hard drive WD vs Seagate (Blue vs Barracuda)

[Supersonicwolfe]

Age old battle between two big giants, just like intel vs AMD, Nvidia vs AMD, Apple vs the World, and here WD vs Seagate...

 

In particular Seagate Barracuda vs WD Blue. Both as internal 2.5 inch secondary drive and 3.5 inch data storage drive.

In both case, Seagate is cheaper, not by a lot (less than 5 USD). With price that close I used to wanting to get WD Blues, but not since WD merged Blue and Green... and WD have less cache... (plus I used mostly Seagate drives...)

• 2TB 2.5 inch secondary drive

1. Seagate ST2000LM015 (128MB, 5400RPM)
2. WD Blue WD20SPZX (128MB, 5400RPM)

• 4TB 3.5 inch desktop data storage drive (will use hard drive bay and USB hard drive base)

1. Seagate ST4000DM004 (256MB, 5400RPM)
2. WD Blue WD40EZRZ (64MB, 5400RPM)

I wonder if these two WD drives were Re-labeled WD Greens... and that 256MB caches is rather attractive.

 

Of course, if there is any recommendations to a similar teir/usage Toshiba hard drive or other brands, I will consider those too.

 

THANKS.

[emosun]

all hard drives are honestly so slow that i ignore everything besides capacity because i don't pull program data from hard drives so theres no reason to consider drive speed ever again.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Supersonicwolfe said:

and that 256MB caches is rather attractive.

the cache really won't make a difference here.

 

2 minutes ago, Supersonicwolfe said:

I wonder if these two WD drives were Re-labeled WD Greens

why does it matter? THe greeens seems fine as a storage drive here. 

 

Id personally get the cheaper seagate drives, you won't notice a difference.

[r2724r16]

14 minutes ago, Supersonicwolfe said:

In particular Seagate Barracuda vs WD Blue.

WD Blue HDDs have slightly better read speeds, Seagate Barracuda HDDs have slightly better write speeds. More WD drives have failed in me than Seagate drives, so get a Barracuda drive (IMO).

[GilmourD]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

the cache really won't make a difference here.

 

why does it matter? THe greeens seems fine as a storage drive here. 

 

Id personally get the cheaper seagate drives, you won't notice a difference.

I'd worry more about reliability.

How are Seagate drives these days? I haven't purchased one in a LOOOOOOOONG time (I'm talking 2008, when the 1TB and 1.5TB drives were failing a lot) but the WDs I've purchased since have all been rock solid. I also haven't purchased a spinner in a few years, either, so I'm not even sure about WD anymore. LOL

 

I guess my contribution here is more a question to ask yourself and research than any actual information.

[GilmourD]

1 hour ago, r2724r16 said:

WD Blue HDDs have slightly better read speeds, Seagate Barracuda HDDs have slightly better write speeds. More WD drives have failed in me than Seagate drives, so get a Barracuda drive (IMO).

Interesting. I've never had a WD fail on me ever. I've had a couple Hitachis die and a couple Seagates. The only reason I've ever removed a WD from a system is that it was getting replaced with something bigger.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, GilmourD said:

How are Seagate drives these days? I haven't purchased one in a LOOOOOOOONG time (I'm talking 2008, when the 1TB and 1.5TB drives were failing a lot) but the WDs I've purchased since have all been rock solid. I also haven't purchased a spinner in a few years, either, so I'm not even sure about WD anymore. LOL

The seagate drives are fine these days.

 

Just now, GilmourD said:

I'd worry more about reliability.

Make sure to do backups, any drive can fail, and you can't know which one will. A green drive will work fine in a deskotp like this anyways, you not pushing the drive very hard.

[r2724r16]

55 minutes ago, GilmourD said:

Interesting. I've never had a WD fail on me ever. I've had a couple Hitachis die and a couple Seagates. The only reason I've ever removed a WD from a system is that it was getting replaced with something bigger.

Toshiba and Seagate HDDs are the best in terms of reliability IMO. 

[Supersonicwolfe]

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

the cache really won't make a difference here.

 

why does it matter? THe greeens seems fine as a storage drive here. 

 

Id personally get the cheaper seagate drives, you won't notice a difference.

I mentioned Green merged with Blue because I assumed their difference was the platters binned differently and paired with different cache. After merging there will be a higher chance I will get a bad one...

That said, I kinda agree that 256MB cache won't help much in my use case since what I usually do is dump chunk of 1GB data into the drive and then leave it unplugged.

 

Anyhow the Seagate are cheaper and I will likely choose them, but the WD Blues are somewhat attractive because the two WD blues I had haven't failed yet...thwy are still running since 2008...