WD retires Green HDDs

TheMorningStar

TheMorningStar

TheMorningStar

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I was thinking of grabbing a few WD Green 6TB drives today but there were none, and later noticed there were also no 5TBs in stock. Had a bit of a search and it seems the greens are being moved into the Blue branding.

So now it seems like my choices are Blue or Red. Most probably Red as I'm assuming they have the better acoustic/heat/power characteristics. My machine is also on 24/7. Are the Blues retaining the features of the now retired Greens?

Am I correct to be going Red even though this is not a NAS solution or would the Blues be better if they are simple rebrands of the existing Greens with the same features?

I was also holding out for the 8tb drives dropping but the only ones around seem to be enterprise solutions which may not be ideal for media usage even with minimal re-wrights and this hasn't changed for months. Are these expected anytime soon for the domestic market or are they just an enterprise solution I should ignore? I have about a max of 6 months before I totally run out of space, I'm already juggling drives between my 5 SATA ports which is an annoyance.

Any input on this one guys?
 
Download less Pr0n?

Personally if you're running as you suggest then sooner or later things will go badly wrong, look at a decent dedicated NAS build like UnRaid or similar that allows you to dynamically add drives to the pool as you go, you simply buy the best £/TB drives when you need more storage and add them to the pool, only down side is the first drive you add to the pool that's larger than the others has to become the hot spare. If a drive fails it's not an issue as it'll rebuild, you've got at least one hot spare.
 
If you are running multiple drives I'd go reds, because of vibration.

If anything I'd expect blues to be quieter, my blacks and my red pros are quite noisy, but the non-pro reds may be quieter due to lower rotational speed
 
As I actually sit here like a muppet desperately trying to recover data from a WD green 1TB for a mate who hasn't backed it up for 9 months.....

Red's are very good, I have many.
Them being "NAS drives" is marketing, if you are putting them in a machine running 24/7 then they are for you, this is the usage they are optimsed for, constant access/online repository type usage.

They are not noisy at all I do not find and are the most reliable long term drives I have used. Never had a single drive failure across multi boxes 24/7 running for almost 2 years now.

Blues were always the "standard" with Blacks being "performance" I guess. Green was the "eco" option. So I do not see or believe blue's will simply be rebranded greens at all. These days disks run very economically it is probably of no worth anymore to have a dedicated and specific green brand so they are streamlining the offerings to reflect that.
 
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Hey there, TheMorningStar and all the guys that took part in the thread!

It's true that the WD Green drives became a part of the WD Blue's family. However, the features of the old WD Green drives remain the same. The only difference is that now it's presented in the 5400RPM class instead of IntelliPower. Basically WD Blue drives have the option for general usage 7200RPM drives just as it was from the beginning, but now you also have the "secondary storage" option added to them. You could check that link for further reference: Same Drive, New Family
I know that sometimes it might be a bit confusing, but actually it's really easy to tell the WD Green drives that became new WD Blue drives, apart from the WD Blue drives which we've always had. Basically the 5400RPM ones are the "new" WD Blue drives. You could also check this out in order to find out more about it: Green to Blue details.

As for the WD Red drives, yes, they can be used as secondary storage drives, or even as main drives, just as the others have already suggested. @xdcx mentioned that them being NAS/RAID drives is just marketing, which I don't agree with, as the drives have Nasware 3.0 firmware specifically created to optimize their work when it comes to NAS/RAID environments. On the other hand, he is completely right that they can be used as regular drives, especially when you run your computer 24/7.

@xdcx, hi mate. I've seen your posts around, so I know that you know what you're doing, so I'm not going to go and blurt out all the basics on how to recover the data from that WD Green drive, but please let me know if you do need any suggestions.

So I hope I've been able to cover everything. Please don't hesitate to ask if there are any questions whatsoever.

Cheers!
Boogieman_WD
 
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Hi Guys, cheers for the responses.

I don't really want a NAS solution but I have no issues using the drives. I didn't know the Reds had a standard and pro option or maybe I did and I've forgotten but I'll watch that as 5400rpm is all I need for media storage.

Hi Boogieman, I posted a similar thread a while back looking at Red and Greens, I didn't expect the greens to be discontinued so it now just complicates my decisions a little. I was actually holding out for the 8tb drives but have heard nothing on them, are/when are they coming? Also cheers for the links I will look them over at a later time, site seems to be down at the moment.
 
I've got a single 1tb red which I've had for about 3 years or so, Even though it's a little slower than the 2tb & 3tb 7200rpm drives it lives with it's a good drive and I wish I'd bought a bigger one. I went for it because it was new out and was meant to be a bit heavier duty so it would be more reliable than regular drives like Barracuda's and Blues or greens. Mine sits there as one of my drives that Steam uses for games. It's in a 5 drive 4790k Z97 machine now but started life in a Z77. I won't think twice about buying another red. Since learning that they released a Pro version and that the Pro's are 7200's I've been planning on getting a 5 or 6 tb pro at some point.
 
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Boogieman_WD said:
Hey there, TheMorningStar and all the guys that took part in the thread!

It's true that the WD Green drives became a part of the WD Blue's family. However, the features of the old WD Green drives remain the same. The only difference is that now it's presented in the 5400RPM class instead of IntelliPower. Basically WD Blue drives have the option for general usage 7200RPM drives just as it was from the beginning, but now you also have the "secondary storage" option added to them. You could check that link for further reference: Same Drive, New Family
I know that sometimes it might be a bit confusing, but actually it's really easy to tell the WD Green drives that became new WD Blue drives, apart from the WD Blue drives which we've always had. Basically the 5400RPM ones are the "new" WD Blue drives. You could also check this out in order to find out more about it: Green to Blue details.

Cheers!
Boogieman_WD
Click to expand...

