whats the difference between western digital drive colors?

[crazystorm13]

so what is the difference. or are they just models that do the same thing.

[WoodenMarker]

From the Western Digital Site: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/catalog/

 

My simplified take:

Blues: Solid general use hdd. It's either this or the Seagate Barracuda for budget builds.

Greens: Low power slower storage

Blacks: High performance

Reds: Slightly faster than Greens storage. Awesome for their nearly silent 3TB drives.

[XiaoPigs]

From the Western Digital Site: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/catalog/

 

My simplified take:

Blues: Solid general use hdd. It's either this or the Seagate Barracuda for budget builds.

Greens: Low power slower storage

Blacks: High performance

Reds: Slightly faster than Greens storage. Awesome for their nearly silent 3TB drives.

Ah you beat me to the punch. Was about to post mine when I saw a new reply has been posted.

[Elbstrand]

Would also add that the Red ones have a longer warranty and are specialy made for RAID / NAS (Network Attached Storage) and 24/7 use.

[Godlygamer23]

Black: Performance

Green: Less performance, but consume less power

Blue: Balance between performance and power consumption

Red: Server use

[Elbstrand]

Black: Performance

Green: Less performance, but consume less power

Blue: Balance between performance and power consumption

Red: Server use

 

For servers you would probably use the enterprise grade storage from WD (something like the RE Series), atleast my rented server does...

[Godlygamer23]

For servers you would probably use the enterprise grade storage from WD (something like the RE Series), atleast my rented server does...

Those are the red ones, right?

[Elbstrand]

Those are the red ones, right?

 

Similar yes, but mostly the version with sas interface are the ones you gonna use for a production server(s).

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/enterprise/

 

XE = Velociraptor

RE = Red

 

These also got better support & warranty then the "consumer grade" ones.

 

But i would probably use Reds in my Development Servers if i had to choose.

[Godlygamer23]

Similar yes, but mostly the version with sas interface are the ones you gonna use for a production server.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/enterprise/

 

XE = Velociraptor

RE = Red

 

These also got better support & warranty then the "consumer grade" ones.

 

But i would probably use Reds in my Development Servers if i had to choose.

Got ya. Apparently, I'm not familiar with all their drives.

[Dragontail]

Although I have had bad experince with the Green series, have had 5, 3TB drives die on me the last year so if your planning on buying, go for the blues and up.

 

Red is the consumers version of the RE. The RE is more expensive but will last longer.

[Elbstrand]

Got ya. Apparently, I'm not familiar with all their drives.

 

As a consumer there is no real reason the be familiar with the enterprise line. :D

[Elbstrand]

Although I have had bad experince with the Green series, have had 5, 3TB drives die on me the last year so if your planning on buying, go for the blues and up.

 

Red is the consumers version of the RE. The RE is more expensive but will last longer.

 

5 out of how many?

[Godlygamer23]

As a consumer there is no real reason the be familiar with the enterprise line. :D

You know the saying "knowledge is power."

[Dragontail]

5 out of how many?

 

Had an array of 10 so yeah quality check was bad or I was unlucky... dunno really

[crazystorm13]

thank's i was always wondering and thought this would be a good thread.

[Elbstrand]

Had an array of 10 so yeah quality check was bad or I was unlucky... dunno really

 

how long did they last? Sounds like problems with the head parking (mostly firmware + raid related) or they got damaged in shipping.

 

Never even once had a harddrive fail on me... The only ones i replaced are one i dropped from 1 1/2 meters, one i dropped while still conntected and while writing data and lying on top of a case and a couple that where getting to slow and small (space) for me... like old 320GB or 500GB ones

[Dragontail]

how long did they last? Sounds like problems with the head parking (mostly firmware + raid related) or they got damaged in shipping.

 

Never even once had a harddrive fail on me... The only ones i replaced are one i dropped from 1 1/2 meters, one i dropped while still conntected and while writing data and lying on top of a case and a couple that where getting to slow and small (space) for me... like old 320GB or 500GB ones

After a year the first one failed then they went one after the other, talked to WD about it and they said something about a bad batch and because I ordered all of the at the same time, well I think I got em from the same batch. Yeah its the first time a harddrive have failed on me also and my mother still have an IBM(you know the ones that overheated alot) from the late 90s in her computer, altough abit slow, but old people dont have a rush :D. I think it was the motor for the arm that broke because they could not move from the outer clusters. Or it could have been bad clusters all together.

 

Yeah ever tried opening a HDD and power it on? really neat, but keep your fingers away hehe

[Elbstrand]

After a year the first one failed then they went one after the other, talked to WD about it and they said something about a bad batch and because I ordered all of the at the same time, well I think I got em from the same batch. Yeah its the first time a harddrive have failed on me also and my mother still have an IBM(you know the ones that overheated alot) from the late 90s in her computer, altough abit slow, but old people dont have a rush :D. I think it was the motor for the arm that broke because they could not move from the outer clusters. Or it could have been bad clusters all together.

 

Yeah ever tried opening a HDD and power it on? really neat, but keep your fingers away hehe

 

Sounds like the problem with the head parking i talked about, maybe combined with a bad motor for the arm. Did you check your S.M.A.R.T data? I think you find the number of head parkings under "Load/Unload Cycle Count"... Some RAID users had some ridiculous high numbers after even short intervals of usage...

[Dragontail]

Sounds like the problem with the head parking i talked about, maybe combined with a bad motor for the arm. Did you check your S.M.A.R.T data? I think you find the number of head parkings under "Load/Unload Cycle Count"... Some RAID users had some ridiculous high numbers after even short intervals of usage...

 

Never really though of that, might be doing that next time, although the ones they sent(great service btw) has hold up, but I am slowly changing them to Reds instead, becasue I dont want the auto error correction in the HDD themselves, the OS and raidcards takes care of that in a much better way. So yeah reds is going all the way.

[the_hardware_guy]

Blue-7200rpm great little drives good for everyday use 

Green- Intellipower (5400-7200rpm) energy saving great if you want to go low power and have high capacities used mainly for storage (ssd + hard drive config)

Red- Intellipower nas drives nothing too special for nas 's they have a good warranty.

Black-Great drives have high capacities used for high performance computers very reliable

 

and then you have

 

Velociraptors- The best 10000rpm have an awesome heatsink on them work amazingly highest capacity is 1TB did I say they were amazing.