Should I get a 2TB WD Caviar Green?

[Denis54]

I want to get a 2 TB drive for backup purposes. I do not care about speed. I just want a large reliable drive.

Would a WD Caviar Green be a good choice? I can get the SATA 3 version for $119

 

[Coup27]

Yes it would but ignore the SATA 6Gbps interface. HDD's can't even saturate SATA 1.5Gbps let alone 6Gbps and it's purely marketing.

If you can get the same drive in 3Gbps form for less, do it.

 

[Denis54]

The SATA 3 version is the one that happens to be on sale. The SATA 2 version is more expensive presently

 

[Coup27]

There's no down side to using the 6Gbps version just if you could have gotten the 3Gbps cheaper it would have been worth doing as the sequential read on a HDD is around 130MB/sec so it's nowhere near 3Gbps let alone 6.

 

[bryanW1995]

I've heard some bad stores about the wd green 2tb drives, but I have had one for over a year and it's been perfect.

 

[exdeath]

Depends. Do you want to take what is already the slowest thing in the computer by a factor of 10 million, and intentionally cripple performance another 50% to save $0.05 a year on electricity and reduce noise?

"Green" drives have no place in anything but HTPC/media center environments at best.

 

[Blain]

"Green" drives have no place in anything but HTPC/media center environments at best.

You do realize they have spinning platters don't you?

 

[Bill Brasky]

All things being equal, I would prefer the seagate green drives because they aren't variable rpm. But since the WD is on sale, it would be a fine choice for backups.

 

[notposting]

Depends. Do you want to take what is already the slowest thing in the computer by a factor of 10 million, and intentionally cripple performance another 50% to save $0.05 a year on electricity and reduce noise?

"Green" drives have no place in anything but HTPC/media center environments at best.

And backup purposes. The density on the platters helps compensate for slow spindle speeds...and sequential reads are just as fast. Have 7 WD Greens and a "green" Samsung in our home server, they work fine. Not doing lots of random access though, music/movie/tv playback, large files, etc. They've been working fine btw.

 

[exar333]

If all you need is storage, they are great. They are quiet and reliable.

 

[El Norm]

"Green" drives have no place in anything but HTPC/media center environments at best.

NAS box? Green drives also run cooler and probably more reliable in the long run. He mentioned it's for backups only so I don't see a problem.

 

[Elixer]

If all you need is storage, they are great. They are quiet and reliable.

They are only reliable if you have multiple backup devices. Never trust just one drive to hold all your backups.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Great porn storage drives.

I mean, great data storage drives. Yeah.

 

[papaschtroumpf]

WD says not to use in RAID, and from experience I have to agree, I never could them working in raid in even Windows dual drive, had to go to Black instead.

 

[beginner99]

WD says not to use in RAID, and from experience I have to agree, I never could them working in raid in even Windows dual drive, had to go to Black instead.

They are perfectly fine to use with software RAID, eg. the thing you get with the prebuilt consumer NAS devices. However I think the can cause issues under Intel RAID or real hardware RAID.

For backup, they are perfectly fine. Actually I have 3 of them for media files and games. No issues so far.

 

[reallyscrued]

All things being equal, I would prefer the seagate green drives because they aren't variable rpm. But since the WD is on sale, it would be a fine choice for backups.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

My roommate is currently going through the RMA process with Seagate and it's been an absolute nightmare so far. They are shipping his replacement drive from Mexico (that's right) and they CHARGE for 'premium service' during RMA.

I almost feel bad about my eliteist attitude about boasting I only ever buy WD drives....almost. Well now he knows.

More on topic though, I've got a 2 tb Green and its working fine for me. Also unlike my roommate, don't think you're actually getting a faster drive by buying the one with a faster interface.

 

[El Norm]

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

My roommate is currently going through the RMA process with Seagate and it's been an absolute nightmare so far. They are shipping his replacement drive from Mexico (that's right) and they CHARGE for 'premium service' during RMA.

I almost feel bad about my eliteist attitude about boasting I only ever buy WD drives....almost. Well now he knows.

More on topic though, I've got a 2 tb Green and its working fine for me. Also unlike my roommate, don't think you're actually getting a faster drive by buying the one with a faster interface.

I hear a lot of things about Seagates but I've had decent experience with them. I had a 750GB fail on me before about 4-5 years ago and since then all my drives have been Seagates and no problems. Best of all most the drives have been in systems that stay on 24/7. Currently I'm running 4 2TB drives on a FreeNAS system on raid z and no problems.

