Western Digital Green vs. Red Hard Drives
Always look at the date when you read an article. Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on October 7, 2014. For newer information, see our more recent articles.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Here at Puget Systems, we sell a lot of hard drives, with a good chunk being WD (Western Digital) Green drives. Especially in our Serenity systems, the quiet operation of the Green drives is essential when a customer wants a lot of storage space without the added noise that usually accompanies hard drives. However, we have recently decided to retire the WD Green drives from many of our systems, moving instead to the NAS and RAID oriented Red drives that are also made by WD. In working with the drives and examining the specifications closely, we have found that there is actually very little downside to Red drives compared to Green drives, but a number of advantages.
For our customers that want quiet systems, moving away from the tried and true Green drives may seem like an odd decision, so in this article we are going to compare the Green and Red lines and show why we believe that this is a good move. One thing we want to note is that all of this information is only valid for the latest revision of these drives. If you go back even one or two revisions, the differences between the two lines are completely different.
Because there are so many specifications and features to go over, we will be dividing this article into separate sections based on the categories that WD uses in their spec sheets. These categories include basic specifications, features, performance, reliability/data integrity, power management, environmental specifications (including noise levels), and physical dimensions. If you rather just see a summary of why we are making this move, feel free to jump ahead to the Conclusion section. Likewise, if you would rather just see all the specifications at a glance without any of our commentary, simply expand the option below:
Basic Specifications
Basic Specifications | Green 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EZRX Series) |
Red 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EFRX Series) |
Interface | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s |
Formatted capacity | 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB | 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB |
Native command queuing | Yes | Yes |
Form factor | 3. 5-inch | 3.5-inch |
Advanceed Format (AF) | Yes | Yes |
RoHS compliant | Yes | Yes |
Newegg Price | $65/85/110/150/223/270 | $70/100/122/170/235/290 |
From a very basic standpoint, the two model lines are essentially the same. They are both 3.5-inch SATA 6GB/s drives that include 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 TB versions. The main difference we want to point out here is the price. If you were to purchase a drive as a stand alone part from Newegg, a Red drive would be cost about $5 more per terabyte than a Green drive. This isn’t much, but depending on the model you may have to spend up to $20 more for a Red drive than a Green drive.
Features
Features | Green 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EZRX Series) |
Red 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EFRX Series) |
TLER Support | No | Yes (7 seconds) |
Vibration Protection | None | 3D Active Balance Plus |
SED Support | No | No |
From a features standpoint, the only major difference between Green and Red drives is TLER support. Neither drive supports SED, and 3D Active Balance Plus is really just WD’s way of saying that the motor and platters are all balanced within a certain tolerance to ensure that vibration is kept to a minimum. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to classify 3D Active Balance Plus as a form of vibration dampening instead of vibration protection.
TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) is a very important feature if you will be using the drive(s) in RAID since it limits the amount of time a hard drive can spend trying to recover from an error. Normally, if a data error is detected the hard drive will attempt to recover the data and repair the error. Depending on the nature and severity of the error, this can take anywhere from a few milliseconds to a couple of minutes. Normally, this isn’t a big deal – it just results in the data not being available for a bit longer than normal. However, RAID controllers only allow for a short amount of recovery time (usually about 7-14 seconds) before the controller assumes that the drive is having problems, drops the drive from the array, and marks the array as degraded.
What TLER does is limit the amount of time the hard drive can spend trying to repair an error before giving up. Since many types of RAID have built-in error correcting, it is preferable to let the RAID itself repair the error than to let the hard drive drop and degrade the RAID array. While TLER is absolutely great if the drive is used in a RAID array, it is not useful (and could even be a negative) if the drive is simply a stand-alone drive. Luckily, WD has provided us with proprietary tools that allow us disable TLER on systems that do not have RAID arrays.
Performance
Performance | Green 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EZRX Series) |
Red 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EFRX Series) |
Buffer to host | 6 Gb/s | 6 Gb/s |
Transfer Rate to/from drive (sustained) |
150/147/147/150/170/175 MB/s | 150/147/147/150/170/175 MB/s |
Cache (MB) | 64 | 64 |
Rotational speed (RPM) | IntelliPower | IntelliPower |
For drive performance, the Green and Red drives are actually completely identical according to the WD specifications. 14
Since Red drives are designed to be used in RAID arrays and NAS units, it is no surprise that they are rated for double the load/unload cycles as Green drives. A load/unload cycle is when the disk spins up its platter to get ready for operation. Typically this happens when you turn on a system, resume from standby, or when the drive has been idle long enough for the OS to power down the drive. While Red drives are rated for twice the number of load/unload cycles, the 300,000 cycles the Green drives are rated for is really quite a lot already. Even if you turn on/off your system or let it idle long enough to power down the drive 20 times a day, 365 days a year, a Green drive should still last for over 40 years.
