Been a while since i bought a mechanical drive,WD Black the way to go still?

[skipsneeky2]

As the title suggests,iv'e been rolling mostly with ssds for a while outside of the recent addition of a free 2005 80gb Seagate that seriously needs to be replaced cause between its 54mbps max transfer speed and its small size it needs a proper replacement

Between Origin and Steam collecting more and more games and me having to reinstall/redownload,uninstall and move between my 260gb combined space i think a proper 1tb drive should solve all those problems immediately.

Looking at this drive here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-625-_-Product

Been about 3 years since i bought a mechanical,last one was a Seagate 1tb that crashed.I recall the Black Drives from WD being apparently being the best for game storage,is this still holding true today?

 

[GrumpyMan]

Mine are still going strong after a couple of years. Now WD has Green, Red, Purple and Black drives. The only ones I've ever had fail were the Green drives. But that could of been an anomaly and not indicative of that type of drive.

 

[coercitiv]

I'm not sure how much this could impact performance in your case, but you might want to do a quick read on this thread. The TLDR version is this model appears to have slower than expected access time. Side effects might include prolongued lifetime ()

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

My wd black 1tb from 2011 is still kicking to this day. Eyeing a 2tb black when it goes on sale. The green drives are the low priced less reliable variety.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I'm not sure how much this could impact performance in your case, but you might want to do a quick read on this thread. The TLDR version is this model appears to have slower than expected access time. Side effects might include prolongued lifetime ()

Appears with those issues,your better off buying the Blue drives then.I'm not sure if they are cheaper.This old ass Seagate 80gb is pulling 12.9ms ffs.....transfer is a dog with a average of 46mbps but at least it seeks quicker then the new black.

No issues with games so far on this old thing,it just lacks space i seriously need.Looks like the Blacks are off my list,i just haven't kept my eye on mechanical drives as far as where performance has landed with them.I mean who does anymore with SSD just dominating performance wise.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Loving the $8 difference between the 250gb WD Blue and the 1tb Blue on Newegg,$47 vs $55.Well geez i feel bad for anyone who is screwed with a max budget of $47 LOL.

My cousin has one of these,a older 500gb and it just won't quit and my old pre-ssd builds had WD Raptors in them which never quit.I wouldn't know if anyone makes a snappy mechanical with reliability matching WD these days?

Coercitiv,thanks for posting that link.It pretty much saved me $20!

 

[coercitiv]

I wouldn't know if anyone makes a snappy mechanical with reliability matching WD these days?

HGST has some very reliable drives, as this data suggests. Lucky WD, they bought Hitachi a while ago.

 

[skipsneeky2]

HGST has some very reliable drives, as this data suggests. Lucky WD, they bought Hitachi a while ago.

I like the Seagate data there,my drive i think pre-dates the Maxtor buy out.If i remember right Maxtor got bought out by Seagate?I always remember what junk drives Maxtors were.I bought a 160gb back in the day and it failed in less then 2 days.No warning either.

Makes sense why this old thing refuses to die,its been in a Dell XPS400 since new and well it has absolutely no issues or errors.It's been in like 3 rigs before finally landing in my rig.:thumbsup:

Gonna look a bit more into the HGST drives,i don't need anything amazing for just games but i will see what they offer.

 

[denis280]

WD Black. second choice Blue

 

[Charlie98]

Personally, I would just get whatever is on sale. You roll the dice no matter what drive you buy, statistics and hearsay nonetheless. I'm not a big 'green' drive guy, I like 7200RPM drives... I have more Seagate Barracudas than anything else, and, yes, they have all been 100%... but I wouldn't hesitate getting a Blue, another Hitachi, or even a Toshiba. Having said that, I'm not really worried about a storage drive failure... I have everything backed up 10 ways to Sunday.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I think buying a hard drive has gotten harder over the last few years.
Even with the mergers, the options have grown. Lotsa product segmentation ie: blue, black, green, red, red pro, purple, re, etc.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Black is pretty good. Red has gotten better. At first they had lot of failures but think it's not as bad now.

Avoid green. They go to sleep. With today's big drives you don't want to run a non raid setup. (whether it's old style raid or something more advanced like ZFS) Greens go to sleep and will break your raid because it will think the drive failed. I learned from that the hard way.

Seagate seems to be the ones to avoid now days and Backblaze and think Google have the stats to show it. That said, if you find a bunch of them on sale it can't hurt to buy them anyway and take a chance. That's what hot spares are for.

Hitachi drives tend to be pretty good too. Personally I tend to buy either WD or Hitachi. For cold backup drives, which are treated like tape backups, I buy any drive that's on sale even greens, for that it does not matter much. If it fails you have other copies. I sometimes even recycle drives I don't really trust but that still work as backup drives. Though got to be careful with that, if I actually do need to restore backups, would be a bad time for it to fail.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I have gotten used to a new noise that honestly is louder then my whole rig....the sound of a mechanical drive writing and accessing data and it has made me officially look at noise as a deciding factor as well.

It's been years since i heard one of these things,i didn't miss it either but i believe the blue drives are the most quiet still?Aren't they marketed more to less noise,plenty of storage?I know the Blacks are apparently much more noisy so those are off my list pretty much immediately.

Really to freaking weird hearing a actual hard drive again,it's actually disturbing that this thing is louder then a Antec GX500 case. 0_O

 

[HalfCrazy]

I bought a new 1 TB WD blue and I don't even hear it.

 

[Ramses]

HGST NAS drives have been good to me so far. I've had two 3tb's in a Windows Storage Spaces mirror set at work for six or eight months now 24/7 and they are happy, reviews seem universally good. I've also had three of those dreaded 3tb seagates running pretty much 24/7 since Oct 2013 without any problems. Two mirror in a NAS and one external to back it up daily. They were a lot of drive for the money when I got em but I'd buy the HGST now if I needed one. In consumer circles I suspect noise heat and reliability is more important than performance these days for a spinny disk.

