spec me a hard drive for data backup

sybaris

sybaris

sybaris

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Hello.
Im looking for a hard drive to backup data and to store images on.
I require 3TB.

Was thinking of WD as Seagate are pretty unreliable according to the reviews.
Ideally a 7200rpm but would I notice a difference in transfer speeds with a 5400 drive with backing up/restoring or reading/writing?

Will probably back up to it on a monthly basis so its not going to be constantly active, and the prices are a lot lower. On the other hand I need a reliable drive and the WD Caviar Blacks are supposed to be rock solid, however they are considerably more expensive.

Can I have some opinions please?
 
Hey there, sybaris.

If you're looking for a WD drive for storage and backup purposes, then I'd suggest that you check the WD Blue drive (the 5400RPM model). Generally for the purposes you need the drive for, I think you wouldn't notice that big of a difference between the 7200RPM models and 5400RPM models, compared to if you need it for general purposes and use it on a daily basis. In addition to that, the 5400RPM models have all the features of the WD Green drives - they run cool and quiet with less power consumption.
As for the WD Black drive, I think it would be a bit of an overkill for the purpose you need the HDD for. Compared to the WD Blue drives, the WD Black drives have better performance (which is normal considering the fact that their main purpose is gaming, video editing and demanding software) and they come with a 5-year limited warranty. The WD Blue drives come with a 2-year limited warranty, they are quieter than the WD Black drives, consume less power and are designed for secondary storage (the 5400RPM models).
Some people would also recommend a WD Red drive for storage (regardless of the fact that their main purpose is NAS/RAID environment), because they can be used just as well for simple backup/storage purposes, plus they have a 3-year limited warranty.

The bottom line is this - basically it's up to your personal preference and budget, but I'd recommend that you go for a 3TB WD Blue drive.

Here you can check the features of all 3 drives in question:
WD Blue
WD Black
WD Red

As you've mentioned the specs, you can check everything in detail for each of the drives when you click on the "Specification" tab and select the Specification Sheet (it's a pdf file).

And last but not least, no matter how reliable a drive might be, you should always have your data backed up at least on 2 separate locations.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions whatsoever.
Boogieman_WD
 
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Good guy WD rep not upselling! Some great info and advice in there.

If it is just for monthly backups have you considered an external drive? I use a WD Elements 2TB for weekly backups and have an WD My Passport ultra that mirrors the Elements drive and then I leave it offsite. These drives do come in 3TB variants though the cost does go up.

Both drives easily managed 80-90MB/s and my backup software only copies changed files which results in about 50-100GB a week which means the backup take 10-20 minutes.

Internally I use a Seagate barracuda 2TB which has been flawless in the last year.

I doubt whatever drive you choose will be a bad choice.
 
I used to be a loyal Seagate fanboy but the last few years they have become so unreliable. Im now a WD convert :).

Thanks Boogieman_WD. I agree about multiple copies, I use 2 physical and 2 cloud services for backup. So if both the Red and Blue are 5400RPM, whats the difference?

Its not for every day use, just monthly backups from a removable drive bay. Not really worried about noise or how hot it gets as that will only be occasional.

I am more concerned about integrity of the data and read / write times. Not sure if this is the best way to describe what I am trying to get at. Say I backed up 2.5GB of files how much faster would 7200RPM be over 4500RPM? There are a fair amount of files, images, photos, documents, software and also a windows image. Are we talking 10 mins or an hour (approx)?
 
