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FizzyMyNizzy
join:2004-05-29
New York, NY

FizzyMyNizzy

Member

Western Digital rebranding all Green drives to Blue drives

Western Digital rebranding all Green drives to Blue drives »www.wdc.com/en/products/ ··· x?id=780
quote:
Same Drive, New Family
We are making changes to simplify the hard drive selection process for our customers by consolidating our mainstream PC product offerings to only the WD Blue family. All current WD Green capacity, cache and form-factor configurations will remain available through their lifecycle, but under the WD Blue brand*. Although WD Green hard drives are part of a new family, they're still the same reliable hard drive you've grown to know and love over the years.

*The WD Green hard drive functionality will remain the same. However, it will now have a WD Blue label with a slight change to their model numbers (ex. WD60EZRX will now become WD60EZRZ).
»www.techspot.com/news/62 ··· ing.html
quote:
Western Digital has given their hard drive line-up a makeover, with the company rebranding all Green drives to Blue drives in an effort to make it "easier for customers to choose the right drive for their PC."
Under the new branding scheme, Western Digital goes from having four main consumer hard drive lines to just three: Blue, for entry-level drives; Red, for NAS systems and long-term reliability; and Black, for ultimate performance from a spinning disk drive.
However, by merging the Green and Blue lines, Western Digital has made their line-up more confusing for people wanting an entry-level drive. Previously, all Green hard drives featured 5,400 RPM-class performance, while Blue drives featured 7,200 RPM-class platters, making it easy to choose between energy efficiency (Green) or performance on a budget (Blue).
With the new line-up, you'll have to look closer at model numbers to determine whether you're getting a 5,400 or 7,200 RPM hard drive. Western Digital suggests that the best way to do so is look at the last letter in the model number: if it's "X", you're getting a 7,200 RPM drive; but if it's "Z", it's going to be 5,400 RPM.
The branding changes have already come in to effect at most retailers around the globe, so make sure you look at the model number when purchasing a Blue drive to ensure you're getting the performance you're after.

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

1 edit

13 recommendations

Camelot One

MVM

Well, this is just the dumbest thing I've read all day. So they aren't eliminating a model, they are just making it more difficult to tell which model you are getting. How is "check the model number for X or Z" better than calling them blue and green?

Even factoring in pure greed, I am having a hard time figuring out the upside for WD in doing this.

Tursiops_G
Technoid
MVM
join:2002-02-06
Brooksville, FL

5 recommendations

Tursiops_G

MVM

FWIW, They may as well call them "WD Grey"...

banditws6
Shrinking Time and Distance
Premium Member
join:2001-08-18
Frisco, TX

6 recommendations

banditws6 to FizzyMyNizzy

Premium Member

to FizzyMyNizzy
Pretty much means I won't buy anything less than a WD Red...which I'm sure is exactly what WD was hoping to hear.

I have been buying Toshiba spinning disks lately anyhow.

Octavean
MVM
join:2001-03-31
New York, NY

Octavean

MVM

Same here,...

If I am going to be buying a WD drive it will likely be either Red or Black. I've found that I typically don't use HDDs in my client systems anyway, instead using SSDs only. In most cases I only need HDDs for Servers and NAS units. I such a case Red would be a logical choice assuming I use a WD HDD.
BlitzenZeus
Burnt Out Cynic
Premium Member
join:2000-01-13

1 recommendation

BlitzenZeus to FizzyMyNizzy

Premium Member

to FizzyMyNizzy
Way to devalue your own brand, some moron in marketing probably thought it was good idea since people avoided their green drives like they were the plague. I've disliked 5400 rpm hdds for a while, do they come with a free outdated copy of win 9x too?

I don't use any hdd less than a wd black currently, and seagate ruined themselves for me.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

1 recommendation

DarkLogix to banditws6

Premium Member

to banditws6
said by banditws6:

Pretty much means I won't buy anything less than a WD Red...which I'm sure is exactly what WD was hoping to hear.

I have been buying Toshiba spinning disks lately anyhow.

Just stick to WD RE drives
»www.wdc.com/en/products/ ··· 580#Tab2
Or Seagate constellation

Forget all those lesser drives (Blue, red, black, barracuda) just stick with enterprise drives.

Octavean
MVM
join:2001-03-31
New York, NY

2 recommendations

Octavean

MVM

That is probably sound advice but many people are only willing to pay typical retail prices per gigabyte. WD Re HDDs will probably come with something of a sticker shock to the average joe.
LittleBill
join:2013-05-24

LittleBill to FizzyMyNizzy

Member

to FizzyMyNizzy
u guys keep buying enterprise. i'll stick to my green's. thanks for keeping the price down by not buying

»gyazo.com/a4a3463d9abd68 ··· 5bf67234

FizzyMyNizzy
join:2004-05-29
New York, NY

FizzyMyNizzy

Member

said by LittleBill:

u guys keep buying enterprise. i'll stick to my green's. thanks for keeping the price down by not buying

»gyazo.com/a4a3463d9abd68 ··· 5bf67234

Or buy SSD =D

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

1 recommendation

DarkLogix to Octavean

Premium Member

to Octavean
said by Octavean:

That is probably sound advice but many people are only willing to pay typical retail prices per gigabyte. WD Re HDDs will probably come with something of a sticker shock to the average joe.

