What 4TB HDD to get? Wanted WD Blue, but got repainted WD Green...

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HoaxXx

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SHORT VERSION:
WD apparently merged their Green and Blue lines and now is selling Blues with features of the Greens. I don't like the head parking feature of the Green drives and am about to send my new WD Blue 4TB back (which has this aggressive parking feature of the Green line), BUT have no idea what to get instead.

LONGER VERSION:
I have a SSD as my OS drive and some older 1TB drives.
Recently upgraded my rig (to a satisfying i7-5820K) and chose to add a 4TB drive.

After a lot of reading on the topic I decided on a WD Blue (WD40EZRZ), because I wanted a simple desktop all-round drive (I plan on doing a smaller "short stroke" partition for games + rest for data storage + torrent (constant use)). I came to the conclusion that speed would not be of great issue.

After installing the new WD Blue 4TB I noticed unusual clicking noises once in a while.
I am now pretty sure it is the head parking (S.M.A.R.T. "Load/unload cycle" goes up constantly - ca. 200 while I was running a HD Tune health check and another 90 or so in the last 2 hours of desktop use) and while investigating the issue I came to the realization that WD dropped Greens but is now selling them as Blues.

I know about "wdidle3.exe", which is a fw mod that could alter the park timings, but the tool is not specifically designed for this drive afaik, and I'd rather not mess with it.

I still have about 48 hours to return the drive for full refund, but what to get instead?

I considered:
- WD Black = those are presumably too noisy and definitely too costly for me;
- WD Green = aggressive parking behavior I don't want;
- WD Red = a bit more costly (around +20% where I live) and then there is the issue with being designed for NAS (not sure how or if this would be of issue running without any RAID);
- Seagate Barracuda = reliability questioned in many user reviews and recommendations on this boards (probably exaggerated vocal minority, but still...);
- WD Blue = are there 4TB Blues that are true WD Blues and not repainted Greens?
 
Solution
madmatt30
^ fairly certain he means the deskstar models.

I've been using toshiba x300's a fair few times lately.
Excellent drives, very very fast , noisy when writing lots if small files admittedly , very quiet the majority of the time though.
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitachi-0S03665-4000-GB-Internal/dp/B00IQOAM5A
Would that be it or a particular one (Deskstar etc.)?

Price wise the one above would be a mere +20% more than what I paid for the Blue and the same a Red would cost (all with added seller warranty to be 5 years).

I'll read up on that.

Edit: As far as I can see "HGST Deskstar" or "HGST Ultrastar" cost a lot more than even WD Black (4TB ones are in the 1TB-SSD territory) - too much for me unfortunately.

 
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madmatt30

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^ fairly certain he means the deskstar models.

I've been using toshiba x300's a fair few times lately.
Excellent drives, very very fast , noisy when writing lots if small files admittedly , very quiet the majority of the time though.
 
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Solution
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HoaxXx

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Thanks, this one looks promising (Toshiba x300 4TB).
 
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madmatt30

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not my personal benches but

seagate barracuda 4tb
nVvHwhgc.png


Toshiba x300 4tb
3dgiLZNS.png



impressive imo,been using toshiba drives solely for the last 13-14 months,since they got hold of WD's old manufacturing plant drive quality & availability has gone up massively,& prices have dropped too.


& yes you're aboslutely right regarding the WD drives, only the lone 1tb model is really a true Blue model,WD's naming conventions are just downright confusing there is even a 2tb WD blue that is only a 5400rpm drive!!
 
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HoaxXx

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I wouldn't mind a 5400 desktop drive, quite frankly if it meant less noise I would take it over a 7200 one.
I bought the Blue as a "standard" desktop drive and I feel kinda cheated by having a Green sold to me with a blue sticker. I'm not saying that Greens are bad in general, they have their purpose, but I don't think they meet mine (which is "reliability for everyday computing" exactly what they say about the Blue on their webpage (whereas the Greens were explicitly aimed for storage. as far as I remember).
This practice is just bad and borders on fraudulent advertisement.

Also thanks for the benchmarks, I just started to consider Seagate 7200.15 4TB because the reliability reviews speak well of those (opposed to their 3TB brethren), also they have quite a lot of good user reviews.
The Seagate's CrystalDiskMark results are pretty bad (the HD Tune ones are not that much apart, though) - however, the Seagate is 93% full whereas the Toshiba is at 14%.

