black blue red??? tha diff

K-Swiggle · June 3, 2016

ok so my 500 gig HWQD HDD or what ever it is that came in an old toshiba just failed. my computer wont even boot with it plugged in. good thing i had my main OS and drivers and junk on my SDD samsung 250 gig. i dont know if it really failed but yea it wont boot if i have it in a port. and yes ive tried many different sata slots and still no boot. but it does post and show it is installed which is wierd. but i digress. The reason im on here now is im trying to figure out what is the difference between all the different colors of HDD by WD. ive read around that black is fast but loud and not really worth it. blue is great for storing music and junk. but im a gamer and i had steam installed on my old HDD. so what color would be best for me. and if WD is good or should go with a seagate or something. right now i have a WD 1tb blue in my amazon shopping cart for like 50 bucks US and if you guys can clear the air so i can get my new drive and continue my gaming. or if you have any idea why all of a sudden my drive would stop working.

side note i was downloading a game from steam (bioshock 1 to be exact) and i got board so i tried to launch sonic Adventure 2 battle and thats when the drive stopped showing up on my comp and steam stopped working.

so yea if you guys can help me decide on a drive and maybe answer my question about my old drive that would help me out cuz i dont wanna have to go back to my ps4 for gaming since it doesnt have all my fun stuff on it right now

my rig. i5 6500, crucial bollistix 16 gig ram, msi gaming z170 m5, samsung 850 evo 250 gb, and some 500gb HDD that isnt working right X D

Captain_WD · June 3, 2016

2 hours ago, K-swigle said:

~snip~

Hey there

To start with the old drive, I'd try to connect it externally to an already working computer and see if the drive shows up in Device Manager or in Disk Management and if it does how does it look like.

You may also want to check if the drive is visible in the BIOS and if it's spinning at all.

What's the drive's exact brand and model number (not the serial number - that should not be posted anywhere online)?

Regarding our drives:
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For gaming it wouldn't really matter as gaming for the most part relies on the storage's performance only for the loading times (initial and in-game). Even if you put a game on a SSD you won't see changes in the FPS or graphics quality. Only games such as MMOs and Open World may load the surrounding textures faster and smoother but this won't change your FPS nor graphics quality.

I'd say the WD Blue is a pretty good choice for this. go for it!

If there are any questions - feel free to ask!

Captain_WD.

K-Swiggle · June 3, 2016

8 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

Hey there

To start with the old drive, I'd try to connect it externally to an already working computer and see if the drive shows up in Device Manager or in Disk Management and if it does how does it look like.

You may also want to check if the drive is visible in the BIOS and if it's spinning at all.

What's the drive's exact brand and model number (not the serial number - that should not be posted anywhere online)?

Regarding our drives:
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For gaming it wouldn't really matter as gaming for the most part relies on the storage's performance only for the loading times (initial and in-game). Even if you put a game on a SSD you won't see changes in the FPS or graphics quality. Only games such as MMOs and Open World may load the surrounding textures faster and smoother but this won't change your FPS nor graphics quality.

I'd say the WD Blue is a pretty good choice for this. go for it!

If there are any questions - feel free to ask!

Captain_WD.

Oh ok thanks. Just ordered me a blue 1tb ^^ and the hard drive is a hgst 500gb 5400rpm but does boot into bios and shows up but I can't hear it spinning but does making a clicking sound every so often. Not a lot but still clicks