Author Topic: WD Blue vs Black: Reliability? (Read 8771 times)

Sakura90 · « **on:** June 14, 2012, 11:46:39 PM »

Hi :3

10 days ago I sent two WD drives for RMA, a 1.5TB Green and a 500GB Blue. Yesterday I received the replacements by mail... the Green is the same model (EARS) I had before, but instead of a Blue I got a Black (AALX)

I don't care about speed, already got a system drive, I'd only use the disks for storage. Are WD Blacks really of better quality? I mean in reliability. I've seen comparison between Blue and Black but they only talk about performance (which btw isn't a big difference it seems). Can the Black be considered "safer" than ordinary HDDs? Or it's all more or less the same?

I ask because I could sell it for a nice amount and get a nice case for my other HDDs

(here WD Blacks are scarce and quite expensive). But if Blacks are worth the while, I could keep it for a "safe" backup of more important stuff.

P.S.: Make the comparison with any other HDD, not only Blue. Has the Black any substantial quality/reliability improvement over other ordinary HDDs?

datora · « **Reply #1 on:** June 15, 2012, 12:32:42 AM »

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The Black edition (of both Caviar 3.5" and Scorpio 2.5" form factors) is THE premium Western Digital offering, manufactured with their best parts. They come with a 5 year warranty, vs. the others with 3 years or less.

The Black drives are intended to be OS drives, where they experience constant read/write and are powered on almost continuously. The performance gain is usually due to being SATA III (6.0 Gb/s), and 7200 rpm, where the other drives might only be 3.0 Gb/s &/or 5900 or 5400 rpm. (caveat: some older Black Caviar drives are SATA II; I have a couple of those, but they aren't manufactured anymore. Also, the Black Scorpio drives often still come in SATA II but, again, WD is halting production of those in favor of SATA III).

Black drives usually have larger cache, usually 32 or 64 MB these days, while the others may only have 16 MB. So, yes, Black editions outperform Blue & Green editions under just about any imaginable condition. The Scorpio notebook drives in Black might only be 16 MB, but that's changing.

You got a pretty spectacular upgrade. There are higher grade WD drives, but they are industrial/server class and very expensive. Be happy; WD customer service did a really cool thing for you.

megido-rev.M · « **Reply #2 on:** June 15, 2012, 12:39:09 AM »

As far as my vague memories can recall, the Caviar Black has higher performance and quality (power, parts, cache, etc.), and maybe longer warranty than Blue. How that translates to a more reliable drive depends on usage, really. If I needed to, I likely would rid the low perf HDDs before anything, because magnetic HDDs are pretty much system bottlenecks in the first place.

Anyway, all I know is that when I did my system HDD research I had concluded the Black was far superior to the Blue.

Sakura90 · « **Reply #3 on:** June 15, 2012, 12:48:26 AM »

Yes, indeed. And more in my country where most don't gives a fuck about customer service <_<

When you say "manufactured with their best parts" I guess it means Blacks have a less % of failures...

Mhm... now I don't know what to do. I have a Seagate 7200.14 (ST500DM002, SATA 6 Gb/s, only 16MB cache) as system drive. I can't find any reviews of the 7200.14 line though, much less a comparison to the Blacks. Still, I don't use the PC for anything that requires speed, seeing 1080p is the most I do.

Should I replace it with the Black? I heard they are noisy (that IS a problem for me, for a system drive @ 24/7). Lol, maybe I should just keep the Black and compare the two myself (I don't want to open the sealed bag it came in, that way I can sell it as perfectly "new").

P.S.: Anything but magnetic is useless to me, as I have ~300GB for seeding. Plus the downloads, for me is all size and reliability, speed is non-important. Even noise has a higher priority for me

datora · « **Reply #4 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:07:59 AM »

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Quote from: Sakura90 on June 15, 2012, 12:48:26 AM

Should I replace it with the Black? I heard they are noisy (that IS a problem for me, for a system drive @ 24/7). Lol, maybe I should just keep the Black and compare the two myself (I don't want to open the sealed bag it came in, that way I can sell it as perfectly "new").

Yes.

