My understanding is that the green drives should be avoided in NASes because of the firmware that they ship with. The advice I got was that green-drive firmware includes error correction and recovery processes that cause time-outs - and while these aren't an issue in single drive configurations, they can cause NASes to think that they have failed (when they haven't) and drop them from the array.
Lizard1977: The WD Green drive isn't listed on the QNAP compatibility list. How much attention should I pay to this, or would the Green drive work fine?
There is actually a note on the QNAP site about green drives not being recommended. I just purchased a pair of 2TB Seagates (ST2000DM001 ) for my TS-212. Which appears to be near identical to the 112 except the 2nd drive is fitted internally so the case is fitted with a fan.
JimmyH: My understanding is that the green drives should be avoided in NASes because of the firmware that they ship with. The advice I got was that green-drive firmware includes error correction and recovery processes that cause time-outs - and while these aren't an issue in single drive configurations, they can cause NASes to think that they have failed (when they haven't) and drop them from the array.
This is what they say about all kinds of SATA drives without, I think its called TLER. Running around 60 SATA drives in various RAID6 arrays atm I've never really had that issue, let alone a failed drive!
It's good to see that people are aware of the QNAP, Synology and even WDC HDD recommendations.
I wouldn't run WD Green drives in a NAS over long term although I have read of Geekzoners who do ran WD green HDD in a RAID setup without problems, but that may just be down to good luck.
However, If I'd done my research and set my sights on a given NAS solution, I probably couldn't wait for months for WD Red drives to become available before I could purchase or use my NAS. But that's just me. :-)
So putting a WD Green HDD in a single HDD NAS for a few months awaiting a WD Red HDD, to me wouldn't be a drama. One could leave original data in place on the PC/Laptop and continue to use it as primary data and use the NAS as a backup, but at the same time, checkout the folder and file setup up with permissions, users accounts and etc for those few months(Good learning time) and when the WD Red drives arrive, one has probably got a good idea of the final data structure and setup and can rebuild the NAS using the WD Red drives and then transfer the data into the folders and then go NAS as primary and remove PC/Laptop data points with the WD Green drive as backup in an eSATA dock.
At the end of the day, having a single drive NAS does still require some form of backup later on and a 3TB WD Green HDD in a eSATA dock arrangement doesn't seem like a bad solution in the long term. My backup disks (WD Blue) are mostly sitting on a shelf and not in an active state other than when being used to backup data from within my eSATA dock.
With a single drive NAS there is always going to be some down time if the primary HDD fails, but at the end of the day for my home environment, the number one driver is, I NEVER want to lose my data.
Downtime I can juggle depending on what other drives I have and the turn around of primary HDD repairs.
As I remember it, the QNAP TS-112 is almost a baby TS-212, but it does have the advantage of a eSATA drive interface, which I think is pretty cool at this price point (~$262.00). The TS-112 does have a built in fan too. Having a fan when you have WD Black HDD in the NAS is a must as they do tend to run a bit on the warm side, WD Red HDD should run a lot cooler and may not even require the fan to activated.
My WD Black 2TB HDD have been in my TS-112 NAS for over a year now, with not even a hint of a problem. Not that there should be any problems.
This pretty much sums up what I was thinking. If the WD Green drive will work alright in the QNAP TS-112 for the next few months, then I can use it to experiment with different arrangements, and play around with copies of our data sets (keeping the originals as they area for now), and then when the Red drives become available, I can roll out a tested system on the Red drive, and format the Green drive for backup purposes.
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