4TB Western Digital Blue 5400 rpm drive okay for general (game) storage?

[Skyyblaze]

I'm looking to clean up the storage inside my PC as I'm somewhat of a HDD hoarder, since unless a drive shows signs of failure I'm unlikely to throw a HDD away and my Define R6 case has tons of HDD bays. However a few of these drives are still sub 500gb and quite old so I thought to consolidate everything I'll get a big 4TB drive and only leave that, my 2TB Toshiba P300 7200RPM and my SSD and NVMe in my PC.

 

Looking at various 4TB HDDs the Western Digital 4TB Blue caught my eyes as it can be had for 99€, would it be fine for older games and general data-storage despite being 5400rpm? And since it's WD I guess these are somewhat reliable? It's hard to find reviews of this particular drive as most reviews online talk about the Western Digital Blue SSHD.

[PlayStation 2]

I've got a 2TB version of the 5400rpm Blue drive and it's been damn solid for video recording. It'll definitely be good enough for general data storage and many games.

[porina]

It'll be fine but I would ask the question, how much is the cheapest 7200rpm model you can get? Assuming it translates into an improved access time, it does help with load times. 

[elektronikfreak]

If you have planned to use the hdd for gaming I will not recommend WD Blue Serie. Try the WD Black Serie instead.

 

See this link

 

The best WD hdd in my opinion is the 1TB DW1001FALS Black Serie. You can check out all hdd att NEWEGG.COM and click "reviews". Some hdd has less than 10% hdd crashes the  first 3 years and some other hdd has up to 50% hdd crashes the first 3 years.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, elektronikfreak said:

If you have planned to use the hdd for gaming I will not recommend WD Blue Serie. Try the WD Black Serie instead.

 

See this link

 

The best WD hdd in my opinion is the 1TB DW1001FALS Black Serie. You can check out all hdd att NEWEGG.COM and click "reviews". Some hdd has less than 10% hdd crashes the  first 3 years and some other hdd has up to 50% hdd crashes the first 3 years.

Just saying the 4tb blue will be faster than the 1tb black,  bigger drives are faster.

 

Where are you getting those stats, most hdds are well under 10% afr.

[elektronikfreak]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just saying the 4tb blue will be faster than the 1tb black,  bigger drives are faster.

 

Where are you getting those stats, most hdds are well under 10% afr.

Check out NEWEGG.COM and click "reviews" for each disc you are interested in.

 

The truth is  - the bigger the drive is = more crashes.

[porina]

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just saying the 4tb blue will be faster than the 1tb black,  bigger drives are faster.

In general, for sequential operations I'd agree. I think access time still has value to add here, so personally I'd see what the price differential is against a 7200rpm model of the same capacity. If it isn't crazy more, it is worth considering.

 

 

Don't want to get too deep into reliability stuff, but if the drive is only used for storing game installs, it is relatively low risk anyway. Worst case if the HD dies, you just re-download your games.

[Skyyblaze]

55 minutes ago, porina said:

It'll be fine but I would ask the question, how much is the cheapest 7200rpm model you can get? Assuming it translates into an improved access time, it does help with load times. 

 

47 minutes ago, elektronikfreak said:

If you have planned to use the hdd for gaming I will not recommend WD Blue Serie. Try the WD Black Serie instead.

 

See this link

 

The best WD hdd in my opinion is the 1TB DW1001FALS Black Serie. You can check out all hdd att NEWEGG.COM and click "reviews". Some hdd has less than 10% hdd crashes the  first 3 years and some other hdd has up to 50% hdd crashes the first 3 years.

 

Thanks for all the replies, sounds like I would be good with it then. Honestly when I said games I meant mostly old games like Crysis, Battlefield 2 etc. and maybe Tekken 7 since the actual game is quite small but bloated to 50-60gb because of Gallery Videos. I wouldn't install any new games there and the most annoying thing to lose would be my PS2, Wii and Wii U game dumps because that means I would have to dump them all again. But it's not like I would put Destiny 2 on it or anything.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just saying the 4tb blue will be faster than the 1tb black,  bigger drives are faster...

Uh, are you aware the Blacks are 7200 rpm drives and the Blues are 5400 rpm drives? The 1TB Black will be faster than the 4TB Blue.

[Skyyblaze]

2 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Uh, are you aware the Blacks are 7200 rpm drives and the Blues are 5400 rpm drives? The 1TB Black will be faster than the 4TB Blue.

I think they implied that bigger 5400rpm drives are still faster than smaller 7200 ones because despite the slower rotational speed they have a way higher data-density thus the required spins are less.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Uh, are you aware the Blacks are 7200 rpm drives and the Blues are 5400 rpm drives? The 1TB Black will be faster than the 4TB Blue.

Bigger drives are faster than smaller ones, the platter density will easy make up for the rpm change

 

3 hours ago, porina said:

I think access time still has value to add here,

A bigger drive will be better in terms of access time aswell as the head won't have to move as far, and since the drive slows down as your move closer to the center, the slow down will be smaller on the bigger drive with the same amount of data used.