The Western Digital website offers Acronis software as part of their free & powerful software options for their customers. You could clone your Seagate to your Western Digital. I do this with 750 GB drives regularly, takes about 1-2 hours depending on how full they are. You can also re-partition while you're at it, if you have need.

Anyway, if you clone the Seagate to the WD, just boot up from the WD and see what the noise & performance is like. If you don't like, then put the Seagate back in.

Personally, I consider the WD Black drives to be about 10 or 100 times more reliable than Seagate.

Also, when you visit the WD website, get a copy of their Data LifeGuard software for analysis, formatting and sector alignment. When I get my new drives, the first thing I do is run the Lifeguard software, do a quick check, then full check (full surface scan), then format using low-level format. Takes about 2 hours, but it means that the entire disk surface is read & written to a couple times. You'll find out fast if there is a problem. At that point I consider the drive safe to format & use, either install an OS, use as data drive, or clone another drive to it.

If your computer has one Western Digital drive connected & detected, you can use both Acronis and Data LifeGuard on any other drive, regardless of manufacture. A very nice bonus that can come in handy. For example, I've cloned a Samsung drive to another Samsung drive using Acronis, just because a WD drive was detected somewhere on the system even though it had no involvement with the two Samsung drives.

When i perform the cloning of an OS drive, I reserve a small space at the very front of the drive, maybe ~8 or 10 GB. I then run my cache on this partition (usually designated as the x: drive). By placing it at the front of the drive, it is in the highest performance region and you get a small performance boost when your RAM needs to use the cache. Also, because there is nothing else in this partition, the cache never fragments and is always operating at peak levels.

If/when you clone your Seagate drive to the WD drive, it will also largely defragment it near perfectly. So, if you clone to the WD drive, try it, then decide its too noisy or something, clone it back to your Seagate drive to preserve any partition tweaks you've done and get it defragmented during the process.

Side note: I have at least 8 WD drives, nearly all of them Black editions (two are older from before the color-coded era). They are at least as quiet as any other drive I have ... virtually perfect silence unless I place my ear within a foot or two of the drive. You should not have a noise problem. Some people get a lot of excess drive read/write activity due to their configuration & what is happening on their drive.

megido-rev.M · « **Reply #5 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:12:47 AM »

Quote from: Sakura90 on June 15, 2012, 12:48:26 AM

Yes, indeed. And more in my country where most don't gives a fuck about customer service <_<

When you say "manufactured with their best parts" I guess it means Blacks have a less % of failures...

Mhm... now I don't know what to do. I have a Seagate 7200.14 (ST500DM002, SATA 6 Gb/s, only 16MB cache) as system drive. I can't find any reviews of the 7200.14 line though, much less a comparison to the Blacks. Still, I don't use the PC for anything that requires speed, seeing 1080p is the most I do.

Should I replace it with the Black? I heard they are noisy (that IS a problem for me, for a system drive @ 24/7). Lol, maybe I should just keep the Black and compare the two myself (I don't want to open the sealed bag it came in, that way I can sell it as perfectly "new").

P.S.: Anything but magnetic is useless to me, as I have ~300GB for seeding. Plus the downloads, for me is all size and reliability, speed is non-important. Even noise has a higher priority for me

Well, having hi-grade parts generally means longer lifespan (or how I actually care, how long it stays 'pristine', which implies lifespan), aka greater overall operation. As for noise, I don't notice anything coming from it, inside my tower right next to me.

Also, I almost always require some reviews for critical components such as drives, otherwise the only data, or lack thereof, for such comes from advertisements (which obviously never disclose negative aspects).

vuzedome · « **Reply #6 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:46:47 AM »

Well as they say, once you go black you never go back.

megido-rev.M · « **Reply #7 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:53:58 AM »

I think in the case it would be "black by popular demand"

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Freedom Kira · « **Reply #8 on:** June 15, 2012, 04:05:07 AM »

Quote from: datora on June 15, 2012, 12:32:42 AM

.
The Black edition (of both Caviar 3.5" and Scorpio 2.5" form factors) is THE premium Western Digital offering, manufactured with their best parts. They come with a 5 year warranty, vs. the others with 3 years or less.

