WD Green 3TB

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

Is it good?

I've got Seagate Barracudas and they're super loud (sound like fans) and ruin my whole silent build.

I do have a SSD that I use for my OS and programs. These HDDS would be for music, videos, pictures, etc. My priorities are (1) decent performance, no sleep modes, or slow playback (2) quiet, (3) last long. I need at least 6gb. I would consider spending extra to set up a raid to backup files.

I have a define r4 case and the HHDs sit on vibration reducers.

Is there a important difference, given my priorities, between WD Green and WD Red and WD Black?
Is WD Green better (esp in terms of noise) than Seagate Barracudas?
Is 3tb an OK size to go with given my priorties.
To protect against file lose, I need to setup a raid and that means I sacrifice one of my 3 drives? I could do 3, 3TB then.

WAD · Jul 3, 2013

green is slow black is as fast as the seagate barracuda

ksham · Jul 3, 2013

My Seagate Barracuda HDD do not run loud at all. So something is not right about that. You need a 3TB HDD for just 6GB of data?

@WAD: not true.

The Kasafist · Jul 3, 2013

Have to agree with ksham why 3TB for only 6GB of data for that not even a 1TB is going to be smart at least in my opinion personally 500GB-750Gb would be more than sufficient. Unless you start to slap full movies on them real soon hehe!

Colors explained here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/264851-32-black-blue-green-whats-difference

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

It seems red drives have "3D Active Balance Plus" which reduces noise. I'm considering that now.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

Sorry for the typo. 6TB, not 6gb. I need huge amountsof storage.

What's the difference between wd red and green. I think ill go with green cause its quiet. I assume muxh quieter than these barracudas.

ksham · Jul 3, 2013

Red is optimized for NAS setup. Green is not really quieter. It is just more energy-efficient. I do not recommend Green for NAS or RAID setup because it tends to sleep.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

What would be an example of an affordable quiet 3TB hard drive?

Are baracuad's def better than wd green and wd red?

ksham · Jul 3, 2013

For NAS or RAID setup, I would go with WD Red. I have them and they have not failed at all for me.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

Are the quiet? Will they be the loudest thing in my case?

ksham · Jul 3, 2013

Your case fans will be louder. I personally cannot hear any of my HDD or external HDD running.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

I currently can barely hear my fans. I've got a define r4 with all silence-optimized parts (incl GPU, PSU, etc). I think I'll go with the WD reds. Again, is there a strong reason to preference them over greens? and over baracudas?

ksham · Jul 3, 2013

I find Western Digital to be more reliable than the Seagate drives. I've only had one WD drive fail on me in the whole time I use them while I've had about six failures with Seagate.

And Green is a bad NAS or RAID drive because it tends to sleep to be more green and energy conservative. So that is not good in a RAID. If you are not running RAID, then don't worry about this issue. Green drive is still good outside of that.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

Yes, I don't plan on raid.

Then you're saying green is just as good as red. I've heard you can turn of the green sleep problem.

I want speed and quietness.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

These drives will be used to download content overnight 3 times a week for a few years.

ksham · Jul 3, 2013

Yes; the Green drive will be fine. The drive itself won't bottleneck you downloading content. That is limited by your connection speed.

Brian_W · Jul 3, 2013

ksham :

How about my ability to open hd movies and sort through them with search, etc.

ksham · Jul 4, 2013

Have you never used a HDD before? What does that have to do with the HDD itself? It depends on what sorting algorithm or sorting app you use.

Brian_W · Jul 4, 2013

You mentioned download speed as your only criterion for my HDD. I want to make sure that I pick a HDD that doesn't give me any lag when opening and sorting through my media (includ 10GB movies, etc). If HDD speed doesn't matter for these then I'll def pick up a Green.

I was also thinking about this -- http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/98214/bh-photo-video-4tb-hitachi-hgst-deskstar-coolspin-3.5-sata-iii-internal-desktop-hard-drive-kit

ksham · Jul 4, 2013

That is not what I said. Download speed is not a criterion for the HDD. I don't even understand what you meant by that. In short, if you want fast access speeds, buy a SSD. For all other things, a HDD isn't going to be much faster or slower than other HDDs at 7200rpm.

Brian_W · Jul 4, 2013

OK. Thanks for the input.

I think I'm going with reds, cause they're pretty quiet and more reliable than greens. I'm considering doing raid 5.

WD Green 3TB

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