Hi @Disco_P, cheers for the good words! :D
After all, as I've mentioned in previous threads, I'm not here to sell, but rather to help the users in any way I can regarding storage solutions - be it by troubleshooting or explaining specs, models or features of WD devices. :)

@sybris, you could take a look at @Disco_P's suggestion regarding an external backup solution if you're still in-between options.
About the transfer time - that really depends a lot on the amount of small files, your system and the drives themselves. If you're talking about transferring 2.5TB at once, we're way past minutes and we're talking about several hours. E.g. if you transfer your data with an average speed of 100MB/s it would take approximately 7 hours.
As for the speeds, I've just tried copying a 4.5GB file to a 3TB WD Blue drive (5400RPM) and it was transferred with an average speed of ~150MB/s. I've tried copying 3GB worth of pictures and the average speed was ~130MB/s. Note that the write speed will decrease if you have a large amount of small files. In comparison the same files were written on a WD Red Pro (a 7200RPM drive) as follows: the 4.5GB single file at a speed of ~164MB/s and the 3GB folder, filled with pictures at ~143MB/s.
You should really take into account the state of your system, currently running tasks (as well as background services), drive model, file size, amount of files, etc. when talking about transfer speeds. That makes it almost impossible for me to predict how much time would take for the 2.5TB worth of data to be backed up.

About the difference between the WD Red drive, which uses IntelliPower (IntelliPower) and the WD Blue (5400PRPM models) - the WD Red drive features the NASware 3.0 firmware, which optimizes the drive's performance for NAS/RAID configurations and 24/7 environments. The WD Red drive has a 3-year limited warranty. As for the WD Blue (5400RPM), it has a 2-year limited warranty and is budget friendlier, as it doesn't have the same features as the WD Red drive.
Basically, as I've already mentioned, you can still go for a WD Red drive for the extra year of warranty, but there will be features, which will be left unused and the WD Blue (5400RPM) is a drive, which should cover your needs just as well.

Cheers! :p
 
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Also after you've done the first backup, you can use something like robcopy to just copy the new files / changed files, it will go through quickly checking the existing files.

robocopy /e "C:\source folder" "D:\destination folder"


If you want it to remove files from destination that no longer exist in source..

robocopy /mir "C:\source folder" "D:\destination folder"
 
Hey lude1962.

I wouldn't call it a downgrade. They're just a part of a different class now, which is the 5400RPM class.
Basically the new WD Blue drives (5400RPM), as I've already mentioned, contain all of the firmware features of the old WD Green drives. The only difference (except for them being a part of the WD Blue drive's line now) is that they do not use IntelliPower anymore and run at a fixed "pace" of 5400 rotations per minute.
However the good old WD Blue drives 7200RPM still remain unchanged and are recommended for general usage, compared to the new additions, which a re recommended for secondary storage and backup purposes.

Cheers! :)
 
Hey mate.

I honestly have no idea if something like this is being planned.
Then again, I can't really share any information before it's made public.

Sorry if this is not a satisfying answer (I can really relate to that about different kind of stuff), but that's how things are. :)

Cheers!
 
Hi Boogieman,

Boogieman_WD said:
The only difference (except for them being a part of the WD Blue drive's line now) is that they do not use IntelliPower anymore and run at a fixed "pace" of 5400 rotations per minute.
Click to expand...
They always used an invariable RPM of 5,400 RPM did they not? http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page2.html Mine certainly do not vary the rotational speed, you'd hear it doing so.

So, if IntelliPower doesn't mean variable rotational speed, what does it mean and what does it change on the re branded green drives exactly?
 
John24 said:
Hi Boogieman,


They always used an invariable RPM of 5,400 RPM did they not? http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page2.html Mine certainly do not vary the rotational speed, you'd hear it doing so.

So, if IntelliPower doesn't mean variable rotational speed, what does it mean and what does it change on the re branded green drives exactly?
Click to expand...

I guess the confusion is caused by the way I've written it. By saying that "they now run at a fixed pace of 5400RPM" I meant that this RPM number goes for all the new WD Blue drives. IntelliPower is not a variable speed drive. The drive has one constant RPM, but the RPM can be slightly different for each HDD since each drive is individually tuned. So if there's any deviation from 5400RPM, the difference would be minimal, but each drive will constantly spin at the speed it has been tuned for and not go up or down in terms of RPM.

