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Western Digital rpm class?

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First post, by Zup

Posted on 2019-01-30, 07:36

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My wife's HDD is throwing SMART alerts and have some unrecoverable sectors, so it's time to get a new HDD. I've developed some kind of anti-Seagate feeling, so I was going to buy a Western Digital HDD (the only other widely available HDDs in my country).

The thing is that I looked to some blue caviar labels, and they some of them say that they are 7200 rpm class and others 5400 rpm class. I've got an old green caviar that ended being 5400 rpm and the performance was very irregular (sometimes it looked a lot faster than other, but in the end the average performance was not impressive to say the least).

So, the disks say they are 7200 rpm class... the key is rpm class. WD doesn't say that they run at 7200 rpm, but that they are 7200 rpm class... what do they mean? Are those drives real 7200 rpm drives or they run at least rpm but get some kind of boost (big caches, those things)? Can I get a 7200 rpm class and get consistent performance or should I go get black caviar disks?

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Reply 1 of 9, by oeuvre

Posted on 2019-01-30, 13:44

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is this for data or for OS? Does she have an SSD yet?

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Reply 2 of 9, by Zup

Posted on 2019-01-30, 18:10

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Data.

I was installing a SSD for the OS when I saw the warnings.

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 3 of 9, by SW-SSG

Posted on 2019-01-30, 21:05

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The "5400 RPM Class" Blues are basically the Greens; WD dropped the Green branding a few years ago for whatever reason and started calling all of its mainstream HDDs Blues. I would like to think the "7200 RPM Class" ones actually run at 7200 RPM.

If WD was my only choice, I'd personally step up to the Black line for the assured 7200 RPM speed, extended warranty, and (probably?) more stringent QA testing, even if it's just for mass storage.

Reply 4 of 9, by chrismeyer6

Posted on 2019-02-01, 02:25

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If your going to get a Western digital drive then I highly recommend getting their black series drives. Their great drives overall their fast, quiet, and very reliable. I have 6 of them in various sizes and a few of them are approaching 8 years old and there all going strong with no surface or S.m.a.r.t. errors.

Reply 5 of 9, by gdjacobs

Posted on 2019-02-01, 03:38

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Or gold series drives as they're "Enterprise".

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Reply 6 of 9, by Zup

Posted on 2019-02-02, 08:47

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OK, after some research...
- The rpm class is not as bad as I thought. Although "7200 rpm class" implies that the disks may not be running at 7200rpm, they have not performance "bumps" and runs on par with other 7200 HDDs like Seagate barracudas.
- Obviously , 5400 rpm class Caviar Blue are way slower but it seems that they won't gave slowdowns like older Green Caviars.
- Rebranding Green Caviar to Blue Caviar is a cheap trick to confuse people.
- It seems that, to be really sure of performance (and improved reliability) I should get a Black Caviar.
- Some people claim that buying a Black Caviar really pays the 20-30% price increase. I wonder where do they get their HDDs, because in my country a Black Caviar costs almost double than a Blue Caviar.

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 7 of 9, by eL_PuSHeR

Posted on 2019-02-02, 09:16

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How about other brands like Toshiba?. I do not trust WD that much (nor Seagate either).

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Reply 8 of 9, by Zup

Posted on 2019-02-02, 09:33

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I was wondering about Toshiba reliability. I saw many Toshiba (and Fujitsu) drives failing, so I've got some distrust about them.

(I must say that those drives were 2.5 inch mounted on copiers, so they were subjected to more uptime hours and way more vibrations that any normal desktop computer. I guess that newer HDDs may be more realizable, and that in desktop computers they are less prone to fail, but the opposite may be true)

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 9 of 9, by gdjacobs

Posted on 2019-02-02, 18:28

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Use Hitachi if you can get them.

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