WD Black

[PaulG|heulboje21]

So today I decided that I need a new Storage device because my WD Blue 1 tb Drive is full. At the Retailer of my trust (more or less, didn't want to wait for delivery so I went to "Media Markt") I wanted to buy a WD Blue 2 tb drive. But examining the packaging I read something about the WD Black being optimized for gaming, at least that's what they are marketed for in Germany. The problem is that i pay almost double for a WD Black 1tb instead of 2tb WD Blue storage. So my question is: How significant, if at all, is the difference between a WD Blue and a WD Black, and where are the differences?

 

Sincerely

heulboje21/Paul G

PS: I hope my english was bearable...

[Oshino Shinobu]

Black drives have a higher RPM, making them a bit more responsive, and they are more reliable, which is reflected by their 5 year warranty compared to the 2 years of the Blue drives. 

 

The optimised for gaming marketing is just that, marketing. It really doesn't make any difference for gaming, though games may load a little faster as Black drives do have slightly faster transfer speeds. 

[SCHISCHKA]

For 1tb drive the significant difference is the warranty not speed. Why don't you get a second 1tb blue and raid0 them

[mariushm]

WD Blue series is a mix of WD Green and WD Blue (they merged the lines together) - some of them may be 7200 rpm some of them may be the old 5400-5900 rpm that was common in WD Green.

 

WD Blacks have higher platter density (more data per inch) so in one rotation you get more data into the buffers and into the computer, basically higher throughput when transferring large files, sequential stuff.

 

WD Blue series uses older platters with less density and probably more platters (ex the 2 TB black may use 2 discs / 4 heads, for 500 GB per surface while the 2TB Blue may use 3 discs and 5 or 6 heads for around 400-450 GB per surface). The added weight of the extra read/write heads plus the extra platters can reduce the access times of the WD Blue drives, which makes them worse than WD Black at some applications like databases (where you may have a lot of seeks in various tables if they can't be cached in memory).

That's pretty much it... oh and WD Blacks would have higher warranty and they may also have some features enabled in the firmware to make them more NAS friendly compared to WD Blue / Green.

 

But really for gaming, to hold your Steam games on it, it really won't make much of a difference , it wouldn't be noticeable. It's like game levels loading half a second faster with WD Blacks compared to WD Blue or something like that.

 

[genexis_x]

WD Black has longer warranty, but it's louder, more expensive and doesn't give you much improvement in speed (it's not for gaming, just marketing gimmick like mentioned above)

 

I'll either get a normal HDD like WD Blue or a SSD

[PaulG|heulboje21]

Well the thing was that I wanted (or needed) a new 2 tB Drive, because my one tB drive is running full. So as I said went to the retailer (not of my trust) and looked around, finding the 5400 rpm WD Blue Drive, and determined to buy it I just looked at the packaging just to make sure and noticed the "black made for gaming" thingy. Still bought that drive for 77€ because it's getting stuffed on the old 1tB drive, but was still curious, so I decided to ask.