher Reply
overclockingoodness - Friday, December 24, 2004 - link#44: The results could be better on the Windows platform, as stated in the conclusion. Reply
sprockkets - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkIf you want to see the clock speed dynamically adjusted just roll your mouse over the kpowersave daemon running in the tray (at least it works for me under SuSE 9.2). Even my little Via C3 800mhz system will scale from 399 to 800mhz depending on load. It may even work in 9.1 (the part I couldn't enable was the suspend options). Hell, SuSE even can make my Hitachi Desktar drive go quiet to performance mode right in the OS! Reply
formulav8 - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkAs this article shows, alot of people way overhyped this chip. Yes its not bad, but not the P4 Killer that alot of people claimed.
It is interesting but it doesn't look like Intel will make a Desktop chip based on this cpu yet in the near future. Dual cores would be very interesting though.
phaxmohdem - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkThis chip seems to be a god-send for the corporate IT directors needing machines for their monkeys to do Word and Excel documents on. As for me though, I don't think I could purchase a chip that has as spuratic performance levels as this. I do so many different things on my box, especially in content creation, that I much prefer the consistant performance of my current Athlon64 proc. across all applications.
Just a suggestion, I would love to see some Adobe benchmarks on these chips... After Effects render times, Premeire Render times, Photoshop performance, etc as these are all applications I use nearly daily. Thanks. Reply
HardwareD00d - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkWhen someone does a full set of benchmarks of the Pentium M for all categories across the board vs A64 and P4, then I'll seriously consider if this chip is worth its salt. Until then, I am unconvinced that it is anything special. If it is so good, then why hasn't Intel made any attempt to push it as a desktop chip? Reply
segagenesis - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkIt was looking pretty good until you mentioned the price :( Ouch. Reply
Ozenmacher - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkAnd go Vikings! Reply
Ozenmacher - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkMerry Christmas to you too! Reply
skunkbuster - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkmerry christmas!
Adul - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkstephenbrooks "superlinearly" even a word? Though I do understand what you mean. Reply
KristopherKubicki - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkabakshi: Intel roadmaps say only DDR1 for 915GL.
Kristopher Reply
stephenbrooks - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkThe Pentium M scales superlinearly with frequency in a few of the time vs. clock-speed benches (and I'm not talking about the 400->533 FSB improvement), which is pretty interesting. I wouldn't have expected a chip like this to get more efficient at _higher_ clocks. Reply
abakshi - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkWell FSB533 is here, but 800 would be a more significant move with Dothan. A P-M with FSB800, even DDR400 let's say (rather than the DDR2 that should be supported by using a 915 northbridge), and higher clockspeeds - maybe about 2.4-2.6 Ghz - would be amazing.
Linux performance will of course depend on other factors such as those mentioned in the article, but the performance under Windows of even the FSB400 2.0 Dothan is awesome -- when overclocked to 2.4Ghz, it's able to keep up with, and at times beat, the latest P4 Prescott and EE's, and A64's, for tasks like gaming:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl... Reply
Lonyo - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkIf Intel gave it a FSB and memory speed boost (ie: 533MHz or 800MHz FSB) and DDR533+, then Dothan could really be something.
With Intels talk of dual core processors, a dual core Dothan, with its low heat output, would be awesome (but costly with 2MB of cache).
2x30w = 60w = less than Prescott.
It looks promising, if only Intel would bring it to the affordable desktop :( Reply
VortigernRed - Friday, December 24, 2004 - link"Although it holds up well against an Athlon 64 3200+,"
Although the Dothan looks to be a superb chip you are certainly overstating its performance here, this is comment is WRT the Shake benchmarks and, effectively, the A64 3200 is twice as fast as the dothan. This would be like saying, for example, a R9800XT holds up well against an X800XT or an AXP2200+ holds up well against a A64 3800+ :-)
Also whilst the DDR400 does improve performance it can't help the Dothan where it is really far behind, the kernel compile benchmarks, for instance, it is still 3x slower than any of the other chips on the chart.
