Western Digital Green 4TB HDD WD40EZRX: $139.99 @Amazon

[Carson Dyle]

$139.99 is the lowest price that I've seen to date. $35.00 per TB.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EHBEUZO

 

[Childs]

Hitachi 4TB Coolspins have been $129, as well as the Seagate equivalent.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Hitachi 4TB Coolspins have been $129, as well as the Seagate equivalent.

This is the lowest Amazon price on the WD Green 4TB.

I see the Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB at $149.99 currently on Amazon, although it was $139.99 briefly, according to Camelizer.

Best price I can find on the 4TB Coolspin is $159. It's $174.99 on Amazon right now.

 

[Childs]

This is the lowest Amazon price on the WD Green 4TB.

I see the Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB at $149.99 currently on Amazon, although it was $139.99 briefly, according to Camelizer.

Best price I can find on the 4TB Coolspin is $159. It's $174.99 on Amazon right now.

I am talking about price per TB:

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/120...al-129-1tb-hgst-touro-mobile-usb-3.0-portable

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/120...ata-iii-hard-drive-130-240gb-crucial-m500-ssd

Both were $129 less than 30 days ago. Not thread capping, just noting that 4TB for $129 is probably where the mark is at for a "hot" deal.

 

[Centauri]

And not all drives are equal simply because they're offering the same capacity. You saying you wouldn't consider a 4TB Black a hot deal at $140 because other drives of the same capacity are cheaper?

 

[Childs]

And not all drives are equal simply because they're offering the same capacity. You saying you wouldn't consider a 4TB Black a hot deal at $140 because other drives of the same capacity are cheaper?

If we are talking $$$ per TB, no. I'm not saying one brand is better than the other, but it's a simple fact that 4TB Internal drives have been cheaper.

 

[funboy6942]

And on a lighter note, my penis is green.

 

[Rio Rebel]

This is the lowest price I've seen on the 4tb WD Green, if that's what you specifically want, so it's a hot deal for those people. As mentioned, it is not the hottest deal at price per TB. But none of this conversation is nearly as troubling as funboy's green penis. The fact that he considers that a "lighter note" is scary and likely means he will never procreate.

 

[Homerboy]

tempted....

 

[esquared]

Please stop with the posts:

"These drives have been cheaper"

That's threadcrapping.

If you can find a cheaper price for the drive that's now being discussed, please post it.

A drive, that was selling previously, for a cheaper price, has no bearing of the price of the drive being discussed in the present.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[vshah]

do these still have the head parking issue?

 

[alaricljs]

That was fixed quite some time ago, there is an exe also that you can adjust the parking. Also a reverse-eng'd Linux proggie that will most likely do the job.

 

[Awesomedude99]

This is the lowest price I've seen on the 4tb WD Green, if that's what you specifically want, so it's a hot deal for those people. As mentioned, it is not the hottest deal at price per TB. But none of this conversation is nearly as troubling as funboy's green penis

. The fact that he considers that a "lighter note" is scary and likely means he will never procreate.

so it's still a hot deal for me, even though i don't really need 4TB with this speed. good point about funboy's green penis tho LOL

 

[Childs]

4TB WD Green for $130.49 at Newegg with Masterpass checkout, found on slickdeals.

 

[Sonu]

If I am concerned about reliability, which is better, WD Red or WD Green? Or should I go for Hitachi / Seagate?
While I am looking for a good deal, the +/-~$30 is not worth the headache of a failed hard drive to me.

 

[Carson Dyle]

If I am concerned about reliability, which is better, WD Red or WD Green? Or should I go for Hitachi / Seagate?
While I am looking for a good deal, the +/-~$30 is not worth the headache of a failed hard drive to me.

I believe the general thinking is that the Red is a better made drive. I'm not convinced there's any physical difference. They do have a 3 year instead of a 2 year warranty, so that may be worth the extra $ to many people. Of course, if you want to use the drive in a RAID array, you'll want the Red.

 

[Vinwiesel]

That is a good price for a WD Green. I bought a 4t seagate about a year ago which has performed well. However, in a virtually silent computer I've found the WD greens make no noticable noise, but the Seagate will make a few barely audible clicks here and there. The seagate also draws 5W idle, which seems high but I don't have any other 4tb drive to compare to.

 

[monk3yboy]

Showing 149.99 for me today. Although the Seagate 4TB is 144.99 w/Prime. Not quite as good as the OP.
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Deskto...ZO_B00B99JU4S

 

[Samus]

do these still have the head parking issue?

I'd also like to know this, ie, what the APM value is set at. If anybody can fire up crystal disk info and let us know if there is smart value for load\unload count (this value only exists on drives with aggressive APM values) it would be much appreciated to the community.

