Difference between WD drive colours?

[Bob Jim]

Hi,

My HDD has died on me (currently using an old 256gb potato) and I am looking for a replacement. I was wondering, why are WD colours so different in price? Should I go for the cheaper one, or splurge some money?

Thanks

[LegacyStijncat]

@Captain_WD, that's your business

 

But I'll give a quick summary.

Green: good for normal storage, and is relatively quiet and power efficient. But this will ENDLESSLY struggle with programs, OS and that kind of stuff.

Blue: normal drives. Most versatile, and good at everything.

Black: I THINK that they are some kind of beefed up Blue's, but not really sure. Cap' may know .

Red: for raid storage, that's kinda it

[-TesseracT-]

[ZetZet]

Green is slow used for archives.

Blue is consumer drive, fast, cheap, bang for the buck.

Red is fairly slow, but designed to work in tough conditions.

Black is overpriced.

Purple is for idk what. (Supposedly for 24/7 writing like in surveillance)

[Bob Jim]

Green is slow used for archives.

Blue is consumer drive, fast, cheap, bang for the buck.

Red is fairly slow, but designed to work in tough conditions.

Black is overpriced.

Purple is for idk what.

Black is overpriced. What? What features does it have? Also what is the difference between normal colours and 'Caviar' colours?

[KamiKatze]

There is some more detailed information on WD's website.

 

The ones interesting for you are the

 

Blue - It's your standard bread and butter HDD, can't go wrong with that.

Green - Has some more power saving features and reduced noise because it runs at lower speeds (5400 rpm)

Black - Faster than blue, but not nearly as fast as a SSD in access times.

 

The other like Red for servers or Purple for surveilance systems are not interesting for you.

[KamiKatze]

Black is overpriced. What? What features does it have? Also what is the difference between normal colours and 'Caviar' colours?

 

AFAIK, Caviar only says it's a 3.5" drives (what you want) and Scorpios are the 2.5" drives. But don't quote me on that.

 

I'd like to know it for sure as well.

[Godlygamer23]

Green drives are slower, more power efficient drives. They're apparently louder than the typical drive, so I can't confirm this as I've never owned a Green drive before.

Blues are more balanced drives that offer a good compromise between heat, performance, power draw, and noise.

Blacks are more oriented towards performance and less concerned about heat output, power draw, and noise.

Reds are designed to be used 24/7 like in the area of servers.

Purples I believe are designed for use with security cameras - at least that's what WD advertises. I don't think there's anything special about the drive at all in that regard.

[Enderman]

Green is slow used for archives.

Blue is consumer drive, fast, cheap, bang for the buck.

Red is fairly slow, but designed to work in tough conditions.

Black is overpriced.

Purple is for idk what. (Supposedly for 24/7 writing like in surveillance)

reds are almost faster than black drives...

and have way lower noise levels and much longer life span

[ZetZet]

Black is overpriced. What? What features does it have? Also what is the difference between normal colours and 'Caviar' colours?

It has longer warranty.

There is some more detailed information on WD's website.

 

The ones interesting for you are the

 

Blue - It's your standard bread and butter HDD, can't go wrong with that.

Green - Has some more power saving features and reduced noise because it runs at lower speeds (5400 rpm)

Black - Faster than blue, but not nearly as fast as a SSD in access times.

 

The other like Red for servers or Purple for surveilance systems are not interesting for you.

Black is not really faster than blue in any test I have ever seen, it's just that black comes in bigger than 1tb capacities and is still fast.

 

reds are almost faster than black drives...

and have way lower noise levels and much longer life span

entirely possible, I never recommend wd black anyway since you can buy two barracudas for the price of one black. Just makes no sense to me.

[Godlygamer23]

Black is overpriced. What? What features does it have? Also what is the difference between normal colours and 'Caviar' colours?

Caviar is WD's old modeling name. They have since dropped it.

[KamiKatze]

Caviar is WD's old modeling name. They have since dropped it.

 

I still see it on recent drives with 64 MB cache and whatnot. Some vendors seem not to have gotten that memo.

[minibois]

-snip-

They all have a different purpose.

Greens are often the cheapest, because they are slower and really only meant for video and picture storage and whatever (stuff that doesn't need high speeds).

Blacks are often the most expensive, but the fastest. (very much fit for OS, Games, etc.)

Blues are just behind that. (and serves the same purpose)

Reds are mostly meant for servers, but still work for regular use too.

Purple IIRC, is for 24/7 server usage but not very much fit for game usage, because of its fluctuating speeds.

Caviar is not used in the names anymore, but if you still come across for example a Caviar Blue drive; it's almost the same as a regular Blue.

 

Hope this helped a bit.

