WD Caviar Blue, Black or Green?

[GheeTsar]

I need a new hard drive as my velociraptor is out of space and fancy sticking with WD. Is it worth the premium to get the "black" over the "blue" or "green" editions?

It's likely to be mainly used for media storage, but with some apps and games in the future no doubt. Probably looking at the 1TB mark.

Any help/advice would be much appreciated!

[jackvdbuk]

going out on a limb here and tottally guessing but:
green - slower drives "save the world" type of drive..
out of the other two one is more server suited high incredibly high mtbf.

if it were me just get the cheapest

[Professor Frink]

I would have recommended Green until you mentioned apps and games. The Green is energy saving and will spin at a slower speed when not needed which is good for standard storage.

[GheeTsar]

Thanks guys - perhaps the "green" is the best bet and then get a SSD drive later when the prices have come down.

[Funkstar]

the green should also be quieter most of the time as it will either spin slower or not at all.

[Zak33]

I'm Blue man for the slight edge on performance, and really hard to see the power saving with a green, when SATA power draw is miniscule anyway.

[shbris]

my blue gives about 95mb/s average access, and almost silent

[arthurleung]

I'm Blue man for the slight edge on performance, and really hard to see the power saving with a green, when SATA power draw is miniscule anyway.

You'd be suprised how many times my Blue in an external enclosure overheated and drop out of windows. Saving 5W per drive is one thing, with 12 drives you'll see 60W saving
And I get less case vibration resonance when mixing 7200 and 5400 rpm drives.

I absolutely love my Green drives. (4 on my desktop and 4 on my server).

And speaking of data drive. I would get it as slow as possible so that it doesn't lag the OS drive when I do copying.

OS on Green, copying to Blue data disk -> Both mouse and keyboard stop working
OS on Blue, copying to Blue data disk -> System unresponsive
OS on Blue, copying to Green -> Acceptable response time

[Zak33]

You'd be suprised how many times my Blue in an external enclosure overheated and drop out of windows. Saving 5W per drive is one thing, with 12 drives you'll see 60W saving
And I get less case vibration resonance when mixing 7200 and 5400 rpm drives.

I absolutely love my Green drives. (4 on my desktop and 4 on my server).

And speaking of data drive. I would get it as slow as possible so that it doesn't lag the OS drive when I do copying.

OS on Green, copying to Blue data disk -> Both mouse and keyboard stop working
OS on Blue, copying to Blue data disk -> System unresponsive
OS on Blue, copying to Green -> Acceptable response time

good post. ....OK, maybe while transfering files to a slower drive it makes the PC a tad slower, but not by much. I'm shocked it would stop your mouse working!!