difference between black/blue/green drives

[Matt_Twinkletoes]

I don't know the difference between the "colors" of the drives, what is the difference? I'm guessing they're more quiet or something?

EDIT: Also do you think 240gb ssd would be enough? I mean my steam library is super small the only thing I do is game. I only have 5 games adding up to about like 30gb of space

[TheKDub]

Green drives are slow, they spin at 5400RPM and are intended for low power usage mass storage, blue is more of average consumer type of storage, and spins at 7200RPM, and black is the higher end, larger storage, which also spins at 7200RPM, though is noticeably faster than blue drives.

[Anthony10]

You mean WD's series of drives? They explain it on their website.

 

Look at this

[Enderman]

speed

green<blue<black

[Hoppa]

From my untrustworthy memory:

Black: 7200rpm - 64MB cache

Blue: 7200rpm - 32MB cashe? not as fast at reading and writing from the black

Green: 5200rpm - I believe it varies its speed to save power (different from when a black spins down) - not recommended for raid use apparently 

[MegaDave91]

Green drives are not recommended for RAID as they feature "Intellipower" which alters (among other things) rotational speed.

[EvilNugget]

240GB of SSD should be fine if you only have 30GB of games (that's not a lot & it will eventually grow), but it won't if you just love one game.

[Tarzan]

I don't know the difference between the "colors" of the drives, what is the difference? I'm guessing they're more quiet or something?

EDIT: Also do you think 240gb ssd would be enough? I mean my steam library is super small the only thing I do is game. I only have 5 games adding up to about like 30gb of space

 

240gb isn't a problem. I have 240gb SSD and 1tb HDD (WD Blue), my 3 games installed on the SSD together with all my files. And I still have plenty of gb available. I only use the HDD for my 13gb files of movies and songs.

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi there @Matt_Twinkletoes!

 

The difference is in the purpose the HDDs are designed for.

 

The Black is a performance oriented drive and has build-in features like dynamic cache (which optimizes the cache allocation) and no touch ramp technology (the recording head never touches the disk) that will give you faster loading times, and has 5 years limited warranty as well. Since you're looking for a gaming drive, I would recommend you this one.

 

WD Blue is meant for everyday computing - very good drive with solid performance and typical power consumption. The Green drives on the other hand are energy efficient, secondary storage designed HDDs. The main benefit is that they save power and wear by spinning down when they can, this means they're basically best for things like backup drives which are only in use periodically (e.g - once an hour). Here are few links where you can check them out:

 

WD Black - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=juuwlU

WD Blue - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=ZgxqiX

WD Green - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=E45poF

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers!