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Thread ID: 140708	2015-11-30 03:14:00	Another faulty Seagate HDD...which Western Digital drive to choose?	wratterus (105)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1412173	2015-11-30 03:14:00	I've had enough of Seagate drives at the moment - had 3 of my own drives fail over the last 2 years, and the final straw is a 3tb drive that's just failed 6 months out of it's warranty. Keen to switch to WD, but am not up with the play with their different models. This is purely for data storage, no crazy IOPS, no DVR or anything like that, just general media and data storage. Would probably like something with at least a 3 year warranty. I would like to just go for the Black drives, but they are an awful lot dearer than the others, and I'm not sure the extra is worth it for this application. Still want something that's 7200RPM, I was looking at the purple drives, which seem squarely aimed at the surveillance market, I assume there wouldn't be any issue using these in a normal desktop PC? Anyone's thoughts/opinions welcomed. Thanks!	wratterus (105)
1412174	2015-11-30 04:27:00	Have you tried updating the firmware on it?? If there is an update? I always check for them IF I buy a seagate hdd	Speedy Gonzales (78)
1412175	2015-11-30 04:57:00	Personally I just use the blues. Wouldn't touch the Blacks, seen so many failures with them is not even funny. Once I had 3 customers Blacks fail in as many months. And quite a few HP computers were using them as well. The Blues are the ones I also use in customer builds, general usage drives and out of all the builds I've done over the years, and I'm talking hundreds ( literally) only had 1 maybe 2 failures come back within the warranty period. :2cents:	wainuitech (129)
1412176	2015-11-30 06:15:00	WD blue are the most popular of their drives for general purpose use. I know you said 7200 rpm but why? the green drives are designed specifically for data storage and perform quite well, just not if you want to use any form of RAID. Unless you regularly move/copy large amounts of data around or need to stream more than 2 videos at a time a WD green is perfectly fast enough for media storage/streaming. I used 4 x 2TB WD greens for this purpose for years, only recently replacing them with 2 x 4TB WD red drives in a NAS for more convenient operation Goes like This; WD Black - High performance OS drive, reputation for a higher failure rate. no Idea how true that is. Better to use an SSD + storage drive than waste money on these. WD Blue - OS + Storage use, mainstream performance, good reputation WD Green - Optimised for lower power consumption and noise, intended as storage drives but not in RAID setups WD Red - essentially the same as green with better firmware and warranty, intended for NAS and RAID use, storage drives WD purple, never looked into these, intended for video surveillance I've had a lot of WD greens, a few blues, and currently have 2 x reds. Never had a failure. Just to mix it up a bit though I back up the WD red drives in the NAS onto seagate green drives in one of my PC's	dugimodo (138)
1412177	2015-11-30 06:27:00	Aren't Seagate & WD of the same parent company? PJ	Poppa John (284)
1412178	2015-11-30 09:34:00	The WD-Seagate relationship is a bit like Intel-AMD.... ....WD and Intel are pricey and have a high reputation to live up to, Seagate and AMD are for the cheaper mass-market Like Dugimodo I have used a lot of Greens and found them good - never had a failure. Occasionally they take about 2 - 3 seconds to respond, presumably after being asleep. I currently have a 2TB Green as a general purpose drive additional to my SSD. A few years ago I decided that 3.5" drives are too heavy and bulky for media storage so I changed to 2TB WD USB3 portables. I've got 14 now - 7 for storage and another 7 for BU. I get them for about $150 (Elements) I'm looking forward to using the 3TB version which is the same size as the 2TB! But currently they are about $450 which is not good value. I also want to see how reliable they are. It's amazing to get 3TB in such a small space	BBCmicro (15761)
1412179	2015-11-30 19:42:00	Personally, I don't like Greens. They're slow to wake up & respond. If you just need some storage, use Red's. Blue's you can use as a system drive (if you don't use SSD).	autechre (266)
1412180	2015-11-30 21:26:00	Thanks everyone - probably a fair point about not needing 7200RPM - I was thinking of the green drives which I really don't like - they are too slow to 'wake up'. But I guess that is more to do with their power saving stuff parking the heads rather than spinning slower. The more I look at it I think the Blue/Red drives are a good choice - as this is solely for storage, no software or OS running from the drives, the extra warranty on the Reds probably makes them the one to go for, plus they will be running 24/7. Edit - I also notice that any blue drives over 2TB seem to be 5400RPM anyway.	wratterus (105)
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