black drives vs green drives for games

[Nvidiaguy07]

Need to get a new hard drive since mine just crapped out.

Looking on newegg, there is a huge price difference between green and black drives. My OS is on an SSD, so no worries there - but are these green drives good enough to run games on?

Going to make an order today, so feedback would be appreciated. But for example:

1TB WD black drive $110 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136533

3TB WD green $160 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136874

3TB Seagate $150 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148844

I would like to get something as big as possible, that is fast enough, and is under 150-160.

 

[MontyAC]

Once your games are loaded you shouldn't see/feel any difference between them.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Once your games are loaded you shouldn't see/feel any difference between them.

but i mean - are load times significantly different? I have BF3 installed on my SSD because of this reason. If its not a huge difference than it really doesnt matter to me.

One thing i did notice was the warranty though. WD black drives are 5 year, green drives are 2 year, and seagate is 1 year.

Not worried about having to send it in or anything, but isnt the warranty a sign of how long they expect these to last? Ive bought WD for my entire life, and this is my first hard drive failure.

 

[Smoblikat]

but i mean - are load times significantly different? I have BF3 installed on my SSD because of this reason. If its not a huge difference than it really doesnt matter to me.

One thing i did notice was the warranty though. WD black drives are 5 year, green drives are 2 year, and seagate is 1 year.

Not worried about having to send it in or anything, but isnt the warranty a sign of how long they expect these to last? Ive bought WD for my entire life, and this is my first hard drive failure.

Yes, its a 5400 RPM drive that might have a problem called head parking. Where the drive goes into power saving mode and has to spin up every time you want to access it, very noticable. Even with m home server its quite annoying.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Yes, its a 5400 RPM drive that might have a problem called head parking. Where the drive goes into power saving mode and has to spin up every time you want to access it, very noticable. Even with m home server its quite annoying.

Both my externals are like that, and take 5 or so seconds to spin up initially, but correct me if im wrong - arent all these drives 7200rpm?

And i know this might be a long shot, but is there modded firmware out there that will tell these "green" drives to stop being so green, and not go to power save mode?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Games belong on the SSD.

 

[Smoblikat]

Both my externals are like that, and take 5 or so seconds to spin up initially, but correct me if im wrong - arent all these drives 7200rpm?

And i know this might be a long shot, but is there modded firmware out there that will tell these "green" drives to stop being so green, and not go to power save mode?

Greens are only 5400rpm, and so far there are no modded firmware versions. Somthing to look at are the red drives, they are essentially greens without head parking and great prices (120 for 2tb I think).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236343

OOS at the moment, but check amazon.

 

[bryanW1995]

WD green is not 7200 rpm. If you're looking for "best" performing drive out of that bunch then the WD black is the way to go. If you just want something big to throw lots of data on then grab the 3tb WD green.

 

[bryanW1995]

Greens are only 5400rpm, and so far there are no modded firmware versions. Somthing to look at are the red drives, they are essentially greens without head parking and great prices (120 for 2tb I think).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236343

OOS at the moment, but check amazon.

WD red 3tb is $180 on newegg, also OOS right now but a very good compromise between the green and black WD's.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

WD green is not 7200 rpm. If you're looking for "best" performing drive out of that bunch then the WD black is the way to go. If you just want something big to throw lots of data on then grab the 3tb WD green.

Well i dont really care about best, but more like good enough for games.

If its a game i play a lot, i put it on my very small ssd along with my OS. Everything else is on my hard drive. Right now the games are on a really old 640GB WD hard drive - i dont even think its a black edtion - and its fine for mostly everything. Load times are fine IMO.

Is the green a huge drop in performance for games? Like i said im willing to spend up to 150 for 2-3TB.

 

[Smoblikat]

Well i dont really care about best, but more like good enough for games.

If its a game i play a lot, i put it on my very small ssd along with my OS. Everything else is on my hard drive. Right now the games are on a really old 640GB WD hard drive - i dont even think its a black edtion - and its fine for mostly everything. Load times are fine IMO.

Is the green a huge drop in performance for games? Like i said im willing to spend up to 150 for 2-3TB.

Yes a green would be a drop in performance, though if you are using a 640gb now, why do you want to have almost 5 times as much storage? It would seem that a 1tb would be enough if your 640 is working now, unless you have games that arent installed that you want to install.