Dothan (or really its derivatives) have loads of potential to compete with the A64 on all fronts (Performance, power, heat, with Intels manufacturing, even cost) given enough effort by Intel (which I'm sure they are doing). I can hardly wait to see widespread adoption on the desktop and, frankly, to see the back of the P4. A desktop Celeron PM (1MB l2, lower FSB) could be the new overclocking king. Reply
bersl2 - Friday, December 24, 2004 - linkYou might want to ask on the GCC mailing lists (http://gcc.gnu.org/lists.html) about --march=pentium-m. Reply

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Submit News
IL Women Arrested in Their Backyards for Trying to Block Smart Meter Installation
Jason Mick
January 24, 2013 3:04 PM
Recipient E-mail
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City "exercise its right" to remove those looking to stand in the way of "progress"
In an incident that's sure to draw national attention, two women were dragged from their own backyards and arrested by police in Naperville, Illinois (a town located approximately 30 minutes west of Chicago) after they tried to block installation of
the city's new smart meters
President Obama has been pushing
for a "smart grid" for some time, with more high-tech meters that can access more detailed information on power usage. Proponents argue the
high-tech meters
cut down on waste and mistakes. Critics cite a variety of concerns ranging from national security to health.
The two arrested women -- Jennifer Stahl and Malia "Kim" Bendis -- were leaders of an anti-smart meter group dubbed "Naperville Smart Meter Awareness". The group's website links to a critical article on the project which points out its $23.6M USD cost, only $11M USD of which came from a federal grant.
Even Mark Curran the Naperville director of electrical utilities admits that the meter rollout has taken "longer than we anticipated", after being fraught with technical delays.
Arrest photos of Jennifer Stahl (left) and Malia Bendis (right) [Image Source: Naperville PD]
Aside from finances, though, there appears to be a relatively strong luddite component of the group's campaign to block the meters. The group links to a number of speculative websites that compile information on the supposed "health risks" of smart meters. The commentary on one site (
) echoes the medically unfounded claims that similar campaigns have leveled
against cell phone towers
Wi-Fi networks
. Comments the site:
This is of great concern because the exposure to microwave and radiowave radiation from these meters is involuntary and continuous. The transmitting meters may not even comply with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "safety" standards ... However, those standards were initially designed to protect an average male from tissue heating (cooking) during a brief exposure. These standards were not designed to protect a diverse population from the non-thermal effects of continuous exposure to microwave and radiowave radiation. Therefore, these "safety" standards were not designed to protect the public from health problems under the circumstances which the meters are being used.
To date, there has been no comprehensive peer-reviewed work supporting the notion that Wi-Fi or cell phone signals cause cancer or other health effects, but that hasn't stopped critics from suggesting that undiscovered risks may indeed exist.
Naperville Smart Meter Awareness Board of Directors (L-R): Jennifer Stahl (Secretary), Kim Bendis (President), and Board Members Amanda Rykov, Lisa Rooney, Tom Glass
[Image Source: Naperville Smart Meter Awareness]
Despite the shaky science, one must wonder whether the city's strong-arm tactics are justified for citizens who don't want the meters. Ms. Stahl's arrest came at 4:30 when police invaded her backyard with the installation crew after cutting the bicycle lock she used on her fence gate. When police found Ms. Stahl standing in front of her old-fashioned "dumb" meter refusing to move, they arrested her and charged her with interfering with a police officer and preventing access to customer premises.
Ms. Bendis's arrest proceeded similarly. She was charged with attempted eavesdropping and resisting a peace officer.
A defiant Ms. Stahl told reporters, "It was forced on my house today. It was really a violation. I violated something, but I've been violated too so I guess we're now in a society of violating one another. I have not done the work of attempting to educate the community and advocating for the right of anybody in Naperville to refuse the smart meter just to stand off to the side."
Ms. Bendis declined to comment to reporters, citing advice from her lawyer.
Both women were released within hours. City Manager Doug Krieger defends the arrests, commenting, "The previous installation attempts were met with some resistance and we wanted to ensure our employees' safety. The city has always had and maintains the right to access our equipment, and today we were simply exercising that right."
The Elster Rex2 smart meter (left) is being installed in homes, supported by wireless stations attached to poles and other infrastructure (right).
[Image Source: Naperville Smart Meter Awareness/Elster]
While the cost is one reasonable criticism against smart meter projects, another more ground criticism is security. Prominent sources, including defense contractor Lockheed Martin Comp. (LMT), have suggested that Chinese or other sophisticated
rivals of the U.S. could "hack into" smart meter networks
and use attacks to cripple or otherwise interfere with the U.S. power grid. If this premise holds true it would represent a tremendous new national security risk.