The Black drives are intended to be OS drives, where they experience constant read/write and are powered on almost continuously. The performance gain is usually due to being SATA III (6.0 Gb/s), and 7200 rpm, where the other drives might only be 3.0 Gb/s &/or 5900 or 5400 rpm. (caveat: some older Black Caviar drives are SATA II; I have a couple of those, but they aren't manufactured anymore. Also, the Black Scorpio drives often still come in SATA II but, again, WD is halting production of those in favor of SATA III).

Black drives usually have larger cache, usually 32 or 64 MB these days, while the others may only have 16 MB. So, yes, Black editions outperform Blue & Green editions under just about any imaginable condition. The Scorpio notebook drives in Black might only be 16 MB, but that's changing.

You got a pretty spectacular upgrade. There are higher grade WD drives, but they are industrial/server class and very expensive. Be happy; WD customer service did a really cool thing for you.

Hmm, WD Black isn't quite industrial grade, if I recall correctly. They're WD's top-of-the-line consumer line though, for sure. Their RE4 drives are their industrial line, and cost a heck of a lot more than WD Blacks. I know RE4 has the 5-year warranty but I didn't know that warranty period also applied to Blacks.

Saras · « **Reply #9 on:** June 15, 2012, 08:50:08 AM »

Seagate 7200.14 is from their Barracuda line. In other words, an eco high capacity drive. They are comparable to the WD greens.

As something to be used for the primary OS drive. There is no competition, go Black.

xShadow · « **Reply #10 on:** June 15, 2012, 12:30:42 PM »

Just from what I remember seeing in the reviews last time I bothered checking, their Black line... even as lauded as it is... isn't actually that amazing. Don't get me wrong: they're obviously better than their Blue line. However, what I noticed is that they weren't worth even close to their price premium. It's like what... twice as much for the same capacity? Better off researching other manufacturers, imo.

Clannad_92 · « **Reply #11 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:50:16 PM »

hey all, dont want to start another thread, so gonna post here...how long Blue going to last? let say in a non stop PC with a constant 40+°C? because my Blue died last week (bought it last year)...

datora · « **Reply #12 on:** June 15, 2012, 02:01:55 PM »

.

Quote from: xShadow on June 15, 2012, 12:30:42 PM

Better off researching other manufacturers, imo.

Well, there's Seagate and then ... uh ... oh. Right. Nobody else. Been paying attention much?

The "other manufacturers" are models manufactured under WD & Seagate and marketed under their old names for brand name recognition. There's been no competition with the Caviar Black line in desktop systems for about the last four years, and nothing emerging currently.

And, as far as "researching," you might consider that the posts in this thread already summarize the current state of the industry. Some of have "bothered to check," both regularly and recently. In some cases on a weekly basis for the past several years.

For a reliability in an OS drive, there's the WD Black sitting in a class by itself.

Maybe you don't place much value on your data, but that's your personal choice. The price premium is (and has been) about 50% for at least three years. Quite often it is far under 50%, sometimes only about 20% if you shop carefully. I can't remember beyond that, and it's an irrelevant comparison outside of that timeframe anyway due to manufacturing & technology changes sine 2009.

For example, a 1 TB Blue drive generally goes for about $100 currently, while a Black edition goes for about $120, outside of unusual deals. Before the flooding in Thailand last year, it was about $80 & $100 respectively. I bought a pair of 750 GB SATA III Blacks last August, one for $59 and the other for $49, and was considering the 2 TB version at about $130 even missed a special deal for $120 once. Just a couple weeks ago I could have had a 2 TB Black for $150, although the standard price is usually about $170-$180 these days.

There is no 2 TB Blue edition for comparison, 2 TB green drives go for ~$130, I've seen special deals as low as ~$115. The VelociRaptor drives aren't part of this discussion due to their extreme performance and price. The Green editions & other "Eco" drives really aren't, either, since it's pure stupid to use them as OS drives.

There's no other brand/model that has a 5 year warranty and is designed as a main OS drive. Period. No other brand/model has reviews even close to the reliability of a WD Black in these price ranges. Period.

