Any advantages to WD Caviar Green?

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Most 1TB Western Digital Caviar Blue HDDs have a 64mb cache, operate at 7200rpm, and cost $60, at 3.5".

Meanwhile, 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green HDDs usually have a 16mb cache, operate at 5900rpm, and cost $70, at 3.5".

This doesn't make much sense, so I'm assuming the Caviar Green drives have some other advantage, like low power consumption or environmental friendliness, or something. Does anyone know why they're priced so inconsistently?
 
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popatim
Unless you are going to be using the green as a storage drive or maybe some apps then that would be ok, otherwise get the blue. The greens have a 'sleep' mode in their firmware that cannot be over-ridden by any windows settings and thus they don't make very good gaming drives, leaving you waiting for the drive to spin back up to load the next level while everyone else is already in.

If the blue is cheaper then get it.
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Spectre694

Spectre694

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Ya they are literally their "green" (energy efficient drives.) However they are kinda slow compared to the other and don't fare particularly well in NAS etc. Work alright as backup/ storage drives but I wouldn't really recommend them unless they were cheaper than a blue.
 
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Ah, thanks. I just looked up benchmarks of the version of Caviar Green I was looking at, and it's a good 50-75% faster than my current HDD, so if they really are energy efficient and or "green" it might still be a better option for me than a Caviar Blue.
So far my mid-range gaming rig is drawing something like 250w, and most of my parts were chosen for their energy efficiency.
 
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Spectre694

Spectre694

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Blue 6.8W
Green 5.3W

The difference isn't really that large and the blues are faster. However, that one is up to you personally 1.5W isn't worth the performance hit for me but it may be for you.

Chart i pulled those numbers from is in this article
http://techgage.com/article/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review/
 
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Ack, really not a noticeable difference at all. I'll check eBay first and see if I can find one new for sub-$50, otherwise I'll just go Caviar Blue.
 
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popatim

popatim

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Unless you are going to be using the green as a storage drive or maybe some apps then that would be ok, otherwise get the blue. The greens have a 'sleep' mode in their firmware that cannot be over-ridden by any windows settings and thus they don't make very good gaming drives, leaving you waiting for the drive to spin back up to load the next level while everyone else is already in.

If the blue is cheaper then get it.
 
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