WD Green vs Blue

[SodaPunch]

My build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/rkqqQ7

 

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: ??? (still deciding between liquid/air cooling)

Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  

Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory 

Storage:120-250 GB SSD (not sure which one)

Storage: Either WD Green 2TB or WD Blue 1TB

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card  

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 w/Window (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  

Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  

Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer  

 

My total budget is ~$1000 USD, but I'm willing to go up to $100 over budget

 

Please leave any suggestions, thanks

[CoolaxGaming]

Seagate Barracuda 2TB = Best HDD ever

[Guest]

green is bad.

go with blue.

 

for those that will say "why is green bad bla bla bla" it is because it parks its head every few seconds and its bad. I know it can be turned off.

[Lolzious]

If it's just for data, then the green drive is good.

It may be a tad slower, but that shouldn't matter unless you're putting an OS on it.

[KE2012]

As you have a SSD I would go for the green as it has the larger storage capacity.

[Dabombinable]

Blue because Greens have notorious reliability issues if they are used for anything except storage (aka normal use kills them).

[DeViLzzz]

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st3000dm001

Price per GB is the cheapest with this Seagate.  7200 RPM drive and I have had no issues with mine after being WD for so long.  Why support WD when they still think that they should have post-flood pricing on WD Caviar Blacks when the flood was over LONG AGO?

[Theo]

Blue because Greens have notorious reliability issues if they are used for anything except storage (aka normal use kills them).

hmm i love this misinformation

[Dabombinable]

hmm i love this misinformation

I had a couple of them before I ended up with my WD Blue. I didn't even get a full 2 years use out of them (RAID 1) before they failed. And they started showing errors when I used SMART when past 12 months use. (I ran a couple of older 40GB standard caviar drives in RAID 1-they gave me 4 years solid use before dieing).

[Theo]

I had a couple of them before I ended up with my WD Blue. I didn't even get a full 2 years use out of them (RAID 1) before they failed. And they started showing errors when I used SMART when past 12 months use.

mine is still running strong after 4 years while it was my OS drive for 2, just cause you had troubles doesnt mean everyone does

[Dabombinable]

mine is still running strong after 4 years while it was my OS drive for 2, just cause you had troubles doesnt mean everyone does

I'm not the only one who has had issues with the reliability of WD Geen HDD, I know everyone has different experiences which is why I wouldn't have made a comment on the reliability of them if other people didn't have the same problems.

[SodaPunch]

I've heard Seagate has had some reliability issues https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/

is that true?

[Dabombinable]

I've heard Seagate has had some reliability issues https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/

is that true?

I wouldn't trust them, the environment those HDD get used in, I'm surprised that they don't all fail in the first month.

[elkenrod]

hmm i love this misinformation

 

The intellipark issue is pretty well documented.  Yes, there are fixes, but the hassle for some people isn't going to be worth it.  This is why many people recommend Blues over Greens.

[Captain_WD]

 

My build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/rkqqQ7

 

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: ??? (still deciding between liquid/air cooling)

Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  

Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory 

Storage:120-250 GB SSD (not sure which one)

Storage: Either WD Green 2TB or WD Blue 1TB

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card  

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 w/Window (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  

Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  

Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer  

 

My total budget is ~$1000 USD, but I'm willing to go up to $100 over budget

 

Please leave any suggestions, thanks

 

 

 

Hey SodaPunch,

 

It depends on what you are going to use the drive for. As it was mentioned above, WD Green drives are designed for secondary storage, energy-efficiency and cool and quiet performance. I would recommend them for media storage, backups and simple secondary place to store all your data. I wouldn't recommend them as boot drives or a place where you run heavier programs or games from. People report that they have problems with them in RAID1 or more intense usage. This is simply because they are not designed for that. They are not NAS/RAID class drives (like WD Red) and are not recommended for RAID environments (including RAID1) exactly because of the bigger chance of having bad sectors more often.

 

WD Blue drives are designed for everyday usage. This includes backups and secondary storage, but they are limited to 1TB in size. You shouldn't see much difference between the two drives if you use them for simple storage (except the heat and noise levels where WD Green performs better). 

 

Either drive should serve you well since you have a SSD for a boot drive.

 

Captain_WD.

[SodaPunch]

Thanks everyone! I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to PCs. What is this RAID you guys are talking about?

[Captain_WD]

Thanks everyone! I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to PCs. What is this RAID you guys are talking about?

 

RAID generally stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks and it basically means a set of drives (two or more) that work together as one.

There are several RAID types: striping (data is split in parts) that gives speed boost, mirroring (a identical copy of a drive is created on another one) that gives you redundancy, spanning (basically several drives seen as one huge volume) that simply enables many drives to be seen as one big volume without any change in performance or redundancy and a combination between these types. the ones that give you speed boost (RAID0, RAID5, RAID6, RAID10, etc.) have the data split. Because of that if one of the drives fail, you lose all data on all the drives. Some of these RAID types provide redundancy (fault tolerance) and when a drive fails, you can reconstruct the data by replacing the drive. Some RAID types have more than 1 drive tolerance. RAID6 and RAID10 can sustain 2 drives failing and still keep your data whole. If you configure a RAID array, you need to format all the drives that are going to be part of the RAID array. This means that all data on these drives will be erased. 

 

Captain_WD.

[ictdude1]

green is bad.

go with blue.

 

for those that will say "why is green bad bla bla bla" it is because it parks its head every few seconds and its bad. I know it can be turned off.

thats because they are made for storage not for running an os, you dont always need to access the storage every send a pc is turned on so whats the point of it having to run?

[MLGNOSCOPEHEADSHOTGETREKT]

Green=Good

Blue=Bad

[Will Barnard]

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

[LasersPewPew]

I had a couple of them before I ended up with my WD Blue. I didn't even get a full 2 years use out of them (RAID 1) before they failed. And they started showing errors when I used SMART when past 12 months use. (I ran a couple of older 40GB standard caviar drives in RAID 1-they gave me 4 years solid use before dieing).

 

Your first mistake was running WD Greens in RAID. WD Greens are variable spin drives and have low power mode build into their firmware. Your RAID controller detects these anomalies as the drives dying and drops the drive from the array. Independently they work fine under any normal circumstance. They were also never recommended as a system drive. That's what Blues and Blacks are for. WD Greens has always been targeted at the home storage market. 

 

My 1TB WD10EACS and 2 2TB WD20EARS have been running for 5+ years as storage drives and they're still operational (knock on wood)

 

 

Anyway...

 

Go with Green if you're just storing files. Go with Blue or Black since prices aren't that big of a difference these days if you're planning on installing applications or maybe games?