I use a 1tb VelociRaptor for game storage that is exquisite still. It's not hot like the early one's and I can't really hear it in a below average noise case (ft02) If they made larger one's I'd own em. $210 for the 1tb still is steep, price hasn't changed in years.

 

[Auric]

2.5" drives are available up to 3TB and even at 5400RPM are perfectly fast and potentially faster than what you may be accustomed to with older 3.5" drives due to higher densities. 7200RPM in either form factor are not significantly faster than 5400RPM for general use where noise is any consideration.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Ordered the WD Blue 1tb that is currently $54.99. More then plenty,seriously need this space with some of my games like Titanfall hitting 62gb in size.

I think the last 1tb drive i got was one of the first Seagate 1tb drives that cost like $300,its been ages since i had one.I have to check the reviews on the release date but i know it was that one lol. High failure rates for that model too i think.:|

 

[skipsneeky2]

Got the new drive today,plugged it on in and did a hdtune test.These things are unbelievably quiet even in burst mode.Think about it this way,my wifes 3 year old notebook came with a 500gb 5,400rpm hard drive that made more noise then this thing lol.

Guess the new 1tb drives are single platter?This thing makes at worst a slight hum and if you press your ear close to it lol.I had to put my ear to it during the hdtune test to make sure it was testing the right drive lol.

Thanks again Coercitiv for saving me that $20,this one seeks at 15.9ms which ironically seems lower then the Blacks mentioned in that thread.This drive is pretty excellent.:thumbsup:

 

[dtgoodwin]

I think you've made a wise choice. It's not very often people talk about the Blue series - it's either Blacks for gaming, green if you want to spend the least, or think you did, save a tiny bit of energy, and take great risks. Reds if you have a NAS, etc. I've only purchased WD drives in the past 10 years with the exception of a 1.5 TB portable seagate (which I'm on my second replacement). I started with the equivalent of a 250 GB Blue. I have 2 of those, two 500, and a 1 TB. I also have had a 1 TB Green, and 3 2 TB Greens, and my latest additions, 3 3TB Reds. The blues are still going strong - two of them are past 6 years of power on time. All but one of my green drives have been replaced at least once - one of those with a Black version. The black is noisier and much hotter than the blues, even though they run at the same speed. The reds have been very good for me. Reasonably fast, cool running, and have been reliable so far. These disks are all in a WHS 2011 server running 24/7.

 

[skipsneeky2]

The black is noisier and much hotter than the blues, even though they run at the same speed.

Yeah this didn't come to mind till i actually heard that old 80gb in my pc,so used the silence that ssd provides so its been a while since i had a mechanical.

I heard that thing going off like it was Hal 9000 calculating a quick death,then it crossed my mind that i actually should seek a quiet drive if i am to be having another mechanical drive.

I always remember the Blue drives for their noise,Blacks are as loud as Raptors so iv'e heard as i have had a few of those things,from the 74gb to the 300 and they all made noise lol.Used those exclusively till i jumped on the ssds.

Even going back and installing Defraggler and seeing that relic of a program on my desktop again is like seeing a old friend over for dinner after many years.:awe:

 

[Carson Dyle]

(This has nothing to do with your choice of drive, which I think is fine. Might even be considered OT.)

I have to imagine that the 3.5" Blue series is being phased out by Western Digital, since the largest available drive is still 1TB. To me, that makes sense. There's really no reason to produce two lines of desktop 7200 RPM drives any longer. In fact, with SSDs being the real road to performance, I wonder how much longer they'll produce any 7200 RPM desktop drives.

 

[skipsneeky2]

(This has nothing to do with your choice of drive, which I think is fine. Might even be considered OT.)

I have to imagine that the 3.5" Blue series is being phased out by Western Digital, since the largest available drive is still 1TB. To me, that makes sense. There's really no reason to produce two lines of desktop 7200 RPM drives any longer. In fact, with SSDs being the real road to performance, I wonder how much longer they'll produce any 7200 RPM desktop drives.

Interesting selection of drives at WD,Greens from 1tb to 6tb with Blue going to 1tb while Black are anywhere from 1tb to 4tb.Maybe Blue is being phased or the Blacks are replacing it?

I picked the Blue as well cause of that link Coercitiv posted about the Blacks pretty much being rebadged Blue drives with a longer warranty.Maybe the Blues will be completely replaced by the Blacks?

Newegg sells other sizes while WD pretty much starts at 1tb,is it possible the current drives are 1tb per platter while Newegg has older models under 1tb perhaps being refurbished?

 

[skipsneeky2]

Yeah looks like all the drives currently are 1tb per platter. Looks like from forum posts from 2012 the series from Blue came out with that.Been so long since i paid attention to these things lol.People i think had to wait for 1tb per platter Blacks to come out while Blue came out first with them.

Think the last drive i really had outside of the Raptors for storage ran 500gb platters and made much more noise.

 

[EXCellR8]

I've had to replace a few 2.5" drives in the last couple of weeks and I typically go with WD blacks. this happens when i fail to get a customer to believe in cutting storage space a bit and going with an ssd.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Yeah looks like all the drives currently are 1tb per platter.

I believe they often take a drive capable of a particular capacity and limit its capacity artificially. Called "short stroking", meaning that they just don't use the outermost sectors of the drive. One (small, IMO) advantage to short stroking is that the smaller drives will be a bit faster, since the heads needn't travel as far as with a larger capacity drive of the same physical design. All to increase the number of drives in the product line and to meet different price points.