In addition to the greater load/unload cycles, Red drives also carry a 3 year warranty from WD compared to the shorter 2 year warranty found on Green drives.
Power Management
Power Management | Green 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EZRX Series) |
Red 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EFRX Series) |
12VDC +- 10% (A, peak) | 1.2/1.73/1.73/1.75/1.75/1.75 A | 1.2/1.73/1.73/1.75/1.75/1.75 A |
Read/Write | 3.3/4.1/4.1/5.3/5.3/5.3 W | 3.3/4.1/4.1/4.5/5.3/5.3 W |
Idle | 2.5/3.0/3.0/3.4/3.4/3.4 W | 2.3/2.7/2.7/3.3/3.4/3.4 W |
Standby/Sleep | .4W | .4W |
Head parking delay | 8 seconds | 300 seconds (5 minutes) |
Comparing the power management specifications between these two drive lines is actually fairly interesting. Green drives are specifically designed for lower power operation, yet the Red drives either have the same or lower power draw depending on the model. In fact, really the only place where Green drives are more «green» is due to a firmware tweak which makes the drive head park after only 8 seconds instead of the normal 300 seconds found on most other WD drives (including Reds).
When a hard drive is under normal operation, the data heads (which both read and write data to/from the platters) float just a few nanometers above the platter. The heads are so close to the platter – which is spinning at thousands of RPM – that they introduce a certain amount of drag which the motor has to work harder to overcome. Head parking is simply the act of moving the heads away from the platters so that they no longer cause any drag. While this does result in the motor drawing a little less power, there are a few downsides to head parking.
The first issue with head parking is that the «landing zone» (where the heads rest while parked) is something that can physically wear out over time. The landing zone is usually rated for hundreds of thousands of uses, but every time the heads park you are one tiny step closer to the drive failing. In addition, it takes a tiny amount of time for the heads to return to a working position after they have been parked so there is a tiny (virtually imperceptible) drop in performance while the heads are unparked for use.
To determine the power savings of head parking, we used a multimeter to measure the wattage of both a 6TB Green and 6TB Red drive at load, normal idle and idle after the head was parked:
From our measurements, having the head parked resulted in a power draw reduction of about .7 watts. This is really a tiny difference, but if you are incredibly power conscious it may be relevant. Just keep in mind that the shorter the hard parking delay, the more wear the drive will sustain which may result in a shorter drive lifecycle.
One thing we want to point out is that WD does have a utility called WDIDLE3 that can change the parking delay on Green and Red drives. It is only available for download through one of their legacy drives (so no guarantee that it will work for all models) but we have successfully used it to change the parking delay on a number of Green and Red drives. So if you have a Green drive but want to make the delay longer (or want to shorten the delay on a Red drive) you currently are able to do so.
Environmental Specifications (noise)
Environmental Specifications | Green 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EZRX Series) |
Red 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EFRX Series) |
Temperature – operating (°C) | 0 to 60 | 0 to 65 |
Temperature – non-operating (°C) | -40 to 70 | -40 to 70 |
Shock – operating – 2 ms, write (Gs) | 30 | 30 |
Shock – operating – 2 ms, read (Gs) | 65 | 65 |
Shock – non-operating (Gs) | 250 | 250 |
Acoustics – Idle | 21/23/23/25/25/25 dBA | 21/23/23/25/25/25 dBA |
Acoustics – Seek (average) | 24/27/27/28/28/28 dBA | 22/24/24/28/28/28 dBA |
While Red drives are rated to operate at slightly higher temperatures, the interesting specification here is the seek acoustics. Even though we have used Green drives in our quietest systems for years, it turns out that the latest models of Red drives are rated to be just as quiet or quieter than their Green counterparts. From our understanding, there is no reason that Red drives should be any quieter, so there is the possibility that this is simply a testing artifact due to the extremely quiet nature of these drives. When you are testing components at 25 dBA, even something as small as a truck driving past on a road a couple blocks away can raise the decibel readings a couple of points.
Either way, Red drives are at least as quiet or quieter than Green drives which is great to know.
