WD Black 7200rpm or WD Blue 5400rpm for gaming HDD?

[Ocelote.12]

I have a SSD for system disk, also currenly using "new" WD Blue (2015 rebranded Green, 5400rpm) for gaming HDD (HDD dedicated to games and SteamLibrary) and another older WD Green for other data (of low usage).

If I need bigger HDD for games, does it have sense to upgrade gaming WD Blue to WD Black? Or is it a waste of money and I should buy a larger Blue (or another, leaving current inside too)?

Pro's of WD Black:
1) Dual-core processor
2) 7200 rpm (vs 5400 of "newer" Blue or "older" Green that I have)
3) 5-year warranty

The particularities of gaming HDD:
1) Most of the time it won't read many small files, because I think most loading game data is read on large chunks.
2) 98% of the time it will only read from HDD, write will probably be only when installing games.

[Ocelote.12]

Originally posted by vadim:

There is almost no difference between WD Blue and WD Black. But difference between WD Blue and WD Green is huge.

You speak about older Blue. But now, as you can see on WD website, there're no "older" 7200 rpm Blues left. The current "Blue" that they offer are simply rebranded Green ones. Currently WD offers only WD Black and "new" WD Blue (rebranded Green).

From a tech news site: "Western Digital paints its Green hard drives Blue in rebranding" (Oct 28, 2015)
http://techreport.com/news/29251/western-digital-paints-its-green-hard-drives-blue-in-rebranding

"New" WD Blue webpage:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=770

[CursedPanther]

Originally posted by AlexK:

Originally posted by vadim:

There is almost no difference between WD Blue and WD Black. But difference between WD Blue and WD Green is huge.

You speak about older Blue. But now, as you can see on WD website, there're no "older" 7200 rpm Blues left. The current "Blue" that they offer are simply rebranded Green ones. Currently WD offers only WD Black and "new" WD Blue (rebranded Green).

From a tech news site: "Western Digital paints its Green hard drives Blue in rebranding" (Oct 28, 2015)
http://techreport.com/news/29251/western-digital-paints-its-green-hard-drives-blue-in-rebranding

"New" WD Blue webpage:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=770

Damn, so the new Blue series are all 5400rpm ones since last October? Thanks for the heads up.

I bought 2 Blue back in 2013. Guess those will be my last.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Might as well get 2 TB or 4 TB Black and be done with it, it's best HDD for gaming anyway.

[Revelene]

You don't need to shoot all the way up to a Black. Both the Blue 7200RPM 64MB Cache and Black 7200RPM 64MB Cache have little difference in real-world performance, especially for gaming usage. Black has a longer warranty (5 years vs 2 years).

If you want better drive performance, I recommend an SSD. It is definitely worth looking into.

[Ocelote.12]

@Revelene, I repeat again (now edited my first post title), new Blue are not 7200rpm but 5400rpm.

[Revelene]

Originally posted by AlexK:

@Revelene, I repeat again (now edited my first post title), new Blue are not 7200rpm but 5400rpm.

You failed to understand my post.

I was not talking about your Blue drive.

I thought that would have been rather clear when I said "You don't need to shoot all the way up to a Black" and then listed specifics for a model that is not yours.

[Ocelote.12]

@Revelene

I have searched on the Internet and found only old Blue 7200rpm that are only 1Tb or less, and I need 3Tb or greater, and for them only Blue/Green 5400rpm or Black 7200rpm are available.

[Revelene]

Originally posted by AlexK:

@Revelene

I have searched on the Internet and found only old Blue 7200rpm that are only 1Tb or less, and I need 3Tb or greater, and for them only Blue/Green 5400rpm or Black 7200rpm are available.

That information was not listed in your OP.

Also, what does drive capacity have to do with you misunderstanding my post?

[moving shadow]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BLUE-Desktop-Internal-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1458664429&sr=8-9&keywords=4tb+hdd

there is legit, nothing different between Green/Blue. Black has a faster revolutions per/min rate and and slightly faster read/write performance. personally i dont believe its even worth the investment. Just get a blue/green 4tb hdd from wd and call it a day. At the end of the day, a HDD is a HDD, and an SSD is better if you're looking for faster perfomance from storage, but is more expensive at lesser capacity.

e.g: 500gb ssd by samsung

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-inch-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B00P73B1E4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458664570&sr=8-1&keywords=500gb+ssd

[76561198135154379]

You didn't really specify size so why not just buy a 500GB SSD? They're cutting into $100 now. 500GB isn't so bad unless you're planning to hoard all your triple AAA games.

[Alexalmighty502 Sup Acc]

get a black for gaming they have a long warranty (and a long lifetime) and are still rather speedy

[Andrius227]

Avoid 5400rpm drives at all cost, they are trash for gaming. Get a 6TB WD black and you will never run out of space.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by Revelene:

You don't need to shoot all the way up to a Black. Both the Blue 7200RPM 64MB Cache and Black 7200RPM 64MB Cache have little difference in real-world performance, especially for gaming usage. Black has a longer warranty (5 years vs 2 years).

If you want better drive performance, I recommend an SSD. It is definitely worth looking into.

But Blue only offered up to 1TB
So Black is the only option. How is SSD an option when people need TB worth of space.
Like who wants to only install a few games; that is non-sense thinking.

Avoid Seagate at all costs. WD Black is very worth it for the warranty alone.

If you budget is really that tight; then yea just get a 500GB SSD for OS + Games and maybe a WD Green or Red for backup storage

WD = if u see anything labeled as "Caviar" do not buy it, that means it is old.
Now they are "Color + Series" i.e. Green Series, Blue Series, Black Series.....etc.

[CursedPanther]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

How is SSD an option when people need TB worth of space. Like who wants to only install a few games; that is non-sense thinking.

Speaking from personal experience, I have a 1TB SSD with the the OS and around 15 games installed. Depends on your definition of 'few' here, 15 are actually a lot considering you do plan to invest at least some time into most of them.

Having that said, I also happen to have a decent Internet bandwidth so downloading games isn't a problem at all for me. So yea there are several things we should consider for achieving a balance.

[Revelene]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Originally posted by Revelene:

You don't need to shoot all the way up to a Black. Both the Blue 7200RPM 64MB Cache and Black 7200RPM 64MB Cache have little difference in real-world performance, especially for gaming usage. Black has a longer warranty (5 years vs 2 years).

If you want better drive performance, I recommend an SSD. It is definitely worth looking into.

But Blue only offered up to 1TB
So Black is the only option. How is SSD an option when people need TB worth of space.
Like who wants to only install a few games; that is non-sense thinking.

Avoid Seagate at all costs. WD Black is very worth it for the warranty alone.

If you budget is really that tight; then yea just get a 500GB SSD for OS + Games and maybe a WD Green or Red for backup storage

WD = if u see anything labeled as "Caviar" do not buy it, that means it is old.
Now they are "Color + Series" i.e. Green Series, Blue Series, Black Series.....etc.

Like I told the OP... size was never mentioned. The post was about performance.