Feel free to name something specific, though, instead of general hearsay & assertion. I'm certainly in the market and would love to see another option.

[ EDIT:

Quote from: Clannad_92 on June 15, 2012, 01:50:16 PM

how long Blue going to last? let say in a non stop PC with a constant 40+°C? because my Blue died last week (bought it last year)...

You get what you pay for. I've avoided Blue drives because the reviews on them gave me no confidence. They used to have a 3 year warranty; you need to check your purchase agreement. After only one year, it's probably still under warranty, unless WD changed it. ]

Clannad_92 · « **Reply #13 on:** June 15, 2012, 03:28:44 PM »

Quote from: datora on June 15, 2012, 02:01:55 PM

Quote from: Clannad_92 on June 15, 2012, 01:50:16 PM
how long Blue going to last? let say in a non stop PC with a constant 40+°C? because my Blue died last week (bought it last year)...

You get what you pay for. I've avoided Blue drives because the reviews on them gave me no confidence. They used to have a 3 year warranty; you need to check your purchase agreement. After only one year, it's probably still under warranty, unless WD changed it. ]

right...i dunno and idgaf, because its a drag when dealing with shop who really want to prove that the damage (or naturally broken HDD) done onto the drive is our fault...

meh, mah Seagate that comes with ACER desktop is still alive (though the desktop dead, that drive in new PC), almost 4 years now~

oh, and i just bought WD Caviar Green 1.5TB...question is, can i go 24 hours on that drive too?

xShadow · « **Reply #14 on:** June 15, 2012, 03:30:45 PM »

Quote from: datora on June 15, 2012, 02:01:55 PM

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Quote from: xShadow on June 15, 2012, 12:30:42 PM
Better off researching other manufacturers, imo.

Well, there's Seagate and then ... uh ... oh. Right. Nobody else. Been paying attention much?

Though they're owned by Seagate now, there is also Samsung; it's too early to tell whether Seagate will turn them into crap. There is also HGST, and a few other brands. If you're willing to look into the external drive category, there are even more. You can just automatically make some assumption that everything churned out by someone Seagate-owned or WD-owned will automatically bear have a similar failure rate, but I would like to contend that... mainly because I can't find any statistics showing such.

Quote

The "other manufacturers" are models manufactured under WD & Seagate and marketed under their old names for brand name recognition. There's been no competition with the Caviar Black line in desktop systems for about the last four years, and nothing emerging currently.

And, as far as "researching," you might consider that the posts in this thread already summarize the current state of the industry. Some of have "bothered to check," both regularly and recently. In some cases on a weekly basis for the past several years.

Are you basing this off of some popularity contest?
Read my post. This is my criteria for judging hard drives. I don't care if they come from GOD DRIVES, THE DRIVE MANUFACTURER OF THE HEAVENS THAT IS LAUDED FOR ITS SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE! If my research doesn't show any noticeable trend, then I'm not going to care about what the popular opinion is. My studies show otherwise.

Quote

For a reliability in an OS drive, there's the WD Black sitting in a class by itself.

EXCEPT IT ISN'T. I don't know where you got your "facts" from, but these drives don't actually have better a rating distribution (including attribution to proper failure factors) than the MUCH cheaper 2TB Samsung drive I bought years ago (which is still working just fine by the way).

Quote

Maybe you don't place much value on your data, but that's your personal choice.

No, more like I believe that YOU don't give enough of a crap about your data to actually do first-hand review-based research. You're basing all of your statements here off of some sugar pill reputation that Caviar Black has.

Quote

There's no other brand/model that has a 5 year warranty and is designed as a main OS drive. Period. No other brand/model has reviews even close to the reliability of a WD Black in these price ranges. Period.

I want to see your sources. I will admit at some storage amount ranges the Caviar Black has superior reliability, but then again below the TB range (which is where most anime fans are going to be looking for their shit anyway), most other manufacturers (which are cheaper) have decent performance anyway. The TB range is where most anime viewers are going to be looking. If you can get me some hard review-based statistics, I'll agree with your Caviar Black lauding.

