WD Green

[Padorkous]

Hi! I am wondering for what are the WD green's and what kind of problems they have.

[rustikles]

They are for lower-cost machines that don't need fast storage. The warranty on them could be better, and most complaints come from their aggressive power-saving features that will sometimes put unnecessary load cycles on the drive (can be disabled with some hassle).

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with WD Greens, but there are usually better options. For example, a 3TB WD Green can be found on sale for $105. A much more well regarded 3TB WD Red can be found for only $15 more on sale ($120). I'm of the opinion that $15 is worth it for an extra full year of warranty and generally better reliability. 

[ZetZet]

They are for home storage, not to be used often. They stop spinning while not in use so access times are so bad it's not even worth having them as secondary drives in my opinion.

[Arcanekitten]

there also slower most of  the time 5400 RPM

[Lolzious]

They are very slow. Only for picture storage/stuff that doesn't need to be accessed quickly.

Other then that, they are quiet, cool, energy efficient, and cheap

[Jade]

They're for mass storage. Typically used for backups or media that doesn't need to be accessed quickly.

[Kyuubixchidori]

its not like they are EXTREMELY slow. I run games off mine 100% fine. transfer rates are between 100-120mb/s. I love my green drive, as its the only thing making noise in my system. and when at idle and just running off the ssd, it stops spinning, which means 100% silent rig, with less moving parts to wear down/make heat. 

 

 

highly recommend it as a secondary drive. I plan to keep using them in systems with a dedicated SSD, as silence and heat are more important then 10-20mb/s in a non operating system setting (imho)

[Jarsky]

wow theres a lot of negativity towards WD Greens. I have a RAID-5 of 6 of them which i've disabled the spindown on, and they can pull upwards of 500MB/s to my SSD's

That array has been running for over 41000 hours.

 

They're absolutely fine for file storage. I just wouldnt put anything that is reliant on access times, like game installs and vm datastores and such. But for media and personal files they're perfectly fine. As above though I would recommend a Red drive over a Green drive any time.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

I am using WD Green 2 TB for over 4 years now, for rendering and gaming, they works perfectly fine, dont need to buy WD black or such just for gaming, they run fine , if you have an SSD for OS ie 

[MoonSpot]

Ditto, been using 5 greens in my array for 4-5 years now.  I however do use them as they were intended and have preserved their spin down as it's an energy saving feature that is of greater benefit then a quicker initial access time to stored data.

[Rift]

This will probably be a repeat of what everyone here had said,but Green's are a great option for a secondary drive, or as some people mentioned, a RAID aray. I know someone who uses two of them for a backup NAS, and an SSD and faster mechanical drive in his system.

[Captain_WD]

Hi! I am wondering for what are the WD green's and what kind of problems they have.

 

Hey Padorkous,

 

The guys explained pretty much all the features and the design of the drive. It is meant basically for secondary storage for files, media and programs that do not require fast access times. WD Green drives work cool, quiet and save energy. they do spin down more frequently than a regular drive in order to save energy, but there is a tool to disable that in case you need it. Those drives are great to have as a massive backup/storage drive in your computer to put all media, photos, music and other files and programs that you don't use often. Here's a link with more info: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Cwi0AP

 

Most people report problems with slow loading times when playing games or other storage-intensive applications, but this is caused by the time the drive needs to spin up after it has spun down. Again, the design of the drive is for secondary storage, not for storage-intensive applications.

 

Captain_WD.