which western digital color to get ?

Blue. Or get a Seagate Barracuda 1TB.

Western Digital Black is another option depending on the type use you plan... and Western Digitals have a better reliebility record than Seagate.

The Most (and Least) Reliable Hard Drive Brands
http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-reliable-hard-drive-brands-1505797966

Western Digital Caviar Black VS Blue
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1858471/western-digital-caviar-black-blue.html

The colors reflect what their intended use is:

Red is intended for NAS usage
Green is intended for low power, cool, quiet operation ... (read slow)
Black is the performance line ... used by enthusiasts
Blue is the "consumer" line ... what you would find ina PC bought in a store.
Purple if for surveillance systems

You can get an idea of how each performs in your intended usage here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/benchmarks,134.html

For example - Gaming:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/-17-PCMark-7-Gaming,2915.html

Black = 17th place
Green = 46th place
Red = 36th place
....and so on

I use the Seagate SSHD (1st) for gaming builds

Video Editing is here
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/-13-PCMark-7-Video-editing-using-Windows-Movie-Maker,2911.html

If gaming a lot off an HDD, then the WD Black should be the best choice.

Those sources draw conclusions that are highly suspect. For example.... If I did a survey where I chose Corsair CX PSUs based upon buying "the least expensive [PSUs] that perform well, based on stress tests and a few weeks in production".... and then subjected that to gaming usage over time.....no one would ever buy any Corsair PSU.

That's exactly what backblaze did

http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-reliable-hard-drive-brands-1505797966

Backblaze says they buy the least expensive drives that perform well, based on stress tests and a few weeks in production

Click to expand...

Not saying their experience didn't happen, I'm saying their results apply ONLY to the very small range of models chosen. And they specifically highlight that the bad experience was with the Seagate Green Drives. Each model has to be judged on its own.... the reliability of the WD Black, has no impact on the WD Green.

Here's another source which is model agnostic where WD comes in last .... who's right ? Neither, the data is meaningless.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,86% (0,95%)
- Toshiba 1,02% (1,54%)
- Hitachi 1,08% (1,16%)
- Western 1,13% (1,19%)

The best source for years was the storagereview.com site ... it's not blingy, simply data centric and therefore hasn't maintained the following it had in past years. It's become so outta date and database hasn't been kept up that the data is somewhat irrelevant as its obvious that the drives aren't still running 10 years later, just that peeps stopped coming back and updating it..... but if ya look at what did fail in those 1st 3 or 4 years when it was updated, we can get a good picture of how they each measured up back then....and the only conclusion we can draw is brand name is meaningless.

Not only does the reliability of one model a poor indicator of reliability on another, even from year to year this can change substantially; here we see that the Cheetah 15K.3 and Cheetah 15K.4 were the best and worst HDs ever made from a reliability standpoint. The Seagate 7200.10's and 7200.12's were great drives, the 7200.11 was a bomb (firmware issue).

http://www.storagereview.com/php/survey/survey_result_tree.php?mfrID=25&k1=uHdG9BGYn6&id=0&ph=

In short, forget brand names..... it's not what logo that's on a piece of equipment that matters its what is inside.

-If a PSU uses better caps, chokes, voltage regulation, etc than another it will perform better and be more reliable. Why does Corsair have a AX, HX, RM and CX line ..... cause they want to compete in all price niche's .... the reliability and performance of the AX should be no reflection on the CX and visa versa.

-If a MoBo / GFX card uses better caps, chokes, voltage regulation, etc than another it will perform better and be more reliable. The logo stuck on the thing at the end of production has little to do with it. Why does EVGA have a classified, FTW and SC card ..... same thing .... the reliability and performance of the Classified should be no reflection on the SC. The Asus Pampage Extremes were consistently the baddest gaming boards around, the most recent one has a 10% RMA rate. Do we judge the Ramaoge V on the 10% faiure rate of the IV or do we look at I, II and II ?

-If a memory stick uses better modules than another it will perform better and be more reliable. Why does Corsair have a Dominator, Vengeance and other lines ..... same thing ..... the reliability and performance of the Dominators should be no reflection on the CMV line.

After 20+ years of building PC's if I have learned anything, it's that there are no absolutes.... today's winner is tomorrow's chump and visa versa.

WD Black ... great drive
Seagate 7200.14 .... great drive

I would take either of the Greens if they were $20.

One thing that does matter however is service.... I got a bit peeved with WD when they wouldn't cross ship a 9 month drive that had failed under warranty even with a credit card.... took 9 days to get a replacement, I sent dead one overnight mail. That was in 2006 .... had an old SCSI fail after 4.5 years in my server about a year before and had the drive from Seagate the next morning. Have no idea whet their policies are these days

My NAS came with 2 Seagate 7200.10s and I bought two more. Two years later I bought two 7200.12's as "spares" .... the NAS died in a storm (yes, was on UPS) but all drives are still in use .... never did use the spares but now use them for offsite data storage. The Desktops have a mix of WD and Seagate, all still functioning, oldest one is circa 2006. (wife uses). The last 2 - 2.5 years though we have used nothing but SSHDs ....