Physical Dimensions
Physical Dimensions | Green 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EZRX Series) |
Red 1/2/3/4/5/6 TB (EFRX Series) |
Size – L/W/H (in.) | 5.787/4/1.028 | 5. 787/4/1.028 |
Weight | .99/1.32/1.4/1.5/1.65/1.65 lb | .99/1.32/1.4/1.5/1.65/1.65 lb |
Finally, for an anti-climatic end, the Green and Red drives are the same physical size and weight for each storage capacity.
Conclusion
Overall, the differences between WD Green and Red drives are very subtle. From a noise, power draw, and performance standpoint Green and Red drives are pretty much identical. Really the only major specification difference between the two drive lines is that Red drives support TLER (critical for RAID arrays), have a longer expected lifespan, and an extra year of warranty. Red drives also have a longer head parking delay than Green drives, which can either be a pro or a con depending on if you want to reduce power draw as much as possible or maximize performance and lifespan.
The only real downside to purchasing a Red drive instead of a Green drive is the price. The difference is only about $5 per terabyte, however, which in our opinion is well worth the longer lifespan and additional year of warranty alone.
In the coming weeks, look for more and more of our certified systems to move from Green drives to Red drives. This is a pretty big move, and we would absolutely love to hear what you think about it. Let us know in the comments below!
Tags: Green, Red, WD, Western Digital
What is the difference between the WD Colours – Blue, Red, Black, Green, Purple and Gold – NAS Compares
Understanding the difference between WD Blue, Red, Black, Green, Purple and Gold Hard Drives
Western Digital have been in the hard drive and SSD market since the 1970s and I think it is safe to say that are one of the biggest and best storage media providers in the world. A lot of this success and market dominance is down to 3 factors.
- Pricing their products correctly so as to ensure that a home user can buy hard drive media priced in their budget that performs to that degree, whereas a highend business users has the option to pay more and get more.
- En-devouring to make their products are designed with the task in mind, rather than a single HDD or SSD for all purposes. You wouldn’t use a hammer to screw an IKEA table together, you wouldn’t use a screw driver to paint a fence. Likewise WD have Hard Drive that are tailored for intensive cold storage in data centers, as well as HDD that are designed for basic PC use and Desktops – this not only allows for grading pricing for consumers, but also that you are buying a tool that perfectly befits the task at hand.
- Ever heard the expression K.I.S.S? Keep It Simple, Stupid! This is possibly the most important factor in WD’s structure these last 5 years or more. Rather than bombard users with ill formed part numbers and flashy names (that’s right, I am looking at you Seagate – what exactly is an ‘Ironwolf’?), WD have just stuck to a simple colour code system of Drives. Once you know what each colour means, then you can pretty much narrow down ever WD drive easily.
The WD Blue Hard Drive for Basic Desktop Use
We start with the most cost effective and budget drive of all, the WD Blue HDD series. These are designed with low level access and long term use in mind. Once these would have been recommended for use for your operating system inside a non mission-critical PC (general browsing etc), but now with the inexpensive of SSD in 128-512GB and it becoming ideal for your operating system, start up and primary apps, the WB Blue hard drive has been demoted to basic storage use. You should not use WD Blue in a RAID and is cheifly designed for everyday storage needs where Read and Write speeds are not paramount.
WD60EZRZ | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM |
WD50EZRZ | 5TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM |
WD40EZRZ | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM |
WD30EZRZ | 3TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM |
WD20EZRZ | 2TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM |
WD10EZEX | 1TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 |
WD5000AZRZ | 500GB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM |
WD2500AAKX | 250GB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 |
The WD Red Hard Drive for NAS and RAID needs
Possibly the most well know WD HDD Color we will talk about today, WD Red is the Drive you need for your NAS Server. If you are looking at buying a brand new Synology NAS for your home or a beefed up QNAP NAS for your business, then it is paramount you get HDD Media that is designed to not only be ready for sporadic and irregular read and write (as your access to the NAS Server will differ constantly) but also Hard Disk media that is designed to be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In this environment, a WD Blue is just no longer suited and though will perfect the job, will do so much slower and is susceptible to errors and potential HDD Failure. Moreover if your network attached storage data is mission critical, of sentimental value or just plain impossible to replace (thinking of my original recording of ‘Bernard and the Genie’), then you will no doubt have more than one HDD in the NAS enclosure, in a RAID volume. Drives in a RAID have to work that little bit harder as data is spread over the drives for redundancy (so the data is duplicated) like butter over toast! WD Red Drives are designed to be used in this RAID environments too and for greater lengths of time.