[Godlygamer23]

I still see it on recent drives with 64 MB cache and whatnot. Some vendors seem not to have gotten that memo.

As I said, the name has been dropped. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007603%2050001306%20600003334&Manufactory=1306

[IMPERIUS]

Green is slow used for archives.

Blue is consumer drive, fast, cheap, bang for the buck.

Red is fairly slow, but designed to work in tough conditions.

Black is overpriced.

Purple is for idk what. (Supposedly for 24/7 writing like in surveillance)

@Captain_WD, that's your business

 

But I'll give a quick summary.

Green: good for normal storage, and is relatively quiet and power efficient. But this will ENDLESSLY struggle with programs, OS and that kind of stuff.

Blue: normal drives. Most versatile, and good at everything.

Black: I THINK that they are some kind of beefed up Blue's, but not really sure. Cap' may know .

Red: for raid storage, that's kinda it

 

Fuck, I have a green hdd. How bad is it? My experiences with it are very loud at start up (not entirely sure if its that or not) and other stuff is meh

[ZetZet]

Fuck, I have a green hdd. How bad is it? My experiences with it are very loud at start up (not entirely sure if its that or not) and other stuff is meh

in my experience green is very slow. good for storage, anything else I can't take it. It shouldn't be loud though...

It's not bad, it's just not for general use in my opinion.

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

Hi,

My HDD has died on me (currently using an old 256gb potato) and I am looking for a replacement. I was wondering, why are WD colours so different in price? Should I go for the cheaper one, or splurge some money?

Thanks

green is good for mass storage. it spins down during inactivity to conserve power, which is great for a silent machine but not ideal as a boot drive. great bang for buck when paired with a SSD

black: fast as far as 3.5 inch HDDs go, but costs more than other colors

blue: bang for the buck, not a bad option for any use case. general hard drive.

red: NAS drive. million hour MTBF like the RE4, but much cheaper. a good option for long term storage or backups. if I was going to pick a drive, I'd probably pick one of these, as most of my storage is network attatched and used for backup

purple: surveilance. pretty specific to that use. meant to be written to all day long.

I can't think of any more colors

[NumLock21]

Green-storage, power savings

Blue- Normal everyday use

Black- Performance

Red- Storage, NAS

Red Pro- Storage, NAS, Performance

Purple- Surveillance

[IMPERIUS]

in my experience green is very slow. good for storage, anything else I can't take it. It shouldn't be loud though...

It's not bad, it's just not for general use in my opinion.

 

Yeah, it is slow, not much faster than my 6 year old hdd.........

[DarkRift5]

I would go for the Blue. It's always been good for me and it's a good mix of pricepoint and performance output. Black is for very high speed stuff but I've found it only makes a slight difference for a big price jump; you're better off getting a WD Blue and a SSD for the OS for a little more. All the other ones (red, green, and I guess there's a purple one now) aren't made for standard computer stuff (think NAS, security footage, etc).

EDIT: make sure you get the 7200rpm Blue drive. You can get them nowadays in 1TB for like $50 if you look. I got mine at Microcenter for $55, and I know that Amazon has them pretty cheap too.

[LegacyStijncat]

Fuck, I have a green hdd. How bad is it? My experiences with it are very loud at start up (not entirely sure if its that or not) and other stuff is meh

Green isn't bad. On the other side, it's ideal if you want a low power consumption - low noise HDD. Just don't use it for OS/Programs. It doesn't have a constant RPM, so it'll struggle with things like that.

[IMPERIUS]

Green isn't bad. On the other side, it's ideal if you want a low power consumption - low noise HDD. Just don't use it for OS/Programs. It doesn't have a constant RPM, so it'll struggle with things like that.

Yeah well bad choice then except for the noise. Need to get a ssd then

[LegacyStijncat]

Yeah well bad choice then except for the noise. Need to get a ssd then

If your drive is underperforming, you need an extra HDD/SSD. Not if in theory something is bad.

[Techpumpkin_WD]

 Hello Guys,

 

Captain_WD is currently taking a few well deserved days off , so I'll try and help you in the meantime.