I just did the CrystalDiskMark test on a 95% full Samsung 1TB 7200 HDD and got almost the same results as the Seagate, whereas as far as I remember, when it was empty, those were just a bit worse than the Toshiba's. Can't do another empty test to double check, as I just moved everything back from the WD Blue to that drive, but I'd consider that a factor.
 
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Here is another set of benchmarks of the Seagate:
http://goughlui.com/2014/06/20/4tb-head-to-head-western-digital-green-wd40ezrx-vs-seagate-desktop-st4000dm000/

HD Tune comes to the same conclusion as in your samples (i.e. not that much of a difference), but DiskMark (here on an empty drive), is thus:

ST-CDM.png


It is still slower than the Toshiba, but not by much. Considering the Toshiba is 7200 RPM and the Seagate 5900, the results are not bad (my WD Blue at 5400 had similar results). Basically spindle speed does not seem to be much of a factor these days.

I think I'll just order both, the Toshiba x300 and Seagate HDD.15, test the speeds and see if I can notice much of a difference in noise performance - and then keep whichever suits me better.
 
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Just wanted to add, that Seagate HDD.15 apparently also has "green" features causing high load cycles / head parking.
Doesn't seem to be as aggressive as with WD Greens (8s on WDs, 1-2 min on Seagate) and can also be turned off with a tool (HDAT2).

Is the Toshiba X300 pretty much the only available "standard consumer grade HDD" at the moment?
(as in: non NAS, non enthusiast level, no pseudo green self destruct features - just a standard PC HDD as we were used to for the last 20 years or so)
 
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madmatt30

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Bear this in mind mate , WD now own Hitachi , do when you buy an Hitachi you are now really getting a WD drive .
Toshiba Adopted the old Hitachi plant & most of their tech when this happened in 2012.

The x300 is as close as your going to get to an Hitachi deskstar nowadays.
All drives (especially 3tb & up) are going to have some form of power saving features, the Toshiba drives in my experience at least are far less aggressive or intrusive on this front.
 
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I'm probably giving this whole issue more bother than it's worth, but the refund hasn't yet come through, so I have time on my hands to ponder a new purchase ;)

I found several e-sellers in my country offering Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 (HUA722020ALA330, 2TB, Sata2) and A7K3000 (HUA723020ALA641, 2TB, SATA3) at great prices. Those are sold as unused (stated as leftovers or stripped from never deployed systems) and come with a a 3 year warranty.

For a little extra (+15-20%) compared to what I paid for the WD Green 4TB I can have 3 of those.
Set in Raid 5 (which my Asrock X99 Extreme 6 supports) I'd have 4TB capacity with 2x read speeds and full data redundancy, as far as I understand that mode.
Seems like a great choice (albeit probably not the most silent one).
 
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madmatt30

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Me personally I'd go with 2x 3tb models in raid if I were doing what your thinking.
I'm using the DT01ACA300 3tb tosh drives in both my systems, they're dirt cheap in the UK (same price as a 2tb barracuda) & just can't be faulted, fast & near silent even under extreme use.

You are over thinking though mate really, the x300 is a rock solid drive if 4tb is what you're after
 
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HoaxXx

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Yeah, I know I am ;)
But it's good fun to mess around with different hardware ideas.
Thank's for participating, mate.

At first I thought primarily in terms of capacity and cost but data redundancy would be something worth considering as well (the PC is used for work as well - and even though I never had a disk fail on me before (running some pretty old ones, too), it would be disastrous if it finally happened).

The DT01ACA300 seems interesting, too.

Thoughts: Between the 2TB Hitachi and 3TB Toshiba price per TB would be nearly the same where I live (with the 4TB X300 not that far off per TB) - meaning, at same cost the 2 Toshibas in Raid1 would give me 3TB capacity and 2 years warranty, whereas 3 Hitachis in Raid5 would go at 4TB capacity and 3 years warranty.

Edit: Ok, I see now, Raid 5 with an OnBoard controller would result in poor write performance, adding yet another caveat to that solution.
I'll probably go with the x300 4TB and schedule-backup essential data to one of my current drives which then will be re-purposed for that task alone - should suffice capacity wise (don't need everything to be backed up) and be safer than plain mirroring anyway.
 
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HoaxXx

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Just out of curiosity, how do the DT01ACA300 compare to the x300? e.g. performance, noise, vibration, heat?
Are those completely different series of drives (as in Blue vs Black, or NAS vs Desktop) or similar designs with merely different capacities?
 
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