Finally, WD Red HDDs have firmware onboard that controls the disks behaviour in a NAS server, catering from everything vibration and temperature sensitivity, all the way through to intelligent spin speed and cache allocation. So, if you are looking to populate a NAS, then definitely go for WD Red. Also see below for the WD Red Pro series for Enterprise NAS use and enclosures with more than 4 or 5 HDD Bays.
Standard WD Red NAS HDD
WD80EFZX | 8TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 128MB |
WD60EFRX | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 64MB |
WD50EFRX | 5TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 64MB |
WD40EFRX | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 64MB |
WD30EFRX | 3TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 64MB |
WD20EFRX | 2TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 64MB |
WD10JFCX | 1TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 16MB |
Enterprise WD Red Pro NAS HDD
(All are Dedicated 7200RPM)
WD8001FFWX | 8TB | SATA 6Gb s | 128MB |
WD6001FFWX | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | 128MB |
WD5001FFWX | 5TB | SATA 6Gb s | 128MB |
WD4001FFSX | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | 64MB |
WD3001FFSX | 3TB | SATA 6Gb s | 64MB |
The WD Green Series of Hard Drives for Lower Power Consumption for quieter and Cooler requirements
The WD Green series, once very popular, is largely overlooked these days. This is once again largely due to the manufacturing technique of HDD becoming far more efficient, as well as SSD media becoming lower in price. That said, if you require a single HDD for backup storage, a secondary media source or just to be used occasionally, then the WD Green series may well be for you. They are designed to use less power than other Hard Drives as well as producing less vibration or heat whilst in use. This of course does mean they are available in smaller capacities and the read and write is of a lower speed, so these should never be used as a primary OS Boot drive or for a large scale RAID enclosure (early varients were but since then much more tailored drives have been released)
The WD Black Series for those that need rugged, enduring, fast long-term data stability
Another Hard Drive type that those with a background in PC building and Photo Editing will be aware of. WD Black HDD are designed for high performance Hard Disk media use. If you require large capacity HDD for your files for editing, or in a large scale Direct Attached Storage (DAS) enclosure, then the WD Black series will more than likely be the drive for you. They are seen as the drive of choice of large scale media editors due to their balance of large capacity vs access speeds.of course, you will get faster speeds from using an SSD but you shouldn’t really RAID SSDs beyond a RAID 0 or RAID 1 and moreover the price per GB of an SSD is subtantially higher than that of a WD Black Drive. With a dedicated 7200 RPM, 128MB Cache and 5 Year warranty, the western digital black drive is the choice for those that was reliability, speed and long-term piece of mind.
WD6001FZWX | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
WD5001FZWX | 5TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
WD4003FZEX | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
WD1003FZEX | 1TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 64MB |
The WD Purple Series for CCTV, Network and Direct Recording Surveillance needs
Released only a few years ago, the WD Purple HDD series is designed for Surveillance requirements. You might think that when using multiple IP or Cable Surveillance cameras in the home, office or retail sector, that you should only really think about the quality of hte cameras. This is sort of true – the better the camera, the more features and better recording. However if will all come to nothing if the Hard Drive media you are writing to is unsuitable. Unlike almost all other HDD use across all environments, Hard Disks used in Surveillance are more than 95% used for Writing and 5% for reading – i.e footage is recorded and written to the drives constantly and only accessed rarely by comparison (the reading of the disk). So, if you have x5 or x10 Relatively high recording cameras sending 2 or 5MB of recorded footage constantly, then you will need to ensure that both the recording server can keep up and that the drives are designed to record the data incoming as fast as it arrives! This is where WD Purple shines.