 

There are a lot of differences between the different WD Colors. Each drive is optimized for a specific function to maximize the performance and reliability of the drives. The Captain already wrote a good explanation so I'll just quote him:

 

 

 

 

WD Blue is your 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. Its capacity goes up to 1TB. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=yEF5Ql

 

WD Green is your energy-efficient drive that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power. It is designed for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving. It is mostly chosen for massive media storage (up to 6TB) in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=9NuekR

 

WD Black is the performance drive in WD's consumer line. It is the fastest among them and has good features such as a built-in dual-core CPU that makes the drive great for multitasking. It is designed for heavy gaming, big workloads and intensive file usage. It has a llong, 5-year limited warranty and its mostly used in gaming computers or editing machines. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=kwWszB

 

WD Red is the NAS/RAID class drive from the consumer series that is designed specifically for RAID environments and NAS devices. It is tuned and optimized for 24/7 performance, RAID arrays and up to 8-bay NAS systems. This drive is often used for backups, stable secondary storage and in streaming builds, as well as NAS and RAID. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=6IxL8e

 

WD Red Pro is designed with the same purpose as the regular WD Red, only for larger scales (8 to 16 bays). They have fixed 7,200 rpm (while the regular WD Red has Intellipower), longer warranty and some additional features in the firmware, enabling it to perform even better at larger scale RAID arrays. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=OZwpoG

 

WD Purple is your surveillance-class drive, designed specifically for surveillance storage, video recording and streaming. It has optimized noise reduction (being the most quiet drive in the consumer line with only 22dBA nooise level during seeking time), significantly reduced frame loss nad optimized firmware. This drive is also used often for desktop computers due to its low noise levels. It has optimized sequential read/write speeds but the random read/write speeds are lower than normal and some people experience problems with it in regular desktops. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=lH1AD6

 

WD VelociRaptor is a fast workstation drive, spinning at 10,000 rpm. It has limited capacity of 1TB and is mainly used in workstations for editing and content creation. People start to replace it with SSDs but still a lot of users prefer regular HDDs. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=lMOnhR

 

WD Black2 is a dual drive that combines a 120GB SSD with a 1TB HDD in one enclosure in 2.5" form factor. It is designed specifically to improve laptop capacity and performance. It is different from a hybrid SSHD because the SSD part is much bigger (120GB compared to 8GB) and works independently from the HDD (while you cannot control what goes on the SSD part of a SSHD). It is mostly used in laptops with only one drive bay for both speed boost and capacity improvement. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=q11Mfu

 

WD AV is a drive that is designed specifically for 24/7 streaming and PVR, DVR and IPTV environments. It is an earlier version of the WD Purple and is still used for constant streaming in TVs, media players, etc. http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=p25oet

 

To answer the specific questions: 

- WD Red is indeed the choice between all the consumer drives for 24/7 RAID NAS. It is designed and optimized for that. You other option would be WD Red Pro, but it is up to you if you need the additional features. 

- The main differences between WD Red and WD Purple would be the features and tuning of their firmware for the specific purposes that they are designed for, the different optimization of random and sequential read/write speeds and the fact that WD Purple does not power down unless the system is shut down, compared to WD Red which powers down after a certain amount of time without usage. 

- WD Red and WD Red Pro would be the consumer level HDDs for RAID environments.

- Both WD Green and WD Red are good and fast enough for storing media and photos

 

Captain_WD. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for Caviar and Scorpio drives – those are just older generation HDDs.

 

@ IMPERIUS It's not usual for the Green drives to be that loud at start up. Run WD DLG to check the health http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=UyixEo

 

Techpumpkin_WD

 

[kent1147]

Hi,

My HDD has died on me (currently using an old 256gb potato) and I am looking for a replacement. I was wondering, why are WD colours so different in price? Should I go for the cheaper one, or splurge some money?

Thanks

 

In order of performance:

 

Green - 5400rpm mechanical hard drive.  Tuned for low noise and heat.  Best used as non-RAID bulk media storage.

Red - Almost identical to the WD Caviar Green above, except it has a feature called Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER), which is a valuable feature for RAID-5 array integrity.  Best use as RAID'ed bulk media storage.

Blue - Standard 7200rpm drive.  Supports 16/32/64MB, with one processor.  Intended for general desktop use.

Black - Labeled as the "performance" mechanical hard drive.  7200rpm, 64MB cache.  Intended for general desktop use where performance is desired.

Purple - Not for consumers.  Intended for surveillance storage purposes (i.e. recording from multiple video cameras simultaneously).  Tuned for high reliability in high-duty scenarios (24/7 writes from multiple data sources streaming data to the drive).

 

 

 

As for what you should buy... 

 

At this point, the only drives you should ever really consider buying are WD Green or Red, depending on whether you are going to RAID them or not.  If you're looking for performance when running OS / apps / games, you should really be looking at SSDs.  

 

It's fair to say that if you're buying a mechanical HDD at this point, the only practical use for it is for bulk media storage (photos, videos, music, pr0n, etc).  And when you're dealing with that type of use case, then you intentionally do not want to buy a 7200rpm drive.  First, because performance doesn't matter.  A 4GB BluRay rip MKV will play back equally well on a "slow" 5400rpm drive, or the fastest storage money can buy.   Second, the lower heat and noise of a 5400rpm drive will actually be an advantage when it comes to drive longevity.