WD Black vs Blue

[LouieH]

My current Hybrid-Drive is on its way out, I only bought it a few months ago, honistly never get one they are awful. Anyway I want a new harddrive and I'm wondering what hardrive would be better the WD Black or the WD Blue, I want 2TB and I'm really wondering is the extra money for the black worth it, Is the speed that much better that I would benifit from having a black instead of a blue.

[Seven7]

WD Black of course or HGST
technically ~= same as Blue, but double buffer size, 2 translator's cpu, dual spindle mount, double actuator, different firmware... +5 year guarantee
black don't have start-stop system with autoparking click-clack sound, suspend r\w speed each 8 sec

WD Blue X - 7200rpm WD Blue Z - 5400 (on desktop only)

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Only 1 TB Blue is 7200 rpm, 2 TB is 5400 rpm.

[Meurock460]

Any WD blue drive above 1TB will always be 5400rpm model.

That alone is enough reason to get the WD black, all of which are 7200rpm drives. The WD black also has a longer warranty than the WD blue

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Blue = the new Green
However they kept going by the older Blue when it comes to the 250GB and 1TB Blue; due to highly demanding bang-for-buck drives (the 1TB I mean) at that price bracket; it's one of the most commonly used HDDs in lower budget builds, in recent years.

Which are why these in particular are still 7200rpms; the rest of the Blue that you see that are 5400rpm varients, are actually WD Green, which they stopped making and just tossed those into the Blue series/family to get rid of Green since they have other, better drive models nowa days.

However, if unsure of a retailers website/page details, always look for the model# on the retailer page, and cross-reference that with what WDC.com has on their site. In short you can simply Google the model# you see on a retailers page, and from such an online search, should be able to double check that those Specs, actually are correct for the listed Model

Blue are also only 2-year warranty
Black = 5-years

Unless you just want a cheap 1TB 7200rpm ~ Go for a WD Black, like 2TB or larger so you have high capacity, overall higher speeds, as well as a warranty that covers you much better.

[-=SOF=-WID99]

id agree always go black ..the few extra bucks as far as warranty are worth it

WD has an exxcellent returm program for failed drives ..i still have a few WD black edition drives from 2009 still running fine ..the green ones . i had 2 fail in 4 yrs ..blues had 1 fail after 4 yrs ..black ones are as good as th HGST ones ..and if ya take care of an HGST drive .. it;; last forever ..got only 1 of those ..but its been running since 2010

[-=SOF=-WID99]

also remember your warranty date STAMPED ON YOUR DRIVE = the date of MFR (date the drive was made) ..not the date you bought the drive ..so be careful ..yes many sellers online do sell out of waranty date drives

my brother bought a 1 tb WD blue drive that was already a yr out of warrnty on amazon , those only have a 2 yr warranty from date of manufacture ..so his drive really only has 1 yr left

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes so a prime example of the warranty:
If I buy a drive today, and it is actually recentlty new; the MFR Date on the Drive itself should not be very old, like maybe 3 months older then the day you buy/receive the drive.

usually the manufacture will have the actual expiration by including roughly 3-6months of a lapse to compensate for this.

So say for example my drive says "MFR Date: Jan 2017"
And I have a 1-year warranty, it should actually be good for 1-year plus a few months after January. But if like -=SOF=-WID99 said above happens to you; buy a drive today, get it and the MFR date says something like June 2016 or something, or older. Then I would simply contact the support of the retailer, tell them you wish to return the drive for a refund. Now the reason I would do a refund and buy from some place else in a situation like this; is because obviously that retailer has old stock left over sitting for long period of time; the last thing you want is an exchange and get another outdated drive in return.

Now this does differ with various products.

For things like Motherboards; they generally just go by the Model & Serial#; as the serial# tells them the MFR Date; they usually won't print that on Motherboard or the Box. Basically because Motherboard are generally covered for its warranty length from the time that model came out; and ends within a general year. So lets says I buy an ASUS Z270 (nothing specific); and they have 3-year warranty; well if it released in 2017, then the warranty for that model should end in 2020 (only Tech Support can help you narrow that down further); regardless of me buying this Motherboard today; or a year from today; the warranty-end-date is basically set due to original model warranty length. As a model of motherboard + revision ## is only going to be manufactured for a generally short period of time; they don't keep producing that model for years on end.