They are desisgned to keep up with this heavy writing behaviour in a NAS or DAS system, suitable for doing this whilst in a RAID 5 or RAID 6 and are designed to be powered on and in use for weeks and months at a time. So if you need a Drive for recording footage from CCTV IP cameras or Cable-to-Camera cables, or are even jsut looking for drives for a NAS that you plan to use as for surveillance in the background, then go for the WD Purple series as it will provide the most stable and reliable result possible. Additionally, if you are using a Network video recording device (NVR), that you use the NVR specialised WD Purple NVR HDD
WD80PUZX | 8TB | SATA 6Gb s | 5400RPM | 128MB |
WD60PURX | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | IntelliPower | 64MB |
WD40PURX | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | IntelliPower | 64MB |
WD30PURX | 3TB | SATA 6Gb s | IntelliPower | 64MB |
WD20PURX | 2TB | SATA 6Gb s | IntelliPower | 64MB |
WD6NPURX | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | IntelliPower | 64MB |
WD4NPURX | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | IntelliPower | 64MB |
The WD Gold Series for Data Centers, Bulk Cold Storage solutions and High Capacity Workloads
The most recent addition to the WD Colors collection. The WD Gold series is designed for Data Centers (or Data Centres!) or long term cold storage in smaller RAID arrays. They arrive with a much more rugged, long term chassis design as they will be HEAVILY used! To back up this level of use, WD provide a 5 Year warranty on these drives. Also, it is well known that Data Centers get through drives much quicker than most HDD Media environments and though the WD Gold Series (available in both SATA and SAS) are more expensive than most hard drives, this cost will pale into comparison to if you filled your data center with WD Blue or WD Green drives and they required replacement more often – as well as the Read and Write operations on the non-gold drives being efficiency and productivity down too. WD Have a long history of Data Center hard drives before they rebranded to the Gold series. Each kind of drive (tailed to different center and use types) was built with longevity in mind, but with names like Xe, Re and Se, they simplified matters and created the Gold Series to make it easier to comprehend.
WD101KRYZ | 10TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 256MB |
WD8002FRYZ | 8TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
WD6002FRYZ | 6TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
WD4002FYYZ | 4TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
WD2005FBYZ | 2TB | SATA 6Gb s | 7200 | 128MB |
Are there any other WD Hard Drive types I should be aware of?
Of course the HDD and SSD market is so big that even a fantastic system like the WD Colors Guide will not quite cover it all. There are a few other models and terms that you should be aware of. Some are older and have since ceased production, some are more enterprise versions of the drives above and others are just…well…plain weird and don’t fit in the spectrum of WD Colours whatsoever. Have a look below a the glossary of WD HDD extras!
The WD Pro Series – Available in Red and Purple
As previously mentioned, several of the WD Color HDD range are available in a mysterious PRO range. Is this just a marketing con or is there an actual difference between WD Pro drives and ordinary WD Drives. The answer is yes. The WD Pro HDD are arrive with a 5 year warranty, more rugged industrial design for long term stability, a fixed 7200rpm (so improved read and writes), larger amount of achefor additional data handling and overall are designed for more mission critical and long term use. Yes, they are more expensive – but you have to spread that cost across the 5 Year warranty (as apposed to the 2 and 3 Years availa with non PRO drives) as well as the improved results of a faster spin and larger cache and its effect on your productivity.
The WD Re, Se and Xe
SAS and generally all enterprise level HDD that are designed for the intense operations of data centers till relatively recently arrived in the WD Ae, WD Se and WD Re series (as well as the Xe series too). each were made with slightly differing hardware environment in mind. Some with a 10,000RPM speed (but arriving in a much higher Price per GB), some in SAS (the 12GB/s connection) and others in SATA (6GB/s) but the whole range was starting to become rather messy and given that the specs in many cases were comparable to the PRO series, WD decided to phase most of them out in favour of the WD Gold series (available in both SAS and SATA).
The WD Velociraptor
A very qwerky and unique HDD, sadly most units are also no longer available to buy. The Western Digital Velociraptor was one of the fastest commercially available HDD in the world! Only available in smaller capacities of 150GB and 300GB, the drives comprised of a 2.5″ 15mm HDD that was housed in a 3.5″ frame designed as a heatsink. This coupled with 10,000RPM and 15,000 RPM, this technology did not arrive cheap. However since the market increase in demand of SSD and the release of WD Gold, we have seen demand fall greatly – even in spite of a 1TB version being released. Sadly we are looking here at a really technology changing appliance that has sadly been surpassed.
The WD Black2 and WD SSD
I have bundled these two together as they are both of interest, but for seperate yet oddly similar reasons. A couple of years ago WD saw the popularity of Hybrid drive technology (A drive that was HDD in design with platters and moving parts, but with a small portion of SSD NAND chip on board for your BOOT and mission critical software to run from). However for most, SSHD drives were let down by the SSD portion only being about 4GB to 20GB in size – Windows 7 alone couple eat up most of that without trying and currently a Full Windows 10 install will eat up 30-50 GB when everything is installed. So WD decided to go in all hot and heavy and release a much, MUCH larger portion of SSD on their drive of 120GB! Sadly, this came at a price and a price that, for many, was just too high. This coupled with poor marketing (rare on WDs part) and a lack of education provided to consumers on it’s benefits mean that it ended up missing target and eventually being abandoned
So what is WD Blue SSD, WD Green SSD and WD Black SSD?