 

[murphyc]

Yes it would but ignore the SATA 6Gbps interface. HDD's can't even saturate SATA 1.5Gbps let alone 6Gbps and it's purely marketing.

It's not purely marketing. You don't understand how SATA negotiates links, and how easily the bus oversaturates if you have multiple disks on a bus.

 

[murphyc]

They are perfectly fine to use with software RAID, eg. the thing you get with the prebuilt consumer NAS devices. However I think the can cause issues under Intel RAID or real hardware RAID.

For backup, they are perfectly fine. Actually I have 3 of them for media files and games. No issues so far.

There is really no such thing as hardware RAID, it's all software. It just depends on where the software is running, whether it's proprietary or open source. I flat out don't trust hardware RAID, such as BIOS initiated RAID. If the board dies, your data goes with it until you find that same exactly BIOS RAID implementation. Whereas OS provided RAID is available even if you move the drives to a different computer.

The WDC consumer green drive is fine for RAID 0 and 1 software according to WDC. WDC explicitly says it's not for other kinds of RAID, because this disk lacks TLER. Massive corruption is possible using these disks in a RAID 5 or 6 configuration. RAIDZ is not really RAID, it's chunk based not block or parity based like conventional RAID 5/6 so it's unlikely to have problems with a drive that lacks TLER.

But it's still possible for something, somewhere, to get pissy if the drive firmware detects problems and goes into an extended 2 minute delay trying to error correct, during which time it's not exactly the most communicative drive - which is why conventional RAID 5/6 systems will drop the disk as faulty. Get another one that does the same thing in RAID 5 and poof there goes the data. And then people who know enough about RAID 5 to get into big trouble fast try to repair it incorrectly, and hose their data.

FWIW, WDC also says the same thing about Caviar Black drives. OK for RAID 0 and 1, not OK for RAID 5 or 6. If you want both fast and reliable RAID, you need both fast and reliable disks, quick to spin up/wake up, seek, and recover from error as well as less incidence of error in the first place.

 

[bononos]

It's not purely marketing. You don't understand how SATA negotiates links, and how easily the bus oversaturates if you have multiple disks on a bus.

SATA is supposed to be a point-to-point architecture which would make 'bus saturation' inconsequent. Give us more details on your reasoning.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Depends. Do you want to take what is already the slowest thing in the computer by a factor of 10 million, and intentionally cripple performance another 50% to save $0.05 a year on electricity and reduce noise?

"Green" drives have no place in anything but HTPC/media center environments at best.

7200 RPM drives have no place in any of my computers. I use a combination of SSDs and 5400 RPM storage. 7200 RPM tech now occupies an awkward niche: too slow for snappy application response, yet they spin too fast to run cool and quiet. I've never owned a 7200 rpm drive that I couldn't hear vibrating and humming over quiet fans.

 

[notposting]

The WD Green drives aren't variable speed. As far as I am aware, every single one has been a fixed 5400 rpm.

 

[murphyc]

SATA is supposed to be a point-to-point architecture which would make 'bus saturation' inconsequent. Give us more details on your reasoning.

LMGTFY:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3517
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/27

Old 2008 and 2009 articles explains this fairly non-technically. You understanding of point-to-point is flawed or you wouldn't consider bus saturation inconsequential. The PHY layer signaling is entirely different between Rev 2 and Rev 3.

There are cases where Rev 2 is quite sufficient. There are cases where it is not. Misunderstanding how multipliers function, present on the vast majority of consumer SATA implementations, is why you think saturation isn't occurring on either 3 or 6Gb/s bus with 3Gb/s drives. There are perfectly valid reasons why someone should get a drive with a 6Gb/s interface.

And I am not the one calling Rev 3 marketing fluff. He who makes the claim is burdened with evidence and that has definitely not been provided, nor could it.

 

[murphyc]

The WD Green drives aren't variable speed. As far as I am aware, every single one has been a fixed 5400 rpm.

From the minimal research I've done, this is correct. The idea behind IntelliPower is that WDC is basically reserving the right to produce drives anywhere between 5400 and 7200 RPM, and not say which is which in the specs.

 

[murphyc]

7200 RPM drives have no place in any of my computers. I use a combination of SSDs and 5400 RPM storage. 7200 RPM tech now occupies an awkward niche

I'd agree except for the laptop case, where someone won't install SSD, but they want fast mass storage. 7200RPM is about what you get, and there really isn't a significant power difference in 2.5" drives between 5400 and 7200 RPM disks, relative to the performance boost.