Which HDD to complement boot SSD? (WD Blue or Green?)

avecmon

avecmon

avecmon

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I have already installed Windows 7 on my 128gb Crucial M4 SSD. I plan on installing all of my programs on the SSD as well. I then plan on having a second HDD storage where the user files, program data and personal documents will be stored. However I am not too sure on which HDD to get. I personally prefer Western Digital drives, but I don't know whether to go for the 'Green' or the 'Blue' drive. Would I really notice much of a difference in performance drop if I opt for the Green 5400 RPM/64MB cache drive compared to the Blue 7200RPM/16MB cache drive? Most importantly, which is the most reliable?

Many thanks in advance :)
 
Thanks, but I have been reading that the the WD Black is fairly noisy and of course has the highest power consumption out of the three. Now given that I already have an SSD with the OS and the HDD I am looking for is more for users files/program data/personal docs, I don't really think the WD black is necessary. Therefore, it really comes between the Sata3 WD 'Green' or 'Blue' :)
 
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tigerstyle said:
You want fast enough or slightly faster than enough? Your money your chocie, no drive is better than the other.
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WD Blacks are built better then most other drives, they share the production line with WD enterprise drives. For example the spindles are fixed at both ends, and the components are better balanced for less vibration. Because of the quality WD blacks have 1.2 million MTTF. They also have dual processors, and have more testing (over green and blue drives) before they leave the factory.
 
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I've used the WD Blue drives and they're fine, but they are the most basic WD do, if you want more power saving and purely storage, the WD Green will be better suited as it's not as fast, but more efficient and a tiny bit cheaper.

The best WD drives I've used are the Raid Edition, I've been using one here for a few years and they're incredibly good, probably similar to the Black (haven't used one though), but there is a sizeable price increase. You could equally go RAID1 with the greens to exceed that reliability though.

Really though, the answer to your question is just buy the WD green and make sure important stuff is backed up in the cloud or on DVDs etc.
 
JasonM said:
WD Blacks are built better then most other drives, they share the production line with WD enterprise drives. For example the spindles are fixed at both ends, and the components are better balanced for less vibration. Because of the quality WD blacks have 1.2 million MTTF. They also have dual processors, and have more testing (over green and blue drives) before they leave the factory.
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Which is great, and I'm not hating or nothing, but any drive could fail after 10 seconds in a rig? They sure do sound nice though!

As the OP doesn't want a black drive anyway, it's moot, they're also a lot more expensive!
 
alex24 said:
You could equally go RAID1 with the greens to exceed that reliability though.
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WD dont recommend using greens in RAID due to the length of time they can take to respond can sometimes cause the raid controller to think theres a problem when there isnt. BUT saying that, I've been running 3x 1TB Greens for around 4 years now without a single issue.
 
skyripper said:
WD dont recommend using greens in RAID due to the length of time they can take to respond can sometimes cause the raid controller to think theres a problem when there isnt. BUT saying that, I've been running 3x 1TB Greens for around 4 years now without a single issue.
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Above WD is referring to hardware RAID as for this drive should support TLER.

For software RAID TLER is not an issue and any drives can be used.
 
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