[LouieH]

Thanks guys I'll get a black, But i forgot about warrentys, I'll check if my drive has one, I only bought it about 6 months ago

[Bad 💀 Motha]

To find the End Of Warranty Date/Info, you can go here and look up the warranty status, based on drive brand.

Western Digital
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/warrantystatus.aspx

Seagate (also for Samsung 3.5-inch HDDs)
http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation.jsp

HGST / Hitachi
https://www.hgst.com/portal/site/en/support/warranty

Toshiba
http://support.toshiba.com/warranty

*If any of these sites do not load or gives errors; Google the brand...
for example "seagate hdd warranty" and go to the branded Global site and choose your Country.

[-=SOF=-WID99]

wish ya luck with your WD black drive ..none of my 512 gig or 1 tb ones have not failed yet ..the two 512 gig ones are from 2009 ..but i went all SSD in my current system ..but if i need to choose a HDD spinner drive .. i will always buy a WD black drive

seagate ..i will never buy again

Hitachii do work but seem slow witrh a lower cache and slower spin rate

HGST ..= buy they have a good non fail rate 7200 rpm

if i need 2 tb or more i'll alays go WD blck on a SPINNER drive or a smaller samsung ssd

AND again WD drives do have a decent return policy .. ever since i bought my first one ,,and yea my old WD 2.1 gig IDE STILL WORKS

[roguekiller23231]

I've got a few HDD's,

on benchmarks my Western Digital Black drives have a read speed of 190Mbps, other drives are around 130 max.

in real life you wouldn't get that high read/write speeds, but they are very fast drives transfering files from Black to Black drives (i have 2) i get around 80-130mbps transfer speeds, other drives will max out at around 60-80Mbps.

there is a huge difference, if it's for a drive you are going to use to install games on, go with a Black edition drive. Especially if it's going to be your main drive and you will be running games off of it.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by roguekiller23231:

I've got a few HDD's,

on benchmarks my Western Digital Black drives have a read speed of 190Mbps, other drives are around 130 max.

in real life you wouldn't get that high read/write speeds, but they are very fast drives transfering files from Black to Black drives (i have 2) i get around 80-130mbps transfer speeds, other drives will max out at around 60-80Mbps.

there is a huge difference, if it's for a drive you are going to use to install games on, go with a Black edition drive. Especially if it's going to be your main drive and you will be running games off of it.

For most drives, you usually have to factor in the read/write only really being that good when dealing with large files. Problem is, the OS and most apps are constantly dealing with alot of small files; that is why you generally don't see that performance as much in a mechanical HDD. That is not to say a drive like WD Black doesn't help overall.

SSD pick up this slack big time overall; but can also provide their speeds even with small files.

[roguekiller23231]

With 2TB worth of games on steam alone, i couldn't afford an SSD for them all. lol, doesn't make much difference in game anyway to have SSD's. but the black edition drives do have a higher read/write speed.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

First off, not all your Games need to be on SSD. Many you wouldn't ever notice the difference in loading and other performance with the game housed on SSD vs HDD

Only the games that constantly /end-less load really benefit from being on SSD; like GTAV, Fallout4, Skyrim, Dying Light, Witcher3... ones like this. Also ones with heavy AI in them; they also can benefit quite a bit, as it can help reduce in-game stutter and pre-fetch times those kinds of game are always doing while running around those game-worlds.

CSGO, HL2, TF2, and most other much lesser demanding games would be fine house on say WD Black or Seagate FireCuda

And you can custom designate where each game goes, so that's not a problem.

[Flickero]

It is worth the extra money for the WD Black drive. You will see much better performance on read/write rates. Also, the parts in the drive are of a higher quality. The WD Blue Drive is okay, but should really only be used for basic computing. You will notice a performance difference if you decide to use the Blue instead of the Black version.

Also, as others have mentioned, an SSD is likely the best option. Especially considering how much they have come down in price over the last couple years.

Source: Tekhattan[tekhattan.com]