Not to be deterred, WD have entered this arena of Solid State Drives again, but this time utilzing their already popular and established colors model. The new WD range of WD SSD Blue, Green and Black (with WD Red SSD Sure to follow for SSD Cache in NAS or something) are available in standard 2. 5″ SSD size and m.2 – the growing in popularity much, much smaller SSD that utilzes your m.2 PCIe slot. This time around they have played it smarter. They have priced the units better, made hundreds of pages of information on the range and like the HDD above) have separated each to a defined use. So, for guidance:
WD Green SSD for Smaller Capacities at 120GB and 240GB with read/write upto 500MB/s – 3 Year Warranty
WD Blue SSD for for mid range capacities at 250GB, 500GB and 1TB with Read and Wrote speeds over 500MB/s – 3 Year Warranty
WD Black SSD uses the new NVMe connection providing vastly faster speeds upto 2000MB/s read and 800MB/S Write, available in 256GB and 512GB Capcities – 5 Year Warranty
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All Western Digital drive lines by color | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories, Computers
Source: techradar.com SSD drives. Let’s say you’re building a computer, setting up a RAID array, looking for a replacement for a damaged drive, or just looking to expand your system’s current storage. How can you determine which color disc is best for your task? This article should help you understand the WD color differentiation so you can make the right choice. Since not all drives are the same, you need to buy a device that is designed to handle the amount of data and usage that you need.
WD Blue:
2.5” SSD WD Blue 3D NAND SATA III 1TB universal drives for personal computers. Source: bhphotovideo.com
The blue series is designed for the widest range of applications. For gaming, high-definition video or creative applications, choose the WD Blue 3D NAND SATA III, available as a 1TB 2.5”/7mm or M.2 2280 SATA III SSD. WD Blue SSDs offer a maximum capacity of up to 4TB, sequential read speeds of up to 560MB/s, sequential write speeds of up to 530MB/s, a Mean Time Between Failures (MTTF) of 1.75 million hours, and the total amount of data that can be write to the drive (TBW — Total Bytes Written) in 600 terabytes.
WD Blue 1TB 2. 5″ 5400RPM (SATA III) Mobile Hard Drive
Another option from the blue range is WD Blue 5400 RPM 2.5″ SATA III hard drives. These devices are used in internal computer bays and external hard drive enclosures and offer features designed for everyday tasks. The line is available with memory sizes from 320 GB to 2 TB. For 3.5” internal bays, the WD 500GB Blue 3.5” will provide a sustained transfer rate of 150MB/s and 64MB of cache, making it suitable for storing UHD 4K video at 30fps. The 2.5″ and 3.5″ WD Blue drives have a 5400 or 7200 RPM spindle speed and are outperformed by solid state drives from the same WD Blue line. However, they are cheaper and generally do the job for most tasks, including gaming.
WD Black: Ultimate Performance for Desktops and Notebooks
Western Digital WD Black 3.5″ 7200RPM 1TB Hard Drive
Moving on to the more advanced black lineup, the WD Black 3 drives. .5″ and 2.5″ hard drives and NVMe PCIe M. 2 2280 SSDs. 3.5″ drives (WD Black Performance Desktop Hard Drives) are designed for desktop computers, and are suitable for power users, creative professionals, system builders Those who need high performance for large media storage, photo and video editing, or game library, these 7200 RPM drives provide data transfer rates from 150 to 227 MB/s and cache sizes from 64 to 256 MB.0006
WD Black 2.5” WD Black Performance Mobile Hard Drives deliver the performance needed by creative professionals, gamers, and system builders suitable for photo/video processing and online gaming. Designed specifically for smaller systems, laptops and Macs, they retain the same 7200 RPM speed as the larger 3.5” models. It should be noted that WD Black hard drives are not designed for use in network-attached storage (NAS), RAID, or other multi-bay storage arrays.
WD Black PCI-E x4 500GB M.2 SSD 2280
The latest member of the family, the WD Black SN750 NMVe SSD provides top performance for gamers and other users who require high read and write speeds. The drives are available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB, and models are sold with or without a pre-installed heatsink. It is a good choice for expanding your game library, as well as storing large media files, including photos and videos. These SSDs come in M.2 2280 form factor with PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and use the NVMe protocol. They use a proprietary 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory, their sequential read speed reaches 3400 MB / s, and the sequential write speed up to 2900 MB/s, mean time to failure — 1.75 million hours, and the total amount of data that can be written to the drive (TBW) is 1200 terabytes.
The next three lines, Red, Purple and Gold, are designed for special applications. Of course, they can be used for more general tasks, but their power is likely to be excessive for everyday use.