True but IMO it's worth it.

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

4 recommendations

Camelot One to BlitzenZeus

MVM

to BlitzenZeus
said by BlitzenZeus:

I've disliked 5400 rpm hdds for a while, do they come with a free outdated copy of win 9x too?

The spindle speed really isn't an issue, particularly when they are only being used for data storage. (which is all mechanical drives should be used for these days) The real problem with the greens has always been the "power saving" features that are enabled by default.
And maybe that is what prompted this move. They still want to make the slower/cheaper version, but without the drive killing "green" firmware settings.
BlitzenZeus
Burnt Out Cynic
Premium Member
join:2000-01-13

BlitzenZeus

Premium Member

Looks just like they label some reds with "Intellipower", but still called them reds. They look like the celeron version of drives to me, like shutting down malfunctioning cores in a processor.
»www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· -Product
decx
Premium Member
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC

decx

Premium Member

said by BlitzenZeus:

Looks just like they label some reds with "Intellipower", but still called them reds.

The the Red drives (not Red Pro) are "Intellipower" drives. They have long been considered to be essentially the same drive, hardware-wise, as the Greens except that the Reds came with different firmware and a longer warranty.

Octavean
MVM
join:2001-03-31
New York, NY

Octavean to LittleBill

MVM

to LittleBill
I still have some WD Green drives in service but I'm no longer willing to buy new ones unless perhaps they are in a USB drive format. In which case that would be for the odd backup here and there.

I had some Seagate drives in my server too but I actively started replacing them with WD Red drives. I've had a few WD Red drives fail. One was a 2TB model and the another was a 4TB model. All within warranty and all replaced with their replacements currently working fine.

As long as you have your data protected the odd HDD failure here and there isn't that big of a deal and in fact it is expected,....
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

4 recommendations

dave to Tursiops_G

Premium Member

to Tursiops_G
said by Tursiops_G:

FWIW, They may as well call them "WD Grey"...

Hm? Surely "WD Cyan" is more appropriate.

jadinolf
I love you Fred
Premium Member
join:2005-07-09
Ojai, CA

jadinolf

Premium Member

I hope I never NEED another hard disk.

I have 4 SSDs and hope they stay with me.

sivran
Vive Vivaldi
Premium Member
join:2003-09-15
Irving, TX

sivran to FizzyMyNizzy

Premium Member

to FizzyMyNizzy
Boo. 5400 RPM drives should be clearly marked. I only use spinning disks for bulk storage now where the difference is much less noticeable, but still.

Oh well, I don't buy WD often anyway, and lately Seagate has been very competitive on price.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix to decx

Premium Member

to decx
said by decx:

said by BlitzenZeus:

Looks just like they label some reds with "Intellipower", but still called them reds.

The the Red drives (not Red Pro) are "Intellipower" drives. They have long been considered to be essentially the same drive, hardware-wise, as the Greens except that the Reds came with different firmware and a longer warranty.

Ok this whole WD color game is a mess, now I'm glad I don't use WD you'd have to be sure its a real red or toss all that out and just get RE's

They seem (based on info in this thread to be playing some nasty games.)
DarkLogix

DarkLogix to sivran

Premium Member

to sivran
I only buy Seagate Constellation drives.
I do it because any sipning drive I buy is going in my SAN or other 24/7 use and I don't want to get into the games the mfg's play on the lesser drives.

If I bought WD drives they'd be RE's, because as ya'll said even reds have intelipower so I wouldn't want to waste my time figuring red or black, just go full ent model with RE.

Octavean
MVM
join:2001-03-31
New York, NY

Octavean

MVM

I can see that,...

The difference in price between a WD Red, Red Pro and RE isn't too out of sorts. The 5yr warranty on the RE and the Red Pro is a nice thing to have. Its the people looking only at cheap Green drives that would see a big price jump,...
BlitzenZeus
Burnt Out Cynic
Premium Member
join:2000-01-13

BlitzenZeus

Premium Member

If you look at the ones they give a five year warranty to it starts with the black, and then the RE and VelociRaptor.