And for the record, lately, as in the last few years, WD and Hitachi have been making overall better consumer class drives than Seagate, especially the lower RPM units. Seagate has fallen flat from the 7200.7 days, and Hitachi has put the 75GXP well behind them.

The problem now is the 6TB+ market where Hitachi is using helium drives, not cost competitive with Seagate 6 platter alternative. But then you'd be getting a Seagate. A company I once loved, but simply can't anymore after what they've been doing to the end user with crippled firmware, shallow warranties, and overall statistically unreliable drives.

 

[Samus]

I believe the general thinking is that the Red is a better made drive. I'm not convinced there's any physical difference. They do have a 3 year instead of a 2 year warranty, so that may be worth the extra $ to many people. Of course, if you want to use the drive in a RAID array, you'll want the Red.

The Red I know has an APM value of 250, it almost never parks its heads and is designed for 24/7 operating. However, internally, it is identical to a WD Green.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I'd also like to know this, ie, what the APM value is set at. If anybody can fire up crystal disk info and let us know if there is smart value for load\unload count (this value only exists on drives with aggressive APM values) it would be much appreciated to the community.

Here you go. I bought one of the 4TB Green drives and installed it about a month ago in my server. I'm using it in a JBOD configuration, and I allow the system turn off disks after 20 minutes.

(All values are in decimal)

I also have two WD30EZRX drives, the 3TB version of the same drive, that I installed in March. They're also JBOD and have different storage functions, so one is accessed more than the other.

 

[Samus]

Yikes, look at your load/unload counts relative to power cycles.

Consider HDPARM to disable the APM (manually set it to 250, or 255 to completely disable)

Here are the commands I run at boot. Make sure the script (CMD or BAT) runs as admin, and keep in mind when your PC comes out of sleep (if its set to sleep/hibernate) that the APM value is reset and HDPARM needs to be run again. Generally I don't bother with sleep mode on a desktop, and in laptops, head parking might be desirable to prevent potential damage during shock/vibration or falls (the only application that parking heads makes sense)

C:\Progra~2\hdparm\hdparm.exe -B 250 hdb
C:\Progra~2\hdparm\hdparm.exe -B 255 hdc

I don't run hdparm on disk "A" because that is an SSD. Disk B is a Seagate 4TB music/video storage drive, so 250 is adequate. Disk C is a 2.5" 2TB, 15mm height WD used for seeding torrents, so I wanted APM completely disabled.

HDPARM is completely safe. The program is a decade old and its been saving drives from head park death since the invention of APM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdparm

http://disablehddapm.blogspot.com/p/1.html (windows distribution)

 

[Carson Dyle]

Yikes, look at your load/unload counts relative to power cycles.

I would expect approximately one for every time I access the drive, or every time the drive is spun up and then spun down. The numbers look fine.

 

[Samus]

I would expect approximately one for every time I access the drive, or every time the drive is spun up and then spun down. The numbers look fine.

Partially true. Anytime you, or an application, access the drive.

I racked up 89,000 load/unloads on my WD 2TB drive in 4 months because I was seeding torrents from it. That's when I discovered HDPARM. I didn't notice at first because the drive wasn't audibly loading the heads like some drives do, but if you do the math, that's a head park every 2 minutes. Initially I tried adjusting the disk cache in uTorrent but it made little different, even turning the cache off.

The drive just wanted to park. Some drives, if the manufacture doesn't market them as such, will self destruct if run in 24/7 applications even if they are physically capable of doing so. And why wouldn't they be? Forensic deconstruction has revealed most drive lines within manufactures are identical down outside of the firmware.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I concur with Carson.

I bought a 3 TB Green with 3 1 TB platters about 4 weeks ago. It's a backup drive only, accessed several times a day. My hard drives are set to never sleep.

After one month, SMART shows:

Start/stop: 36
Power on hours: 405
Power cycle count: 36
Load/unload cycle: 445

I think they are rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles, for whatever that is worth.

Apparently, the head parking issue has been resolved, although I did research and find that there are cases where the load/unload cycle count will appear to be very tame for months and months and then suddenly go nuts and start to rack up thousands per week. I'm not sure if that still goes on with the recent models.

I'm more antsy about the (seemingly) high percentage of bad reviews, but none of the high capacity spinning drives look good in that regard.

I downloaded that WD tool to control the head parking, but have not run it and don't intend to as long as the load/unload numbers appear partially sane.

My particular drive was manufactured in Thailand, Feb 2014.

Model WDC WD30EZRX-00D8PB0; Firmware 80.00A80