WD Red: for NAS
WD Red NAS Edition 1TB 3.5″ hard drive (SATA-III)
WD Red is available in 3.5” hard drives, 2.5” hard drives, and 2. 5” and M.2 2280 SATA SSDs. 3.5″ and 2.5″ hard drives are designed for home and small office network storage with 1-8 bays. Designed to handle increased workloads, WD Red drives feature a SATA III 6Gb/s interface, up to 512MB cache, 5400 RPM, up to 210MB/s data transfer, 600,000 load/unload cycles, operating load is 180TB per year, and the number of unrecoverable read errors is less than 1 in 1014 bits. These devices are equipped with error recovery capabilities and have a MTBF of 1 million hours. WD Red devices are built-in noise and vibration protection, and also uses proprietary NASware 3.0 technology.
WD Red 500GB SA500 SATA III M.2 Internal NAS SSD. Source: bhphotovideo.com
2.5” and M.2 2280 SSDs are designed and tested for 24/7 use, while their TBW and caching efficiency make them ideal for demanding applications and multi-user environments , 3D rendering, 4K and 8K video editing, etc. Through the use of 3D NAND flash memory, users achieve up to 560MB/s sequential read speed, up to 530MB/s sequential write speed, 2 million hour MTBF, less than 1 in 1017 bits of unrecoverable read errors, and total data that can be written to the drive (TBW) is 2500TB.
Small and medium businesses should consider WD Red Pro. Designed for medium to large NAS sizes up to 16 3.5” bays, Red Pro units are available in capacities up to 14TB. The rotation speed is 7200 RPM, the data transfer rate is up to 255MB/s, and the cache size is up to 512MB. The drives are rated for 600,000 load/unload cycles, have a 1 million hour MTBF, are equipped with dual-plane balancing technology, multi-axis shock sensor and WD NASware 3.0 technology. With 7200 RPM speed, high data transfer rate and high reliability, WD Red Pro devices can also be used to edit large video files.
WD Purple: CCTV
WD Purple 3TB 3.5″ Hard Drive (SATA-III)
Looking for a surveillance system? with up to 64 cameras.Available in capacities up to 12TB, these drives meet the specialized needs of 24/7 CCTV, DVR and NVR systems. Some of them are suitable for arrays up to 8 bays, while others are designed for arrays of 8+ and 16+ bays. Some are 5400 RPM, some are 7200 RPM.WD Purple models with AllFrame 4K technology can withstand loads of 180 TB/year, and WD Purple models with AllFrame AI technology up to 360 TB/year to support deep learning analytics used in NVR systems using using artificial intelligence algorithms with support for up to 32 threads.
WD Purple drives use a 3.5” form factor, SATA III 6 Gb/s interface, provide data transfer rates up to 255 MB/s, cache up to 512 MB, 300,000 load/unload cycles and an MTBF of 1 .5 million hours.
WD Gold: for the heaviest load
WD 12TB Ultrastar 7200 RPM SATA 3.5” Internal Data Center HDD servers and large businesses. They can withstand loads up to 550 TB per year, which is 10 times higher than standard desktop drives. The Gold Series uses advanced technologies for energy efficiency, reliability and enterprise-level performance.
Drives are available in sizes up to 12TB. They come in a 3.5″ form factor with SATA III 6Gb/s interface, 7200 RPM, up to 267MB/s sustained transfer rate and up to 512MB cache. These models are designed for 24/7 operation. 7 with a mean time between failures of 2.5 million hours, with an annual failure rate (AFR) of 0.35%, they are rated for 600,000 download / upload cycles, and the number of unrecoverable errors is 1 in 1015. WD Gold can be used for video editing , work in surveillance systems and many other tasks, but most likely will be too advanced for most user tasks.0006
WD Green: entry-level low power
WD Green SATA III 240GB 2.5” SSD
WD Green series available as 2.5” and M.2 2280 SATA III SSD . Designed for quiet, low-power operation in laptops and desktops, the WD Green range provides the performance and reliability you need for everyday user tasks. The drives are available in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 1TB capacities, with sequential write speeds of up to 545MB/s and MTBF of 1 million hours.
We hope that after reading this article you will be able to better understand which WD line is best suited to your needs. At the same time, be careful, as there are also differences within the rulers: individual models can be optimized for more intensive workloads or for operation in arrays with more or less bays.
* Materials from the resource bhphotovideo.com were used in preparing the article.
What do the colors on the Western Digital HDD mean?