 

[porina]

17 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

A bigger drive will be better in terms of access time aswell as the head won't have to move as far, and since the drive slows down as your move closer to the center, the slow down will be smaller on the bigger drive with the same amount of data used.

If you continued that quote, I said "of same capacity". Thus rpm will be the main difference. Strictly speaking the platter configuration might still be different.

[ToastyBear]

8 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Uh, are you aware the Blacks are 7200 rpm drives and the Blues are 5400 rpm drives? The 1TB Black will be faster than the 4TB Blue.

Looking at the spec sheet the 1TB Black is 150mb/s while the 4TB blue is 175mb/s. Looks like the data density won in this case.

 

But contrast that to the 4TB Black which does 256mb/s. Obviously entirely different ball game because 7200RPM

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

If I had to I would get the 8tb WD HSGt goldstar 8tb 7200rpm

[PianoPlayer88Key]

For those arguing whether a larger 5400rpm hard drive is faster or slower than a smaller 7200rpm drive ...

Well, first off, I don't have a 1TB WD Black or a 4TB WD Blue on hand.  Also, all my 4TB+ drives are 7200rpm; I do have a few 1TB to 2TB 5400rpm drives, and some smaller 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives.

 

Anyway, I ran some benchmarks on a few hard drives I do have.  I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves.  I'll put the list here, then put the screenshots in order below the list.  (The people I chose to quote who were talking about 5400rpm vs 7200rpm speed are at the bottom of the post, below the screenshots.)

1. Western Digital Green WD20EZRX - 5400rpm 2TB SATA HDD = CDM Seq: 139MB/s Read, 134MB/s Write ; 4K Q8T8: 1.01 MB/s Read, 1.27 MB/s Write ; HDTune Access 13.3 ms
2. Western Digital Black WD7501AALS - 7200rpm 750GB SATA HDD = CDM Seq: 100MB/s Read, 98MB/s Write ; 4K Q8T8: 1.18 MB/s Read, 1.22 MB/s Write ; HDTune Access 11.9 ms
3. Western Digital Caviar WD2500JB - 7200rpm 250GB PATA HDD = CDM Seq: 49.4 MB/s Read, 16.7 MB/s Write ; 4K Q8T8: 0.67 MB/s Read, 0.67 MB/s Write ; HDTune Access 17.6 ms
4. Western Digital Caviar WD800JB - 7200rpm 80GB PATA HDD = CDM Seq: 29 MB/s Read, 6.76 MB/s Write ; 4K Q8T8: 0.59 MB/s Read, 0.64 MB/s Write ; HDTune Access 15.7 ms
5. IBM Deskstar 120GXP IC35L040AVVN07-0 - 7200rpm 40GB PATA HDD = CDM Seq: 34.8 MB/s Read, 22.2 MB/s Write ; 4K Q8T8: 0.7 MB/s Read, 0.42 MB/s Write ; HDTune Access 17.5 ms

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If needed, I can plug in my 1TB WD10EADS 5400rpm drive and benchmark that as well, which might be a more similar comparison to the 250GB 7200rpm drive, like the 4TB 5400rpm vs 1TB 7200rpm discussion.  (Same difference in capacity.)

Interesting thing about the 80GB drive - it's detected as a WD800JB-00CAA1, but the label is marked WD800BB-32CAA0.

Also I benchmarked an 8.4GB IBM Deskstar DTTA-350840 drive, but after doing that, looked up the specs and learned that it's a 5400rpm drive, so I didn't include it here.  (I was only including 7200rpm drives for the smaller drives I was benchmarking.)  Also I invoked the mercy rule, and left my 1TB Samsung 970 Evo out of the benchmarks.

 

 

Quote

Looking at various 4TB HDDs the Western Digital 4TB Blue caught my eyes as it can be had for 99€, would it be fine for older games and general data-storage despite being 5400rpm?

 

11 hours ago, elektronikfreak said:

If you have planned to use the hdd for gaming I will not recommend WD Blue Serie. Try the WD Black Serie instead.

 

See this link

 

The best WD hdd in my opinion is the 1TB DW1001FALS Black Serie.

 

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just saying the 4tb blue will be faster than the 1tb black,  bigger drives are faster.

 

10 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Uh, are you aware the Blacks are 7200 rpm drives and the Blues are 5400 rpm drives? The 1TB Black will be faster than the 4TB Blue.

 

8 hours ago, Skyyblaze said:

I think they implied that bigger 5400rpm drives are still faster than smaller 7200 ones because despite the slower rotational speed they have a way higher data-density thus the required spins are less.

 

7 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Bigger drives are faster than smaller ones, the platter density will easy make up for the rpm change

 

A bigger drive will be better in terms of access time aswell as the head won't have to move as far, and since the drive slows down as your move closer to the center, the slow down will be smaller on the bigger drive with the same amount of data used.

 

1 hour ago, ToastyBear said:

Looking at the spec sheet the 1TB Black is 150mb/s while the 4TB blue is 175mb/s. Looks like the data density won in this case.

 

 

[Skyyblaze]

Thanks for all the tests and feedback, looks like the WD Blue 5400rpm will be sufficient for my use-case