Edit: And to clarify when I was looking for a new 2TB storage drive a few years back, I considered all possibilities. Obviously I had heard a lot about the Caviar Black line. Then I did my own research and realized that the much cheaper Samsung line was actually showing better reliability results. My main point (which is what pissed me off about your post) is that you seem to be basing a lot off of superior reputation. Reputation means nothing to me. I want actual hard evidence.

Edit2: Toned down profanity.

Saras · « **Reply #15 on:** June 15, 2012, 04:05:26 PM »

Performance wise, I personally am not aware of any differences in performance between the blue and black series. However, I'd say the 3 years of added warranty warrant the extra 20$.

As for seagate, their drives from a few years back had very... abysmal quality assurance. However, that was then, it is likelly that they've changed, at least I'd hope so. Furthermore, they can indeed contend for OS drives, the Barracuda XT seems to be well liked.

As for Samsung, they seem to be well liked, however I couldn't bring myself to recommend their drives, as all the one's I've had from them are dead.

All that remains is basically Hitachi, out of the major brands. However, I don't know anything about their drives. And given this, I generally recommend blacks. As I've yet to have many unfortunate accidents with them.

vuzedome · « **Reply #16 on:** June 15, 2012, 05:30:26 PM »

WD's reliability has only gone up, currently using a EARS green and FAEX black, if you know WD you'll know what it means.
Both are doing well, actually almost too good. I've jumped over to Samsung a year or so ago before being handed over to Seagate, the EARS drive is still doing pretty darn good, no errors on SMART.

(click to show/hide)

Now where do the Blues fit in? Had a few Blues running, massive earthquake AKA big boot to CPU case sitting on floor knocked out the Blues to the point of no recovery, however the older WD IDEs and Hitachi Satas installed were still running happily. Of course this was years back but I'm still paranoid in buying the Blues because of this.

kitamesume · « **Reply #17 on:** June 15, 2012, 08:06:21 PM »

i got a 1TB WD Blue with me as a Torrent drive, purchased about a week ago and running for technically 24/7, the whole PC is moving back and forth from the living room and to my bed room for the past few days. no issues so far =O

i dont really care which brand of drives i get tho XD i rarely stumble upon dying drives for it to even matter *~*

Jelle458 · « **Reply #18 on:** June 15, 2012, 08:23:34 PM »

I have had multiple WD drives, and I am happy to say, I still have my Black drives, the green ones died while the black drives just continued to run.

I have also had a couple of blue drives, which, for some reason started to make a lot of noise, I haven't had the problem with the black drives yet, and they continue to work just as if they were new.

In my experience the black ones just keeps working, where both the green and the blue failed on me. I haven't had a single black edition drive that has failed.

megido-rev.M · « **Reply #19 on:** June 16, 2012, 12:08:32 AM »

Green is virtually useless as a drive, meant for those who like to pinch every joule of electricity.

Quote from: xShadow on June 15, 2012, 03:30:45 PM

Quote
There's no other brand/model that has a 5 year warranty and is designed as a main OS drive. Period. No other brand/model has reviews even close to the reliability of a WD Black in these price ranges. Period.

I want to see your sources. I will admit at some storage amount ranges the Caviar Black has superior reliability, but then again below the TB range (which is where most anime fans are going to be looking for their shit anyway), most other manufacturers (which are cheaper) have decent performance anyway. The TB range is where most anime viewers are going to be looking. If you can get me some hard review-based statistics, I'll agree with your Caviar Black lauding.

Ooh, the provocativeness is strong in that one.

By the way, if statistics matter that much to you, perhaps you might want to perform some investigation yourself. That kind of information doesn't come out of nowhere, and often enough it doesn't naturally arise as long as nobody really cares to do so or the reward is nil. Opinions merely coming from the experiences of actual users of any kind are far more worthy than numbers. Being a numerically obsessed individual, I still assert that reliability measurements shall always remain theoretical even if they are simply a collection of numbers: probability is all relative and shit happens. Unintended witnesses are the best kind of feedback sources.

If you ever heard of 32-block PS1 memory cards, you should acknowledge lifetime far supersedes capacity.