Look at seagate or hitachi drives, or even caviar blue, there are more than just WD drives out there. Back in the day a Spinpoint F3 1tb would run you 50$ on a nice deal.

 

[greenhawk]

what was your old drive that died? it might get a better indication as to if you would notice.

But greens have a very noticable delay vs black in level loading times (personally, I avoid green for anything but storage, using two SSD's, v'raptor and a black, pulled a green I was using as being useless (was waiting for a replacement v'raptor RMA).

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

what was your old drive that died? it might get a better indication as to if you would notice.

But greens have a very noticable delay vs black in level loading times (personally, I avoid green for anything but storage, using two SSD's, v'raptor and a black, pulled a green I was using as being useless (was waiting for a replacement v'raptor RMA).

the drive that died was a 500GB WD on my living room PC. Since my 640GB drive is full, and i always have to delete stuff after im done (like games), id rather just move everything from that 640GB drive to something much bigger, so i wont have to worry about space.

The one that will be going in my gaming PC will be replacing this drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136218

Like i said i dont need the "best" performance, but i dont want to switch to something that is noticeably slower than my 640GB drive i linked above. I'd like to get 3TB, but 2TB and decent performance is good enough for me.

 

[Gorrillasnot]

I use to buy Seagate drives because they had a 5 year warranty when most of the others had 3. Now I buy Western Digital Black for the same reason.

The black drives may or may not be better quality then the other brands, but it just makes me feel better with the longer warranty.

 

[greenhawk]

original drive a blue then, so I would think the green would be rather close overall.

The green will be faster in straight reading (higher data density), but random access it will be slower, but I do not think enough to notice.

Only thing you will have issues with is the drive going to sleep when not in use (regardless what you set windows's power settings to ).

WD still sell the blue range, but I think they have not advanced since they got to 1TB. Other options would be to find some other 7200rpm drive like the samsung (?) ones. F4 or some name. no idea on cost or if they are still around, they where quite popular back a year or so now.

 

[murphyc]

Yes, its a 5400 RPM drive that might have a problem called head parking. Where the drive goes into power saving mode and has to spin up every time you want to access it, very noticable. Even with m home server its quite annoying.

WDC Green Drives with IntelliPower don't state the RPM. Basically they are saying the RPM may vary between releases of a model so they don't specify a fixed RPM.

The head parking issue is not related to spin down. The disk is only going to spin down if the OS asks it to. The head parking is something the disk firmware does. And it's an interesting issue in that thus far WDC support has told me they haven't had disks fail as a result of high head load/unload. But it is known that the separation distance between heads and platters is quite small and any material in the drive, including flaking platter coating, becomes a concern for head wear and platter damage. So theoretically the less time the head spends floating right above data loaded areas of the platter, the better.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

I think i might just go with a green. I can get a huge 3TB green drive for 150 bucks, and probably not notice the difference in MOST games.

Also, because ill be saving some money there, i just had a chance to look at my system drive, and its a pretty sad situation. Its 80GB, formatted to 74, and i currently only have 8GB free

I only install what i need to + battlefield 3. Pagefile is 8GB hiberfile is 6. Dirt 3 takes up 2GB even though its installed on my HDD , windows is 19GB, office is 1, etc. I thought i could keep getting by with this small SDD, but i think its time for an upgrade.

Since mostly everything will be on the green drive, i can use steammover to put my most played games on my SDD, and move them back if i need to.

Would it even be worth it to sell my 80GB ssd? Dont know what else to do with it. Hows this look for an upgrade? http://www.compusa.com/applications/...27-137758993-2

 

[Rvenger]

I had absolutely no problems with a 500gb green for gaming. I set the head parking to 5 minutes instead of 8 seconds through the WD utility.

 

[kmmatney]

Well, I have an SSD for my OS (80 GB) and a WD Green 750GB drive, and I haven't noticed too many issues with Battlefield 3 or Skyrim. it's certainly not as fast as having the games on the SSD, but it's livable. I have put a few games on the SSD, and it is WAY faster, so that is what you'd ideally want to do.