Another interesting criticism
comes from security researchers
[PDF], who report that smart meter data, if carefully analyzed, could reveal intimate details of one's life. For example, a house hooked up to smart water and electric meters could allow a third party to track when people shower, whether a home alarm is on, and how often people use their televisions.
Chicago Tribune
Daily Herald [Naperville]
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
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In Yoder WY, most of the people install septic tanks in their houses as they do not have access to the sewage system. Septic tanks are widely used to collect the sewage waste that comes from bathrooms, lavatories, washing stations, and kitchen. There are mostly two types of septic tanks available in the market. One is cement container and the other is plastic container.
Cement septic containers are large in size and most of the house owners prefer to install these containers. Plastic containers are used when there is no enough space for installation of huge cement septic system. Simply installing the system and using it will never make that system work for long-term. Every septic tank holder should have the minimum knowledge on this system for effective maintenance and to avoid major septic issues.
There are few simple precautions to be followed by sewage system holders to avoid repair and replacement. The cost of septic tank cleaning and pumping will be pretty expensive. One can reduce the cost by effective maintenance. One of the most important tips to avoid sewage issues is to "Conserve Water".
Reduce the usage of water in Yoder WY that can minimize the risk of frequent sewage pumping. If more water dumped into the tank, then more frequently septic tank pumping is required. Avoid dumping solid waste into the container. It is better to have a garbage disposal container for putting all the heavy solid waste materials. If you continue to dump solid waste materials, it leads to the blockages and clogging in drain field or leach field.
Stop using chemical substances for cleaning or pumping your sewage tank. Most of the chemicals will kill bacteria that exist in the container. These bacteria are useful for cutting down or breaking the heavy solid sludge to tiny particles for free passage into the septic pipes. In general, an average sewage tank should be pumped or cleaned at least once in a couple of years.
The time schedules of cleaning and pumping varies according to the size of the container, number of people staying in the house, and average number of gallons of water dumped into the tank. One should also avoid putting heavy load on the sewage container. This can break the container and you may need to replace with new container.
Get Your Spectic Tank Inspected in Yoder WY
If you consider all these simple precautions, it can easily help function the sewage system effectively for long-term. The cost of cleaning and pumping varies from vendor to vendor and location. Contact a professional septic tank cleaning company that can perform the job at affordable cost.
For many individuals living within rural settings, septic pumping is a part of their life. With all the nearby municipal sewage linked up to an appropriately functioning septic system, it is significantly vital to get the sewage pumped out at frequent intervals. In this short article, we will discuss why getting it to be pumped out on a regular basis is vital, how it can be done, and how much one can anticipate to pay for this service.
However, before we get into all these, let us have a quick look at what a septic system is, as well as the way it works. In the easiest terms, a septic system is a sewage treatment underground system for houses that lack access to municipal sewer services. It has 4 parts; the septic tank, the waste pipe from the home, the drain field along with the soil. All these parts are required to be in order, however the tank itself is probably the most vital part.
Having the tank pumped out at frequent intervals enables it to function properly and to avoid clogs that may cause sewage to be stuck in people's home as well as to avoid generating bad odors. The first contributor to clogs can be things which are extremely biodegradable. This consists of cooking grease along with oils that get dumped into the drain along with paper items like sanitary napkins, paper towels as well as tampons, cotton balls. These would all eventually degrade, however they have a tendency to get stuck within the inner functioning of the tank and will eventually generate clogs that worsen over time.
Another cause of getting a septic tank pumped on a regular basis is to check the tank for damage that could compromise its capability to function in a competent way. As soon as it is pumped out, it could be visually inspected for cracks or other further damages. In case some damage is detected, the tank may need to be repaired to avoid future issues.
The pumping procedure is straight forward. A big truck, occasionally known as a "Honey Wagon", with a huge tank, suction pump, and a big hose would arrive at the Yoder WY property and will park the vehicle within the general vicinity of the septic tank. The operator would take off the cover of the manhole from the tank, bring down the suction hoses into it and fire up the pumps which will start sucking the collected garbage into the holding container of the truck .