Caviar Green vs Black

C

cheburns

New Member
I need to get a 1TB or bigger drive for my desktop. I stream a lot of video over our network off of these hard drives and was wondering if I would notice a difference between a caviar green or black drive. You can get a 1.5TB green drive for the same price as a 1 tb black. I am a big WD fan (I have 7 or so in my house and none have failed me and all perform well) and I remember a few years ago Seagate was having a lot of issues with drive failures, have they fixed that? The seagate 7200.12 (I believe) 1TB is like 20 bucks cheaper than the caviar black... what do you guys think of seagate drives?

Any advice would be great.
Thanks
 
With the caviar black, you get a 5 year warranty compared to a 3 year warranty with the caviar green. And I think the caviar black is a higher performance drive.
 
You're gonna get much better service with WD. Try to get a combo deal, because I saved 15$ by buying a Caviar Black 1TB and a copy of Win Vista (+ Win 7 Coupon)
 
I've had way too many WD's fail me the last few years. I'm sticking to Seagates, I've had no problems with them. I bought 2 WD's for a raid 0 a couple months ago and one was bad.
 
Any drive can be a bad drive/bad batch. Personally, I've had the best luck with Western Digital drives, but I know people who have not and swear by Seagate. It's really up to you. I'd look for recent reviews of both drives and see if there are a number of people having similar problems. Aside from that, either drive would essentially be the same in the end.

Just for the record, I got a Seagate for my previous build and the drive squealed right out of the box. It worked, just made all kinds of noises. Then at work we had a brand new Dell that wouldn't POST at all. Turned out as soon as I removed the Seagate drive, it started working.

Be different. Get a Samsung or Hitachi :P
 
Last edited:
There is no such thing as a working hard drive... they all do something after a while.

Green hard drives aren't green at all. They are just very slow and consume less power/second... however there are more seconds so it makes it just the same as a black.
 
Wow ScottALot, such as pessimistic post :P And yes, while all drives will essentially fail at some point, some fail sooner than others. I've had some fail out of the box, and I've had some that still run after nearly 20 years (my Macintosh SE FDHD for example). But even the best drives can fail prematurely.

Again, I stick with what I said before. See if people post any consistent problems in reviews. Guess I should also add; Go with a drive with a good warranty, and be sure to keep backups of everything.
 
yea thats the reason i ask cuz you can find 1.5tb green drives on sale for significantly less than a 1tb black... but if they're noticeably slower then i don't want that since i'll be streaming video from them over a network. Think its just find the best price on the 1tb caviar black... thanks guys
 
g25racer said:
Read the Reviews!! Newegg's site is wrong

Quote: This is NOT a 7200rpm drive. It is fixed at 5400rpm. This has been proven via access times. No, the RPM does not vary either based on load. Western Digital CONFIRMS this drive as fixed 5400rpm. Newegg website is WRONG!
Click to expand...

Makes sense. I went to WD website to get the specs from the source - and it doesn't even mention the RPM's in their spec sheet. Here's waht I did find

Western Digital Corp Site - Cavier Green said:
As hard drive capacities increase, the power required to run those drives increases as well. WD Caviar Green drives make it possible for energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.

Key Features

Reduced power consumption - WD has reduced power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to standard desktop drives with the combination of WD's IntelliSeek, IntelliPark, and IntelliPower technologies.

Helps enable eco-friendly PCs - WD Caviar Green drives yield an average drive power savings of 4-5 watts over standard desktop drives making it possible for our energy-conscious customers to build systems with higher capacities and the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation. This power savings equates to reducing CO2 emission by up to 13.8 kilograms per drive per year - the equivalent of taking a car off the road for 3 days each year*. By using environmentally-conscious PCs with our WD Caviar Green drives on board, large organizations with many desktop computers can minimize their carbon footprint and save real money on electricity costs.

*Assumes that a car produces 1.60 CO2 pounds per Kwatt/hours/year. Calculation of automobile emissions depends on the car's g/km emission levels and km/year of driving.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=565&language=en#jump11
Click to expand...

Amazon however, lists the drive as 7,200 RPM

Frys said:
The IntelliPower delivers a fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms; IntelliSeek Calculates optimum seek speeds; and IntelliPark automatically unloads the heads during idle. All the features help the drive to operation in lower power consumption and reduced noise environment.

http://www.frys.com/product/5912254#detailed
Click to expand...

Looks like it's performance is Eco-friendly first - Reliability second - and Performance third.

The drive " appears " like it can spin at 7,200 RPM max, but some eco-driven application in the drive balances the speed and loading / unloading heads to save energy first and foremost. It would be nice if WD was up front about it - but it looks like the thrust of this product is marketed to Environmentally sensitive PC builders.
 
g25racer said:
Read the Reviews!! Newegg's site is wrong

Quote: This is NOT a 7200rpm drive. It is fixed at 5400rpm. This has been proven via access times. No, the RPM does not vary either based on load. Western Digital CONFIRMS this drive as fixed 5400rpm. Newegg website is WRONG!
Click to expand...

Where does W/D confirm this? On their site they say its a IntelliPower drive which means it varies the drive speed. All their green drives are.

But it could be true that they are only 5400RPM
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page2.html
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top