WD Blue vs Black

[cooled]

hello
Im trying to decide wether to get a WD blue or Black
What are the advantages of the Black
except warranty and cache

 

[hexstatic]

lower seeks, faster read and writes

 

[po1nted]

hello
Im trying to decide wether to get a WD blue or Black
What are the advantages of the Black
except warranty and cache

If you play games or do video work (or anything else that requires moving data to/from the HDD) then a black might benefit you. If you don't do data intensiv things than a blue will suffice.

I have both in my desktop and honestly don't really see a real work daily use difference. Things copy over a tad bit faster to the black, but not so much of a difference that the blue makes me sit there and wait.

What are your needs? What is the cost difference between drives? What is your budget? Weigh those against each other.

 

[thlillyr]

The black is significantly faster than the blue in all tasks and is a far more reliable drive. Also they cross ship black drive but not blues. meaning you call today with a bad drive and they put the new one in the mail that day and you have 30 days to return it. The blue they wait to receive it before shipping a new one to you.

 

[cooled]

If you play games or do video work (or anything else that requires moving data to/from the HDD) then a black might benefit you. If you don't do data intensiv things than a blue will suffice.

I have both in my desktop and honestly don't really see a real work daily use difference. Things copy over a tad bit faster to the black, but not so much of a difference that the blue makes me sit there and wait.

What are your needs? What is the cost difference between drives? What is your budget? Weigh those against each other.

so if both of them are 3Gbps the black is only a tad bit faster and more reliable?

 

[raven2510]

Correct. I am also running both in my current desktop. I use the blue for my SSD storage, docs, ect. I use my Black drive for movies, video streaming, ect.

If you will be doing any type of movie streaming, movie editing, or media stuff....I would just go for the Black drive.

 

[one_with_shadows]

I have a 320gb blue in my wifes computer, and a 640gb black in my pc. Honestly, go for the cheaper of the two (unless the warranty is really important to you) There is a bit of a speed difference, but you will more than likely not notice it. On occasion my wifes blue can actually out perform my black drive. Not sure how thats possible...but hey, can't argue with Crystal Disk Mark/HD Tune. I am fairly confident you would not notice the difference in a daily use machine anyway. I have read that the black is more reliable though, which IS most important to me. If you are really concerned with speed, buy a small OS ssd and a smaller blue drive for daily storage if your budget allows. Having a Corsair Force 3 I can say with certainty the cost for going ssd is worth it.

 

[cooled]

Best answer selected by cooled.

 

[JbrRo]

I have a 320gb blue in my wifes computer, and a 640gb black in my pc. Honestly, go for the cheaper of the two (unless the warranty is really important to you) There is a bit of a speed difference, but you will more than likely not notice it. On occasion my wifes blue can actually out perform my black drive. Not sure how thats possible...but hey, can't argue with Crystal Disk Mark/HD Tune. I am fairly confident you would not notice the difference in a daily use machine anyway. I have read that the black is more reliable though, which IS most important to me. If you are really concerned with speed, buy a small OS ssd and a smaller blue drive for daily storage if your budget allows. Having a Corsair Force 3 I can say with certainty the cost for going ssd is worth it.

i believe that, in your case, the blue outperformed the black because of the difference in size. 320gb blue drive can "find" files faster because it is a smaller sized drive and therefore less files/space to cover. the larger black drive on the other had has to cover twice the amount of files/space to access the files.

 

[mike321sk]

not true, nowadays WD company make Black drives at same speeds as Blue drives, they just put 20 $ plus on the price on Blacks and plus 3 years on warranty. But they are exact the same in transer rate - sometimes Blues are bit faster than Blacks. Really shame they do this politics these days, but that´s the truth. I have WD1003FZEX and know what I´m talking about. What´s worse, when I sent them this fact, they agree with it. Silly, no?

 

[Maroje]

The solution lies in the fact that the graphics cards are different from the one to the other computers, same as a speed changes pixels. Pictures on two TV screens differ. The question should be asked, looking at the same screen.

 

[Mr Wrong]

not true, nowadays WD company make Black drives at same speeds as Blue drives, they just put 20 $ plus on the price on Blacks and plus 3 years on warranty. But they are exact the same in transer rate - sometimes Blues are bit faster than Blacks. Really shame they do this politics these days, but that´s the truth. I have WD1003FZEX and know what I´m talking about. What´s worse, when I sent them this fact, they agree with it. Silly, no?

The drive size is important, and there are blue drives that still spin slower then black and there are blue drives with less cache then the black. Even though the drive may have the same 6 Gigabit transfer rates from the drive, a slower spinning drive (like 5400 vrs 7200) will take longer to read the data and a smaller cache (like 8 Mb vrs 32MB) will need to read more often. If you work with small files and not accessing the drive often then they may appear similar, working with large images or gaming will show the difference. However the blue drive is quieter. Seems that you want to examine the specs of the drive vrs the type. I had changed out a 500 GB blue for a 500 GB black, the black is faster but the drive specs support that. My blue was 500 Gb, 5400 rpm and 8Mb Cache, the new black is 500 Gb, 7200 rpm and 32MB Cache.

 

[bboiprfsr]

1) Dual-Core Processing: The WD Black drive features a dual-core processor that offers twice the processing capability as a standard single-core processor to maximize drive performance, especially for loading games or large multimedia files.
2) Increased Reliability: WD Black drives are equipped with StableTrac Technology (2 TB and larger models). This secures the motor shaft inside the hard drive to increase reliability and help reduce impact due to system-induced vibrations from other components. By stabilizing the platters inside, WD Black drives result in more accurate tracking in a particular sector during read and write operations, optimizing performance and reliability.
3) Warranty: Every WD Black drive is backed by an industry leading 5-year limited warranty. Compared to standard hard drives such as WD Blue, WD Black hard drives pass more strenuous and aggressive internal testing over a longer period of time.


source: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

 

[redwolf357]

here is a good writeup on the differences, they appear to have done their research on the matter.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1741-wd-blue-vs-black-comparison-best-drive-for-gaming

 

[CarlSorvino]

hello
Im trying to decide wether to get a WD blue or Black
What are the advantages of the Black
except warranty and cache

For the 1TB drives the Black and the Blue are essentially the same. Both are 64mb cache. The Black has a 5 yr limited warranty and the Blue has a two year. Once you go to a 2TB Black then you get 128mb of cache and StableTrac. Honestly paying $30 for the additional 3 years is probably worth it but I doubt there is a performance difference.

 

[smokingjoeblazer]

I see a few comments on blacks being more reliable. I have not seen this in my experience. I have used many blue and green drives in both personal and work machines. Heck, I even slapped a few green drives in to a NAS in a Raid 10 config just for the hilarity of it. After several years, all 4 green drives are still running (to my amazement).