The Reds are a relatively new addition to the lineup designed for NAS use. I'm interested in the performance aspect of them myself. Will you test and post results of read and write times, etc.? 
 I may get one since I've filled up my TB green with video, music, and software.  Have you run OS's on greens? Do they perform acceptably? Or would I be better off using a Red for OS's?
 I have a multi-boot setup with XP, 7, and 8. Currently, all my OS partitions are divided between 2 160 Blues, and a 320 Blue.  I'd like to use my TB green for most of them, then maybe a 500-750 Black for Gaming, and a 3 TB Red for Storage. If the greens don't work well for OS's, then I may use a Red for OS's...
 

Baltothewolf

I have 2 WD greens in a RAID-0. I don't really like them personally. They boot pretty quick into OS, but I noticed, even in RAID, they seem to get bogged down really easily... I don't know why, and it's really kind of annoying lol. 

I notice that using mine for storage. It takes 30 secs or so to list what's in large files whenever I open something bigger than 20 GB. So I figured it wouldn't be much good for OS's. Guess I'll just use it as I have been...

So I guess the Reds are better in the always on department, but a bit worse for quality control. At least they have a good warrantee. I've been using WD forever, and NOT one has ever died. Got 20 or more too small to be useful pata hdds in the parts bin that are still good. No good Seagates though...Hmmm...
I still may get one for storage, but I guess I see a TB Black in my immediate future for OS's (2-500 gb partitions, loaded with 7 Home 64, and 8 Pro 64) Consolidate my Gaming rigs...

That dent shouldn't effect the drive. Hopefully there are no issues with it, in case you have to RMA through Western Digital. I myself picked up the 2TB Red the other day. They are supposed to be the new green drives. Like the green drives, they are intelliseek so they don't have a specific RPM. They also come with a 3 year warranty as opposed to the 2 year that the greens have. The best feature, they are intended for NAS 24/7 operating. Should work fine in a typical computer

Keep us updated. I'd like to see how they perform in RAID.

Ok, finished extensive testing on all three of the drives now. For RAID5 I need some input on configuration. I'm connecting the drives to my EVGA E762 mobo Intel SATA ports.
 
Question #1:
From what I understand the Intel SATA controller isn't really a true hardware raid like a dedicated RAID card would be. I see Windows 7 Pro also allows for me to make a software RAID5 if I chose to. Either way both use minor CPU overhead to do their thing correct? Looks like more people say to "Control-I" and create an intel RAID5 at boot. My curiosity is that if I do a Windows RAID5 I should be able to see the individual drives SMART data still? The Intel RAID5 obscures the SMART data on the individual drives making it hard to know the true health of the individual drives until it degrades. My thought is why shouldn't I use the Windows 7 RAID5? Which option has a more functional interface to rebuild once a drive dies?
 
Question #2:
What allocation unit size should I use for three WD Red 3TB in a RAID5 configuration? The drive will be used for 3TB of Steam game installs. It's not that the files are mission critical but it's a major PITA to download 3TB of anything if a drive dies, hence my use of RAID5.
 
I thought I'd ask these questions because Google is coming up with nothing definitive on these two questions. One would think both questions would be something more commonly asked?

How are they?  The initial reviews of the WD Reds where not positive at all.  Lots of DOA and apparently they behaved more like WD Greens with slow spin up and short life.
 
Looking to replace the two 1TB Blacks ATM with a larger HDD for storage and the Red 3TB and Black 2TB have been high on my list.

Brad_Hawthorne

I'm guessing a lot of DOA is in relation to bare drives and how Newegg ships them. 

 
A lot of comments about that too.  My HDD came that way also, won't be purchasing any HDDs from newegg anymore unless I purchase something else so they package it better.

I did a bit of experimenting tonight with allocation unit size. It seems to be totally inconclusive no matter what allocation unit size is used. I did 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K and 64K. The speeds were all within what I consider the margin of error of each other with no conclusive winner. The 512K reads where the only thing that showed any real variation at all. Everything else was the same.
 
These are all RAID5 setup via Control-I at boot into Intel bios and formatted within the Windows disk management control panel window.

 
I just found out that the RAID-5 feature in Windows is deceptive. They have the option there but it's grayed out. It's a legacy item from previous enterprise OS. You can't create a new one under the control panel options. No wonder I've not heard of anyone running the Windows soft RAID5 in Win 7.
 
Looking at this numbers again above you really take a heavy write penalty for the parity check.

Ya, I think something is wrong with the Windows format looking at the sequential and 4K write speed.
 
What did you put into the Intel bios for stripe size and what did you format for allocation unit size? Both 64K? I noticed Intel bios has 128K maximum but Windows format has 64K maximum option. Could that be where we differ on setup?

Oh and here is what my IRST RAID 5 detail screen looks like.  Don't mind the single SSD not being in RAID 0 at the moment.  One of my Vertex 3s is out for RMA :(
 

Well keep us up to date guys.  Looking to purchase a large HDD and reliability is what matters the most to me.

I just found two 500GB WD Blacks in a box I totally forgot I had. I'll put those as OS drive. Throw those on the JMicron two SATA ports in RAID0. I'm going to put the old two WD 1.5TB Greens RAID0 and the three WD Reds RAID5 and the last port for the Blu-Ray.
 
Will be back in a few hours after the case cleanout, cable management rework and OS install gets done. I've got the disk version of the JMIcron and Intel RAID drivers on USB stick so I can install them at OS install time.

Wow does initializing take forever. 10% complete. I'm all up and running other than that.

After testing, it looks like the only real difference is the fact "write-back cache" is enabled or disabled. That's where the deviation in performance occurred.
 

 
I just noticed mine is 128K stripe, not 64K stripe but I don't see any ill effect from it.