Help with choosing hard drive

[Roboslash1]

Hi, 

 

I have decided to get another hard drive for my setup so I looked a bit at some ones on the internet. I have found two that I like:

 

• Western Digital Desktop Green 2TB
• Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 

I wondered what I should get. The 2tb green is slightly more expensive. I do have a lot of games and media files. I also wonder if there is any BIG benefit of having a blue disk over a green. 

 

Post your thoughts below

Cheers,

 

Roboslash1
 

[xeromynd]

I'd go for Blue, they're pretty standard aside from the high performance Black. Greens (imo) are ok for storing data you don't access all the time, backup drives etc..

 

Are you sure you're looking at the newly released drives? afaik they no longer use the 'caviar' branding, so the Blue one you've selected might be an older product, which would explain why the green is more expensive.

 

Are they both the same RPM?

[Roboslash1]

The blue has 7200 rpm, the green I think also has, though it slows down to be "eco friendly" when it is not in use.

.

[michaelk12]

The main difference is that greens are slower, and they use less power, and make less heat, and are quieter. This is really only an issue if you have a server room/NAS full of drives, where the the extra heat/power/noise is magnified over dozens of drives, then that becomes a problem. If you are mainly storing pictures and non-4K videos, get a green, but if you are storing a lot of games on a green, or if you are using it as a boot drive, performance will suffer noticeably, but loading times might not bother you as much as they bother me, since all my games are on SSD, and I've grown used to that.

[paps511]

Newegg has a deal today for 3x 2tb Seagate Barracuda drives for like $239. I know they are not WD, but it might be worth looking into.

[Ptopman]

In reality, if its really just for games, the green drive. load times may be a bit longer but its not going to be a whole lot. As well with the greens, you should beable to turn off that sleep mode if it gets irritating.

 

If you are open to suggestions, may I add that you may like the seagate barracuda 2tb for $80 that can be found here, Or the 3tb for $90 here. and from what im looking at, for the same price as a WD Green, a 4tb for $130 here.

They are nice drives, I just got a 3tb. 

 

Im not a segate fanboy, just they have better prices.

 

PS. this is all in USD. you don't have a location so i cant tell what currency you have.

[Roboslash1]

The main difference is that greens are slower, and they use less power, and make less heat, and are quieter. This is really only an issue if you have a server room/NAS full of drives, where the the extra heat/power/noise is magnified over dozens of drives, then that becomes a problem. If you are mainly storing pictures and non-4K videos, get a green, but if you are storing a lot of games on a green, or if you are using it as a boot drive, performance will suffer noticeably, but loading times might not bother you as much as they bother me, since all my games are on SSD, and I've grown used to that.

 

I will basically store games on the new disk. 

[Roboslash1]

In reality, if its really just for games, the green drive. load times may be a bit longer but its not going to be a whole lot. As well with the greens, you should beable to turn off that sleep mode if it gets irritating.

 

If you are open to suggestions, may I add that you may like the seagate barracuda 2tb for $80 that can be found here, Or the 3tb for $90 here.

They are nice drives, I just got a 3tb.

 

I looked into them yes, but many people said they had high failure rates, so I decided to go WD, the same company my current hard drive is from. 

[Ptopman]

I looked into them yes, but many people said they had high failure rates, so I decided to go WD, the same company my current hard drive is from. 

Then I would say go for the greens. They will be slower but you will only see it when loading in games.

[Mighty_Miro_WD]

Hi there @Roboslash1!

 

The difference between these drives is in the purpose they're designed for.

 

WD Green is an energy-efficient drive that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power. It is designed for backups and secondary storage and its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving. It is mostly chosen for massive media storage (it comes in capacity up to 6TB) in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games.

 

WD Blue on the other hand is a regular everyday drive that is most commonly used for regular computing, light gaming and workloads and combined with SSD. It is fully capable to run most games as well as many programs for editing or programming. If you're looking for a HDD to run games from, I would recommend you this one since it will suit better.

 

You can check them here:

 

WD Blue - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Ty2xsX

WD Green - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=7bOiVv

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers!

[ictdude1]

a green drive would probably do you just fine, yes they are slightly slower then the wd blue drive but not by much