WD Blue or Black

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giantbucket
Good choice. But when you get an external, try to go for a 1TB so that you can carry movies or other stuff to a friend's place. When I bought mine, I was deciding between 500G and 1T and I'm glad I went with the bigger one cuz it gets full quickly!! The price was $60 versus $75 so not that significant.
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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Due to some slight changes(I think WDC calls it dual stage actuator[not actually more actuators, but one that can fine adjust the head position for better accuracy] and dual processors) as well as firmware optimizations, the Black will perform a bit better as an OS drive. As a file storage drive alone they would both work about the same for most users.

The black also has a 5 year warranty vs 2 for the blue.

I am almost sure the laptop WDC blues have this dual stage actuator as well(I would be surprised if they all do not have it yet.).

Personally I like the WDC blacks for the performance at a cost of noise level when seeking.
 
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gakukid991

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Dec 27, 2013
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the warranty does not matter for me bz i will not be able to use it since one of my friend in usa will buy this for me and send it here in europe
anyway will i be able to notice a great difference in speed if i get the black version bz it cost like 25$ more than the blue version
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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It depends on the user. average users may not see too much difference and may like that the blue is a bit less noisy.

Seagate also has some newer Barracuda drives that come with only a 1 or 2 year warranty depending on when it was bought.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/...60Gb-s_35_Internal_Hard_Drive_ST3100005N1A1AS

It is kind of a middle ground, but some users do not like seagate(some don't like wdc, ect as well).

I personally have had failures from both companies and I know it is just part of owning equipment. After so many dries, one is going to fail at some point. This is why I stress backup as being VERY important.

Honestly, if you wanted pure speed, saving up a bit more for a small ssd(60-120 gigabytes depending on your number of programs.) for windows and programs and using a slow hard drive for files would work great.
 
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gakukid991

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Dec 27, 2013
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is not like i don't want to buy a ssd the prob is that my current hdd is only 160gb and i can put only on hdd in my pc case so if i get a ssd 80-120gb i will not have enough for my files
i can't buy another external hdd to use for my files that way i want to get a good 1tb hdd
is the barracuda faster and better than the wd blue?
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Faster, yes, better is up to the owner. again some users have sworn off seagate while others love them.

If your hard drive is only 160gigabytes, please ensure that the drive is still SATA because 160's are not too common any more and I just want to ensure you have the required sata port for it.

What case do you have anyway? lots of ways to make an extra drive fit :)
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Big difference on the laptop drives the blue spins at 5400 rpm(and also spins down after like 8 seconds of inactivity and even stops spinning to save power and keep the head safe. I am guessing the blacks do not do this, but can not be sure. I have a 1000gigabyte blue 2.5 in my media center for recording) and the black is 7200.

On 3.5 inch drives they are both 7200.
 
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giantbucket

giantbucket

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Doesn't matter much. Hard drive read/write speeds are around 140MB/s, USB3 is around 500, and USB2 is around 50. So while USB2 is slower, for most tasks it's not noticeable. Watching a movie is around 3MB/s if I remember right, so it won't be a problem at all.

If you get the 2.5" drives, you can usually fit two inside the case (as long as you have enough SATA ports on your motherboard). This lets you put Windows on one drive, and movies/music/documents on another, so that if something bad happens, you only lose windows and keep your other stuff safe.

But if you're going for 3.5" then blue is probably just fine. Black really only makes a lot of sense if you go for the 2.5" drives.
 
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giantbucket

giantbucket

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Good choice. But when you get an external, try to go for a 1TB so that you can carry movies or other stuff to a friend's place. When I bought mine, I was deciding between 500G and 1T and I'm glad I went with the bigger one cuz it gets full quickly!! The price was $60 versus $75 so not that significant.
 
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Solution
nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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Usb 2.0 is more likely going to be about 35-40 megabytes tops because of overhead, but for backups(but trust me, pushing 2tb over usb 2 does take a long time.) it is not too bad(you only have to copy changes so once the first long backup is done, small incremental ones are fast enough.). I had used E-sata for years and just started to use USB 3.0 for backups.

Most external drives are also the green version so they are not as fast either(still make it upto and over 100 megabytes/sec when not limited by usb).
 
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