Western Digital Blue v. Green v. Black (hard drives)

[Jusmar]

Today I found my computer making the click of death. I will admit that I probably shouldn't have been salvaging old drives from computers from long ago, but to cut to the chase I need to find a replacement for about 2TB of storage. Money isn't exactly an issue, I just don't want to end up spending $300 on drives.

 

I'm looking at Western Digital because my friends have had a lot of success with them in the past. The thing I'm stuck on is how their branding system works.

I know they have a "Green" level which I assume is supposed to be a low power/ high volume option, a "black" which is all performance based, and a "blue" which is a mix of the two.

 

 

My question is this: Is there that much of a difference between the blue and black that a price difference of $20 can be justified? I don't want to just be buying something for the label, I want to know how it handles.

 

Sorry if this doesn't make very much sense, pneumonia, antibiotics, and anti-epilepsy meds don't work to well together.

[BTGBullseye]

Actually, if you're getting a brand new drive, the new batches of the Seagate drives are less likely to be DOA, and they perform about 20% faster than comparable WD drives. Last I checked, they were less expensive than the WD Black too.

 

Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM $110 (I have one of these, it is on-par with mid-grade SSDs, about 20% better performance than WD Black drives)

 

Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM $160 (same price as a WD Black with about 30% better performance)

[Jusmar]

Excellent, I may shop around a bit because $200 is a bit out of my price range for the XT.

I did some checks on tom's hardware and I think I may go with the ST you recommended. How's the noise?

[Obsidian]

On the topic of Seagate drives, they're cheaper these days because they only ship with a 1 year warranty, while WD is still on their old policy (at this time, anyway). So, if that sort of thing is important, factor in a Squaretrade warranty or something for the drive's price.

 

On the topic of the difference between WD drives, here's an easy breakdown (you forgot Red, which I'll include anyway). Bear in mind I'll only be comparing this in relation to the WD drives, not the Seagate drives (for the record, I'd agree with Bullseye that Seagate drives are looking better than WD these days)

Blue = the most balanced of the consumer lineup. Good price, speed, and decent capacity options.

Green = the best drives for dedicated storage on a non-RAID desktop. The slow RPMs don't affect basic file access as much as it would if used as an OS drive, and they're the largest single disks WD offers today. Tend to be cheaper than Blacks and Blues.

Black = the best consumer drive that's not the Velociraptor. Max storage is 2TB, and spins at 7200rpm, so it's a decent OS drive. Also the most expensive of the general trio.

Red = a good in-between of consumer and enterprise-grade HDDs. Supposedly a fantastic choice for server-use (I don't think anyone can legitimately claim this for another few months, if not a year, to evaluate the real-world-use failure rates), but much more expensive than the Blacks.

 

tl;dr, I'd go with Seagate for now, and the ST series isn't all that loud in my opinion/experience. Aside from the spin-up, the drives I've been exposed to are inaudible when the case fans are spinning as well.

[Jusmar]

Awesome. Thanks for the breakdown. I've got a hairdryer of a GPU anyway.

[BTGBullseye]

Yeah, you shouldn't hear a thing.