As for the new WD Blue drives and your other question - It means that there's no longer such type of individual tuning regarding the RPM and all the drives are the same class with exactly 5400RPM.

I hope that made things a bit clearer. :)
 
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WD Green 3TB 64MB Cache Hard Disk Drive SATA 6GB/s <8.9ms - OEM overview
Key Features

Reduced power consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek, NoTouch, and IntelliPower technologies.

IntelliPower - A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.

So Intellipower was a piece of marketing hype...

And changing to blues they're no longer tuned for optimum power/saving performance (your own words), so they're not the same then?

Could you also confirm the following (green 2tb)
StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations. (2 TB models only)

-this was the reason why I bought some 2tb greens, a quick search reveals this was used in the advertising by multiple retailers, so I assume this must have been supplied by WD as the text for the drive features are identical across all the retailers. Now the question is if it doesn't have stabletrac technology, who's responsible for the mis-selling of this product?

And to add more confusion listed as a spec for an old green drive
Features Data Lifeguard, Shock Guard, SecureConnect, FlexPower, WhisperDrive, Soft Seek

-so whats FlexPower then?
 
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The WD Blue (5400RPM) drives are still as energy efficient as the WD Green drives were. All the other features, which make this possible are still present, such as: caching algorithms, spinning down, fine tune and balance as well, but they rotate at а 5400RPM speed now.

As for all your other questions:

StableTrac is indeed a feature, which is available for our drives, but only for the WD Black drives (2TB and above).

The features: Data Lifeguard, Shock Guard, SecureConnect, FlexPower, WhisperDrive, Soft Seek have been a part of our drives, but for much older models. They were necessary back then due to current circumstances and hardware requirements. As technology develops, so do the HDDs and some features become obsolete, while other are standard now. For example, you could take a look at our press release recording FlexPower (as you've specifically asked about it) along with SecureConnect: Western Digital to Ship Industry's First 250 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with SecureConnect™ and FlexPower™ Technologies

As for how our drives are presented on 3rd party websites, we can take no responsibility about that.

Your confusion is understandable if you've seen different info, so please let me know if you have any other questions.
 
Boogieman_WD said:
I hope that made things a bit clearer. :)
Click to expand...
Yes and no. :) You answered the first question but then answered the second question with a rehashed version of your answer for the first question :)

You've confirmed what I already knew in that the rotational speed never varied dynamically, but you weren't tuning the rotational speed on each drive just for fun. So, again, what are the consequenses of dropping that and just going with the same RPM on each drive? I imagine performance will be more variable drive to drive and power consumption and noise will be higher on some drives where they would otherwise of been able to have a lower rotational speed applied.

So the drives are not simply a rebrand, the rebrand is to disguise the loss of IntelliPower which seems like a cost saving excersise. Not necessarily a bad thing but if the green replacements turn out to be louder I will be dissapointed.

BTW the only drives I own that are not WD are SSDs. I am a happy customer who's just concerned about this "nothing is changing" rebrand that's turned out to be "actually something is changing". I'll be getting a 6TB blue in the new year so will be able to judge for myself. It'll replace a 4TB Red and sit alongside my 6TB green.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.
 
Sorry for the late response, but I've been away for the holidays. Happy new year to everybody I hope it's a great one! Cheers! :D

Now about your questions, John. I understand your concern, but there's nothing you should worry about it terms of performance, regarding the drive. Also if you check the spec sheets of the new and the old models, you'd see that the noise they emit is the same dBA while the HDD is idle and while seeking. The same goes for the power consumption as well.
WD Green Specs Sheet - pdf
WD Blue Specs Sheet - pdf

This all a part of the development of the HDD. You are technically right about that "something's changing" regarding the IntelliPower feature, but basically everything regarding the drive and all it is supposed to be with its performance, features, power consumption and noise levels is practically the same.

Again, sorry for the late reply, cheers! :)
 
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