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Confused about all these 1TB hardrives for sale... help me understand

Last response: in Storage
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OK, so there is Seagate, WesternDig, Hitachi ect...

Seems all about the same price. I have always used WD and had good luck.. but I am not brand specific.

I see some BLUE and some GREEN and some Black models for WD. What does this mean??

I don't want a drive that is slow to save energy. I am looking for maximum performance.

What 1TB drive should I get?

I could also do 500gig or 750gig... or even 500gigX 2 in RAID 0.

But I want to spend about 100 bucks if possible. I would step up if the performance is worth it.

I plan to use 120gig SSD for system, and I also have a Velociraptor now as my system which I will use for installation of alternate programs and holding my MP3 and Itunes foldes ect....

The 1TB will be for general storage, and movies and downloads

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Storage Expert

Mfusick said:

I see some BLUE and some GREEN and some Black models for WD. What does this mean??


GREEN = Power saving (Varying RPM)
BLUE = Mainstream (5400RPM or Less cache)
BLACK = Performance (7200RPM and/or more cache)
Storage Expert

Hawkeye22 said:
GREEN = Power saving (Varying RPM)
BLUE = Mainstream (5400RPM or Less cache)
BLACK = Performance (7200RPM and/or more cache)
Not true, at least not as far as the WD drives are concerned. All of the BLUE drives are 7200RPM - see: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=110

Frankly, I've never really understood the distinction between the BLUEs and the BLACKs. For example, if you compare the specs of the 1TB blue WD10EALX against the 1TB black WD1002FAEX, they both have exactly the same transfer rates.
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These graphs may help you decide:

http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/io.tests/platter.tran...


As a general rule, the 7,200 rpm drives will perform much faster
if they use PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) just because
of the higher recording density.


We are routinely measuring 150 MB/second with the WD5003ABYX RE4
using the ATTO benchmark:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...


WD does not publish this number; instead, their specs show
a "sustained" rate, which is different from the faster rate
at the outermost tracks.

Because of the large cache and 5-year warranty, we plan now
to migrate to RAID 0 arrays with 2x or 4x of these WD5003ABYX.


MRFS

> Frankly, I've never really understood the distinction between the BLUEs and the BLACKs.


WD just updated their corporate website:
check there for the latest documentation
e.g. "Drive Specification Sheets".


MRFS
Storage Expert

> WD just updated their corporate website: check there for the latest documentation e.g. "Drive Specification Sheets".
Yes, I checked them just before my prior post - that's where I got the info about the quoted transfer rates being exactly the same between the 1TB Blue and the Black drives (126MByte/sec)

Looks like my post included a miscreant trailing parenthesis in the link, though - I removed it so it should work now.

popatim said:
two samsung 500gb f3's in raid 0


faster than a 1.5TB seagate ??? I can get a 7200 seagate for like 70$ brand new... seems like a great deal.

Wondering if I should spend more. I don't mind if the performance is there... but it is just storage as I have a velociraptor and a 120gig SSD as main drives
Storage Expert

Hawkeye22 said:
Sorry about that. I had just recently got a scorpio blue and I know the main distinction over the scorpio black was that the blue was 5400rpm and the black was 7200rpm. I guess that doesn't pertain to all desktop drives.
The Scorpios are laptop drives. The "normal" speed for laptop drives is 5400RPM, so the "Black" drives are definitely designed for people looking for extra performance.

But for desktop drives the "normal" speed is 7200rpm, and the Blues and Blacks both run at that speed. I really don't see much to distinguish the two...
Storage Authority

Mfusick said:
faster than a 1.5TB seagate ??? I can get a 7200 seagate for like 70$ brand new... seems like a great deal.

Wondering if I should spend more. I don't mind if the performance is there... but it is just storage as I have a velociraptor and a 120gig SSD as main drives


Aside from the yet to be released single platter ~667gb based drives all the new drives use 500gb per platter pmr so a 1.5tb (3 platter) drive is no faster than a single platter 500gb. Its not like the multiplatter drives use some kind of raid0 internally to read from all 3 platter simultaneously.

Keep iin mind - More platters = more heat and more things to break.
Storage Expert

> so two or three 500gig drives in RAID 0 would be a better and faster option ?

Faster transfer rates, but not access times. It means you can read or copy large files from one place to another faster, but it won't have that much of an impact on booting the system or starting applications.
Storage Expert

Go to the manufacturer's web site and check the specifications for the model numbers you're interested in. The drives with the highest sustained or peak transfer rate will be the ones with the densest platters, which will be the newest generation.
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