A lot of people have mentioned that using an SSD cache (using Intel's SRT) makes a big difference.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Well, I have an SSD for my OS (80 GB) and a WD Green 750GB drive, and I haven't noticed too many issues with Battlefield 3 or Skyrim. it's certainly not as fast as having the games on the SSD, but it's livable. I have put a few games on the SSD, and it is WAY faster, so that is what you'd ideally want to do.

A lot of people have mentioned that using an SSD cache (using Intel's SRT) makes a big difference.

How close are you to maxing out that 80GB SSD? I only really have one game on there along side everything else, and im coming pretty close to the max. I think i need to do something about my hiberfile and the pagefile.

EDIT: how much weight should i put into the reviews im reading? Both the WD and seagate 3GB green drives have many reviews about failure, about 1 out of every 3 or 4. I dont care about the performance as much, but the 5 year warranty on the black drives makes me feel a little better about using it.

 

[thelastjuju]

You get what you pay for people..

I wouldn't expect a WD Green to last more than 1-2, maybe 3 years if you're lucky.. I have all the confidence in the world that a WD Black will be good for well over a decade.

Remember the golden rule: The larger the capacity, the more green the drive, and the lower the warranty = the higher probability of it failing prematurely.

Although its fair to say the latest generations of WD Greens are improved over the old ones.. they no longer do the head parking nonsense apparently, but even still I'm not taking that risk.

 

[bononos]

How close are you to maxing out that 80GB SSD? I only really have one game on there along side everything else, and im coming pretty close to the max. I think i need to do something about my hiberfile and the pagefile.

EDIT: how much weight should i put into the reviews im reading? Both the WD and seagate 3GB green drives have many reviews about failure, about 1 out of every 3 or 4. I dont care about the performance as much, but the 5 year warranty on the black drives makes me feel a little better about using it.

I think loading in games usually operate in sequential fashion so the performance for green drives can be pretty good. If you could stomach loading times for old 7200rpm drives, the current green drives are faster.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

I think loading in games usually operate in sequential fashion so the performance for green drives can be pretty good. If you could stomach loading times for old 7200rpm drives, the current green drives are faster.

well either way, im more concerned about the drive not failing than anything right now. And the fact that WD hasa 2 year warranty on green drives, and a 5 year on blacks makes me just want to pay up and get black.

What are the actual chances of these drives failing (green), as long as i run some tests right when i get it? And if thats the case, is just getting 2 green and setting them up in raid a better option? So it would be like ~300 dollars for 2 3TB green drives vs like 180 for the WD black 2tb.

 

[murphyc]

well either way, im more concerned about the drive not failing than anything right now. And the fact that WD hasa 2 year warranty on green drives, and a 5 year on blacks makes me just want to pay up and get black.

Option to extend warranties on some drives.

I'd also think about how much space you need now, and 2 years from now and 4 years from now. It might just make more sense for you to get a green and rotate out the drives every 2-3 years, and only buy the amount of capacity you need in that time frame. If the growth rate for the drive is minimal, but will be initially filled quickly, I'd get a black and replace it in 2-5 years.

What are the actual chances of these drives failing (green), as long as i run some tests right when i get it?

I don't think there are any tests you can do that will produce failure probability at all. I have a laptop disk that's pushing it's 8th year that I expect to die any day now. But it's in a laptop that likewise needs to be retired. And this disk is OEM with a paltry 1 year warranty.

No matter what you need backups.

And if thats the case, is just getting 2 green and setting them up in raid a better option? So it would be like ~300 dollars for 2 3TB green drives vs like 180 for the WD black 2tb.

RAID is about data availability. It is not a backup. You can lose the data in other ways than merely a drive dying. The time to rebuild a replacement 3TB disk in a mirrored array is at least 6 hours, it could easily be double that time. What are the chances of the remaining drive dying in the time to get a replacement drive *and* complete the rebuild? You're not inherently better off getting a huge 3TB disk and putting it into an array precisely because of the long rebuilt times. Even if only 10% of the space is used, a mirrored array must copy every single chunk, even if it contains no user data.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

You can disable the head parking with the officially provided wdidle utility.

I have Green drives for storage on all my machines and haven't had any issues. I use them for primary storage and my Samsung F4s (pre-flood) for backup because the Greens are quieter.