Which WD 640Gb, Green Blue or Black?

Which one

  • Caviar Black - $85

    Votes: 27 62.8%

  • Caviar SE16 - $70

    Votes: 10 23.3%

  • Caviar Green - $75

    Votes: 6 14.0%
  • Total voters
    43
C

chrisf6969

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 27, 2003
Messages
9,011
WD6401AALS = Caviar Black
WD6400AAKS = Caviar SE16 = Blue?
WD6400AACS = Caviar Green

Need to buy a new drive for my system.

I was thinking of getting the SE16, then I saw there was the Black edition with a bigger cache... 32Mb... how come the blacks are always bigger? :eek:

So which one should I get. (prices @ newegg)

UPDATE: See last post for more questions.... reguarding the set up of it.
 
Get the black (32MB Cache, Dual Procs, Stabletrac)

Its beast-like in Raid 0
 
Switch to black now and SS it to 75gb it would faster than an old 74gb raptor i think.
 
I replaced my 4 year old 150GB Raptor (that just died on me) with the 640 Black and I am happy with it.
 
Yeah my 74Gb Raptor is like 5+ years old, so I'm starting to worry about failure.

nitrobass24 said:
Switch to black now and SS it to 75gb it would faster than an old 74gb raptor i think.
Click to expand...

SS it? Assume you mean just copy everything over to it... don't know what "SS" stands for?
 
I haven't tried the others, but the SE16 WD640AAKS drives are great.

The AALS "Black Edition" drives have more cache and some other features but I don't know if they're really significantly faster.
 
chrisf6969 said:
SS it? Assume you mean just copy everything over to it... don't know what "SS" stands for?
Click to expand...

SS is short-stroke. Basically keeping your OS partition small so that it is on the outer edge of the platters which have the highest velocity.
 
IIRC the black has a long warranty, which is worth the extra added cost alone.
 
Well, just placed the order for the Black edition.

So can I short stroke say 74Gb of the 640Gb on one partition and have the partition RAID'd (mirrored) with the WD 74Gb... then the rest for non-raid storage or would that not be a good idea or even possible?

BTW, ASUS P5K-E in case you need to know what controllers I have.
 
chrisf6969 said:
Well, just placed the order for the Black edition.

So can I short stroke say 74Gb of the 640Gb on one partition and have the partition RAID'd (mirrored) with the WD 74Gb... then the rest for non-raid storage or would that not be a good idea or even possible?

BTW, ASUS P5K-E in case you need to know what controllers I have.
Click to expand...

Thats not a good idea. Keep your raptor (depends which generation you have) as your system drive and the 640 for everything else.

If thats an old generation raptor, then sell it and buy another 640
 
Got the 640Gb installed.

The 640Gb seems to be faster than my old Raptor....(see screenshots below)
except for the random seek time, which is about 50% faster for the 50% faster spindle speeds. (10k rpm vs 7200rpm)

74vs640.gif


So I used Clonezilla to copy the a 70Gb partition from my Raptor to the 640Gb Caviar. So I assume that 70Gb is short stroked since its the first/primary partition of the drive.

I made it the C: drive after cloning it. And I'm about to wipe out the raptor.

So I'll have it set up like this:

C:\ = 70Gb SS'd on the 640Gb Caviar
E:\ = 70Gb on Raptor
F:\ = 530Gb on the 640Gb Caviar

I'll use the Raptor as a back up of my important stuff. Though its more likely to fail than the Caviar. Anyway, now I'll have all of my pictures & videos on 2 drives as a back up... until I run out of room on the Raptor then I'll get a 2nd 640Gb and probably set it up as Raid 0 from the get go. By that time it will probably be time for me to upgrade to Windows 7 (from XP).
 
So I have it all set up. The cloning went well.

Now I'm wondering where I should put my Virtual Memory file ?

On the C:\ drive which is the 640Gb Caviar Black short stroked to 70Gb, 11-12ms seek, 93Mb/s transfers, higher minimum transfers too.

or the E:\ drive which is the Raptor.... lower seek times (7-8ms)... but slower transfers 64Mb/s avg.. if you look at the HD Tach diagrams.
 
I tried the exact same set up last week and it felt that it was just a bit slower running the Page File on the old Raptor. I moved the Page File back to the 640 and all is well. I think it really boils down to what type of programs you are using. I do not game, so having it on a different drive still might make a difference but I do not think it would make much of a difference. It really does not hurt to just play around with it and see which way works best for you.
 
I think I may just leave it on the 640Gb.

When I run HD Tach on each drive.... I can barely hear the 640Gb.
When I run it on the WD Raptor... which is in a harddrive enclosure (silencer)... I can hear it quite clearly.

So I think for now just for noise reduction... I'm only going to use the Raptor for backup storage.

A while back when I changed all my fans and changed BIOS settings to lower the RPM's on the fans.... I made my PC almost silent... except for the super loud Raptor... so I bought that enclosure which helped a lot. But compared to the new drive its still quite loud. I think long run. I'm going to get another 640Gb and an extra HD silencer... then put both 640Gb's in enclosures... Raid 1 (mirror) the 2 drives for data integrity. And just get rid of the 74Gb Raptor.
 
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