You've got to feel sorry for Boogieman_WD, bravely trying to make sense of what was clearly a marketing decision. How on earth can such a rebranding actually help the consumer? Before it was clear, to me at least.

WD Black, performance.
WD Blue, general purpose, 7200 rpm good performance.
WD Green, lower power, lower temps internal drives.
WD Red, optimised for NAS.
WD Purple, optimised for video.

Then there are the Pro and enterprise class drives.

Now if you buy a 'Blue' drive you will have to refer to the spec sheet to find out what you are getting, and we all know not all on-line resellers are not as knowledgeable as OcUK!
 
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TheMorningStar said:
Hi Guys, cheers for the responses.
Hi Boogieman, I posted a similar thread a while back looking at Red and Greens, I didn't expect the greens to be discontinued so it now just complicates my decisions a little. I was actually holding out for the 8tb drives but have heard nothing on them, are/when are they coming? Also cheers for the links I will look them over at a later time, site seems to be down at the moment.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I don't have any available information on when and if 8TB drives are coming.
As for the new addition to the WD Blue's line, perhaps the links I've posted will shed some light on what I mean, when saying that the WD Green drives' features are the same for the new WD Blue drives.

TheMorningStar said:
Can anyone see the WD links, I just get a white page every time.

Bookie, are they public links?
Click to expand...

Yes, they are public. I've just tried them out and had no trouble opening them. Everybody should have access to them. Just in case, here are the raw links with no shortener and no mask:
Same Drive, New Family - http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=780
Green to Blue details - http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=770#Tab8

malcolm said:
You've got to feel sorry for Boogieman_WD, bravely trying to make sense of what was clearly a marketing decision. How on earth can such a rebranding actually help the consumer? Before it was clear, to me at least.

WD Black, performance.
WD Blue, general purpose, 7200 rpm good performance.
WD Green, lower power, lower temps internal drives.
WD Red, optimised for NAS.
WD Purple, optimised for video.

Then there are the Pro and enterprise class drives.

Now if you buy a 'Blue' drive you will have to refer to the spec sheet to find out what you are getting, and we all know not all on-line resellers are not as knowledgeable as OcUK!
Click to expand...

Sorry you feel that way mate. As I said, it might be a bit confusing at first, but I think people will probably get used to it soon.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll make sure to share it with the marketing department, so that they know what's the general opinion of the users.

As usual, I'm available for any questions you may have and I'll do my best to answer them.

Cheers!
 
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Hi DeadMan300 and welcome to OcUK. :)

Basically that's not correct.
If you take a closer look, you'd see that the WD Green drives are now a part of WD Blue's family and not the successors of the WD Blue drives as suggested in the link you've provided.
It's normal for the new addition (the 5400RPM drives) not to be as fast as the WD Blue drives we've all known up until now (which are 7200RPM). The models are different and one can still choose between the 7200RPM and the 5400RPM models.
As for the stated data, I really can't confirm it, as when I benchmarked one of those drives, I got different results.

You can take a look at the WD Blue drive's specs sheet for further reference: WD Blue - Specification Sheet

Please feel free to ask if you have any questions whatsoever. :)
 
Hi guys,

I picked up a 3tb WD Green in the sales, it's not here yet so no model info, but it should be okay right? I realised they were "end of life" when I bought but the warranty isn't affected or anything isn't it? I plan on using the drive in my main system to replace my 4 year old 750gb samsung drive for backing up/archiving purposes.

Do I need to implement the WDIDLE3 app at all?

Thanks.
 
Hey there, slipd!

Basically the answer is - yes, everything should be OK with the warranty and the drive should be covered by a 2-year limited warranty. As for the WDidle, you don't need it, especially if the drive is going to be used for backing up/archiving purposes.

Cheers and a happy new year!!!
 
Boogieman_WD said:
Hey there, slipd!

Basically the answer is - yes, everything should be OK with the warranty and the drive should be covered by a 2-year limited warranty. As for the WDidle, you don't need it, especially if the drive is going to be used for backing up/archiving purposes.

Cheers and a happy new year!!!
Click to expand...


I wish that I had encrypted my data on the WD Green 6TB HAD I had recently bought - around three months old.
Whilst it was only used for backups, nothing lost as other backups were in place, it still failed yesterday and now just constantly clicks. It simply can't be accessed.
I have noted that it is still in warranty until the second half of 2017 but my biggest concern is the personal data on that drive when using WD's warranty service, hence the wish for encryption.
I doubt that WD can do anything apart from need the drive back, probably take a hit on this tough lesson and use encryption next time.
 
^^ Funny you should mention the clicking sound, I hate to say it but since introducing my new drive I've definitely noticed a drive clicking sound coming from my tower... I usually notice it first after coming out of a game but it might be happening more, I don't know?

It sounds like a those cards you used to get in your bike spokes :p

RMA time?
 
I run my WD 3TB Greens in a raid 5 NAS array and have been doing so for over 4 years.

I used WDIDLE to stop intellipark from parking the heads all the time and making the load cycle count grow massively, by setting the idle time to 0.

I'm sure NAS red would be preferable, but I'm not sure what the benefit would have been over moded greens?

Either way the greens were a bargain and have operated flawlessly (touch wood) I'd recommend WD and have used them for years.

I think the constant clicking is common to when the heads park on the greens?
 
Constant clicking is not normal as you describe it. Certainly isn't with my dead 6tb Green.

I would back up and run WDs diagnostic software on it.
 
Thanks guys!

It's weird, I can't hear a thing now? I'm about to have a little FO4 sesh and will report back. Like I said, it's usually after coming out of game when I notice the clicking sound. The drive isn't even in use then, all my games are installed on my C: drive (ssd).
 
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