Western Digital to abandon ‘Green’ brand in favour of ‘Blue’ HDDs

[sylarspock]

Doesn't make much of a difference to me. I have always avoided WD Greens and went with Blue or Black either way.
Black's additional warranty is worth it imo.   

Current system using 4TB black as mass storage, and my is NAS on WD Reds   
 

 

Western Digital Corp. plans to unify its Green and Blue product lineups. The move will help the company to increase its profit margins. For end-users, the unification of low-cost HDD brands could mean increased performance of affordable hard disk drives.

 

Western Digital is set to unify its Green and Blue families of hard disk drives under the “Blue” brand, reports PC Watch. WD Blue HDDs will be aimed at mainstream personal computers, WD Black will be designed for high-end desktops and workstations, whereas WD Red will focus on network attached storage systems.

 

WD’s Green hard disk drives have variable RPM [revolutions per minute] performance, whereas WD Blue feature 5400 or 7400 RPM. It is unclear whether new HDDs will all feature variable RPM, or will stick to 5400 RPM, leaving 7200 PRM to the WD Black series.

 

For a limited period of time current WD Green HDDs will be sold under WD Blue brand, but with different product numbers.

 

WD reportedly claims that the unification is made to simplify HDD choice by consumers.

Update Comments from KitGuru:
KitGuru Says: In fact, cancellation of a low-cost hard drives brand makes sense for Western Digital from business standpoint. Increasing price of HDDs by $5 – $10 – a sum that many retail customers will never notice – will help the company to increase its revenues and margins. Any increase in revenue automatically means increase in research and development spending, which means additional performance and capacity.

Source:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-to-abandon-green-brand-in-favour-of-blue-hdds/
 

[Aytex]

Great!!!

[Swndlr]

I cant see WD winding the Blue drives down to 5400RPM and leaving the Black drives to be their only consumer 7200RPM drives

I personally think it should just be left as is, with Greens being safe mass storage, Blues being quicker and more average, and Blacks being the performance HDD's.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just saying if they make blues 5400s, then I will never buy a WD drive again (not when HSGT offers near WD black performance on their red line for way cheaper.)
 

 

Moving back in HDD speed is just another indication of the growing obsolescence of the media.

[TroubleKlef]

Hope to see 2tb+ blue drives then

[SImoHayha]

Interesting. Personally I have one WD green. It works like a charm ^~^. Nice to see Blue and Green HDD mix. Why not call it yellow from now on ? Mixing reliable storage of green while maintaining the lightning fast speed of 7200 RPM?

[SkilledRebuilds]

Gotta love WD,...I have a green thats over 5 years old and going strong... But understand their move.

 

& Aussies pronounce Favor like "FAE-VA"

[Albatross]

Well, it is sad to see it go because they seemed to always be on reason at a reasonable price. Now there will only be price increases.

 

 

(and it is always interesting to see arguments break out over how to pronounce something haha)

[Clyne]

Just give me a 2TB WD Blue or higher....then i'm happy.

I'm stuck using 2x 1TB Blues...

[asker509]

Hope to see 2tb+ blue drives then

My thoughts exactly

[fade2green514]

ill take an HGST drive thanks, dont want my data getting lost lol.

 

more of a stab at seagate than wd but i havent owned a wd drive in forever. oddly enough i have one of those notorious dying 3tb seagate drives and it runs fine. got lucky i guess.

[CyberHusky88]

Just saying if they make blues 5400s, then I will never buy a WD drive again (not when HSGT offers near WD black performance on their red line for way cheaper.)

 

 

Moving back in HDD speed is just another indication of the growing obsolescence of the media.

 

You do know that WD owns HSGT right?

[Curufinwe_wins]

You do know that WD owns HSGT right?

Yes, but they still offer massively different value lines and the HGST's seem to be faster (for non-black ofc), yet cheaper and more reliable.

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/

[fade2green514]

buying a hard disk drive based on performance relative to other hard disk drives is just a ridiculous notion altogether. 5400 rpm drive thats reliable should always come before a 7200rpm model that has a high failure rate.

 

if you want performance, get a solid state disk.

[Real_PhillBert]

I love my WD greens. Inexpensive mass storage, anything that needs speed goes on SSDs.

But i understand the need increase revenue.

[Paranoid Kami]

I only use SSD's now, so doesn't affect me.

[App4that]

Once you go Black.

[zacRupnow]

Nobody said "Fuck yeah" for republicans rofl

I wonder why...

#VoteForDeryl

[TheMcSame]

They're going to unify the two? It doesn't quite sound like it's a dropping the RPM deal to me. Sounds like they're going to make something like Toshiba's MD series drives to me. A 'power efficient' 7200 RPM drive that spins down after it hasn't been used for so long.

 

That being said, I wouldn't say an RPM drop is out of the question...

[You_are_a_cunt]

Never actually seen the usefulness of Greens, to be honest. Always went for Blue or Black

[Psykomantis00]

What they say: "We're getting rid of the WD green drives in favor of the WD blue/black drives"

 

What they mean: "The quality of the blue/black drives will now go down as the green drives are now just lumped into the blue lineup. 

[Speedbird]

Am I the only one who sees this as a good thing? We could finally have 2TB Blue drives.

[alicskysareblue]

thank god their green drives are terrible even for backup 

[Prysin]

I cant see WD winding the Blue drives down to 5400RPM and leaving the Black drives to be their only consumer 7200RPM drives

I personally think it should just be left as is, with Greens being safe mass storage, Blues being quicker and more average, and Blacks being the performance HDD's.

they should merge Black and Velociraptor... So all black drives has 10400 RPM.... Now that is performance.

 

 

fun fact though, although i cannot find it anymore, WD had a HDD with 20.000 RPM speed some 5+ years back... it cost more then my whole gaming rig does today.

[Nup]

Whelp, there may be a sweet period where WD greens will be even cheeper, woot.