I bought black as my os drive for my gaming systems, and they were not that much more than the blue models. I end up using them as a storage drive later if they're not too small to be useful. So I wouldn't discount the wd black, but I wouldn't run it in a case/enclosure with poor ventilation either. I still have a 80GB wd black around here somewhere that a tiny microsd could replace...
decx
Premium Member
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC

decx

Premium Member

Yeah the WD Blacks are excellent drives but they run relatively hot. Frankly with the wide availability of SSDs the there really any need for the 3.5 inch Black drives. Byhe only market that needs the Black drives is the 2.5 inch market as a good performance but lower priced option for notebook users.

As for the X and Z naming convention I don't see how it works. So they're saying 7200rpm drives are labelled X but the intelliwhatever drives are Z. But the Reds are all labelled X (eg WD60EFRX) despite them being intellithingy drives. At least be consistent.
BlitzenZeus
Burnt Out Cynic
Premium Member
join:2000-01-13

BlitzenZeus

Premium Member

As the prices goes, they're still cheaper than ssd. You might find some cheap ssd these days that give 500GB, but you can still buy 3TB of wd black for the same price of a 500GB ssd.

Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium Member
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX

Doctor Four to FizzyMyNizzy

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to FizzyMyNizzy
I almost bought a 500 Gb Blue drive to replace the dead hard drive in my Toshiba laptop I bought about 3 years ago. The other day I heard the click of death coming from it (something no computer owner wants to hear), and went looking for my recovery image I had made to an external hard drive shortly after buying it. I had an old Hitachi 500 GB SATA drive that I used to restore the image to, but found two issues. One was that it was a 9.5 mm drive when I needed a 7 mm one. The other was that it was not Advanced Format/4K compliant.

So I went onto Amazon/com to look for a replacement. I ended up choosing a 500 GB Seagate Laptop Thin drive, same size physically and capacity wise as the original drive, plus it is 4K compliant. From what i could tell, the WD Blue was a SATA III and I needed a SATA II as I wasn't sure if the SATA III would work in my system, and did not see any WD Blue drives which were both SATA II and 7 mm.

It is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I've got the laptop cover off and the drive out of its cage in the table next to me on top of an anti-static mat. I plan on putting the new one into an external enclosure and using my imaging software to restore the backup to it in Win PE on my Shuttle PC. The backup was made using Terabyte's Image for Windows; if that does not work I am going to have to get recovery media from Toshiba. I was using the laptop mainly for playing music, so there is nothing important on it that I lost.

Hopefully this one lasts a while, but I will be making another recovery image once I get it back up and running again.
decx
Premium Member
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC

decx to BlitzenZeus

Premium Member

to BlitzenZeus
said by BlitzenZeus:

As the prices goes, they're still cheaper than ssd. You might find some cheap ssd these days that give 500GB, but you can still buy 3TB of wd black for the same price of a 500GB ssd.

That's true. However for almost all desktop applications which support for than one SATA drive it is more beneficial to use even a small (128GB can be had for cheap now) lower end SSD for OS and applications along with a slower mainstream HD for data rather than have everything on a single large WD Black.

I would only suggest going with a larger SSD in system like a notebook where only one drive is possible. Or where the OS and applications is expected to be sizable.

C0deZer0
Oc'D To Rhythm And Police
Premium Member
join:2001-10-03
Tempe, AZ

C0deZer0 to FizzyMyNizzy

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to FizzyMyNizzy
With all the shit I have to endure because of a WD green, this just further irritates me toward them, and makes me angrier still that the Fry's Electronics seems to only ever carry WD drives for any mechanical hard drives anymore.

Bill
Premium Member
join:2001-12-09

Bill to FizzyMyNizzy

Premium Member

to FizzyMyNizzy
It's about consolidation for WD. In the past you had one sales/marketing team supporting Green and one team supporting Blue. Now you can have one team supporting both. It also didn't help that you probably had the Green and Blue teams pitted against each other some times for sales to OEMs.

It doesn't make sense to continue having two teams supporting the brands when the Desktop PC TAM that those brands supported is declining.

sivran
Vive Vivaldi
Premium Member
join:2003-09-15
Irving, TX

sivran to C0deZer0

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to C0deZer0
My local Fry's seems to have quite a few WDs, but they also have Seagate and a few Hitachi.

I guess it doesn't help that there's been so much consolidation in the HDD industry. Everyone's swallowed up everyone else.

If you wanna talk limited selection, the MicroCenter "near" me seems to carry almost entirely Ballistix memory. Argh.
fetcher
Premium Member
join:2015-01-02
Saint Augustine, FL

fetcher to FizzyMyNizzy

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to FizzyMyNizzy
I use a lot of the WD Green drives, and agree with this consensus that this is a dumb idea. My biggest gripe with them is the extremely slow spin-up time from full sleep state. They take more time for this than any disk I've worked with, at least since the heyday of 5.25" full-height SCSI. Definitely slower than the low-power Seagates.