Scrolling through the pages of online stores in search of a new hard drive, you probably noticed more than once that Western Digital drives are painted in different colors for some reason. There is no secret in these colors: WD decided to divide their products into several model lines, designating each of them with a certain color. In today’s article, we will take a closer look at what each of the colors means and what features the disk models included in it have.
Blue HDD by Western Digital
HDDs under the blue color are versatile drives for the needs of average users. They have a fairly good speed, which is primarily achieved due to the high cache size (maximum — 64 MB), and a relatively low price. Among other things, do not forget about technology such as WhisperDrive, which reduces the level of operating noise. Ideal HDD for data storage and light tasks such as office applications.
Perhaps the most successful example of the «blue» line of Western Digital can be considered the WD10EZEX model, which has the following characteristics:
- storage capacity — 1 terabyte;
- connection interface — SATA III;
- spindle speed — 7200RPM;
- buffer size — 64 megabytes;
- Form Factor — 3.5″;
Green HDD from Western Digital
A feature of hard drives from the «green» model line is that they consume much less electricity for their work. Western Digital claims that these drives use up to 40 percent less power than drives from other product lines.
Beneficial technology behind the reduced power consumption is IntelliPower. In addition to reduced power consumption, Western Digital’s green HDDs produce far less noise during operation. Economical and quiet HDDs will definitely find their customers. However, one should not forget about the quite obvious minus of such drives: they are much slower than other HDDs.
From the side of this line, the ideal representative will be the WD20EZRX model, which has the following characteristics:
- storage capacity — 2 terabytes;
- connection interface — SATA III;
- buffer size — 64 megabytes;
- Form Factor — 3.5″;
You may have noticed that there is no line with spindle speed among the characteristics. Western Digital instead points to the presence of IntelliPower technology, which does not mean anything to many users, however, be aware that the speed of the hard drive spindle using this technology will, as a rule, always be 5400RPM.
Western Digital Black HDDs
Western Digital Black HDDs are definitely worth buying for a computer that will only be used for light tasks. Such HDDs are perfect for heavy tasks such as video games, graphics processing or video editing. The minimum spindle speed for these hard drives is 7200RPM.
Such disks are perfect for a home computer, but installing them in an office is not very profitable. It should be noted the rather low operating temperature and excellent protection against vibration of «black» drives from Western Digital. Among other things, we shouldn’t forget about the dual-drive head positioning system, which improves the quality of these discs.
In the case of an example for this line, a model such as WD10JPLX is a good fit. It is worth noting that this hard drive can be sold at a fairly high price.
- storage capacity — 1 terabyte;
- connection interface — SATA III;
- spindle speed — 7200RPM;
- buffer size — 32 megabytes;
- Form Factor — 2.5″;
Of course, you can find «black» hard drives in the form factor 3.5″ and with caches up to 64 megabytes. WD10JPLX was just given as an example.
Red HDD from Western Digital
Moving on to heavy equipment. Western Digital’s «red» line of hard drives are designed to work in really tough conditions. Such disks will be ideal for working with cloud storage, servers and in certain office departments.
Buying a red HDD for home use can be safely called a waste of money, especially considering the fact that these drives use IntelliPower technology. As you can remember, the speed of drives with this technology is only 5400RPM. The price of such discs is often extremely high, which is not surprising.
Consider this model line on the WD60EFRX hard drive:
- drive capacity — 6 terabytes;
- connection interface — SATA III;
- buffer size — 64 megabytes;
- Form Factor — 3.5″;
Western Digital Purple HDDs
Western Digital Purple HDDs are designed for video surveillance applications. These HDDs are able to work in rather harsh conditions for a long period of time. They have extremely high cache and volume. However, the spindle speed on such disks does not exceed 5400RPM.
It should also be mentioned that purple HDDs can work with NVRs that use artificial intelligence. Such opportunities are achieved thanks to the support of analytical systems with deep learning technologies introduced by developers.
Perhaps the ideal representative of this model line would be the 100PURZ drive, which has the following characteristics:
- storage capacity — 10 terabytes;
- connection interface — SATA III;
- spindle speed — 5400RPM;
- buffer size — 256 megabytes;
- Form Factor — 3.5″;
Other lineups from Western Digital
In addition to the product division by color, Western Digital has three special lines at its disposal: SE, RE and VelociRaptor. SE — hard drives designed for office storage systems, have a low operating temperature, relatively high speed, but at the same time noisy operation. RE — hard drives that are designed for office workstations, which constantly produce a huge amount of software solutions.