WD Blue vs Seagate Barracuda, trying to choose a 2TB HDD

Cyber Akuma

Cyber Akuma

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Jan 3, 2009
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I am rapidly running out of space on this old 300GB 15000RPM SAS drive that came with this workstation I am using as a backup PC. This drive is NOT the OS drive (That's running off of a SSD) , it's just used for storage.

I have an unused Best Buy gift card, and I saw that there are several 2TB drives around $50 right now, so I figured I could just replace said SAS drive with a SATA one (and as a bonus I can remove this annoying RAID card used to interface with it that slows everything down). I looked things up and saw two models, a WD Blue and a Seagate Barracuda. Yes I know there are better drives that cost more, no I can't afford them.

I was looking at these two:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-blu...rd-drive-for-desktops/9312076.p?skuId=9312076

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagat...rd-drive-for-desktops/6344172.p?skuId=6344172

They seem 100% identical.... except for the fact that the WD Blue is 5400 RPM instead of 7200. The drive I am going to replacing is already 15000RPM so I am already going to switching to a slower drive, but I am worried that 5400 will be a little TOO slow.

That being said, I saw some sites mention that the WD Blue seems to be far more reliable than the Seagate drive, and easier to recover data (somehow?) if it dies than the Seagate. Is any of that true? Which one would you recommend out of these two?

I noticed that Amazon seems to have a 7200RPM version of that WD Blue for the same price:

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Blue-Hard-Drive/dp/B08VH8R94B/

... but I am pretty sure I can't use my Best Buy gift card on Amazon and Best Buy doesn't seem to have that model... so that pretty much sucks for me, assuming that WD Blue are indeed better.

Any opinions on this? Is the WD Better for reliability? Or would I be better off with the Seagate? Is the difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM that noticeable? Especially coming off of a 15000RPM drive?
 
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Cyber Akuma said:
I am rapidly running out of space on this old 300GB 15000RPM SAS drive that came with this workstation I am using as a backup PC. This drive is NOT the OS drive (That's running off of a SSD) , it's just used for storage.

I have an unused Best Buy gift card, and I saw that there are several 2TB drives around $50 right now, so I figured I could just replace said SAS drive with a SATA one (and as a bonus I can remove this annoying RAID card used to interface with it that slows everything down). I looked things up and saw two models, a WD Blue and a Seagate Barracuda. Yes I know there are better drives that cost more, no I can't afford them.

I was looking at these two:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-blu...rd-drive-for-desktops/9312076.p?skuId=9312076

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagat...rd-drive-for-desktops/6344172.p?skuId=6344172

They seem 100% identical.... except for the fact that the WD Blue is 5400 RPM instead of 7200. The drive I am going to replacing is already 15000RPM so I am already going to switching to a slower drive, but I am worried that 5400 will be a little TOO slow.

That being said, I saw some sites mention that the WD Blue seems to be far more reliable than the Seagate drive, and easier to recover data (somehow?) if it dies than the Seagate. Is any of that true? Which one would you recommend out of these two?

I noticed that Amazon seems to have a 7200RPM version of that WD Blue for the same price:

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Blue-Hard-Drive/dp/B08VH8R94B/

... but I am pretty sure I can't use my Best Buy gift card on Amazon and Best Buy doesn't seem to have that model... so that pretty much sucks for me, assuming that WD Blue are indeed better.

Any opinions on this? Is the WD Better for reliability? Or would I be better off with the Seagate? Is the difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM that noticeable? Especially coming off of a 15000RPM drive?
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You can get 2TB SATA SSD's for under $100 now, I would do that 100x before I bought 2TB of spinning rust for $50.
 
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I'm with everyone else, I wouldn't touch either one of those drives. Those are going to be the absolute worst for performance and likely quality as well. I wouldn't trust them one bit. If I was in your shoes I'd wait and save up for something better or look at what you can get as an SSD with your $50 gift card. I know those options aren't what you want to hear but it's a lot better than purchasing either one of the drives you're talking about.

When it comes to HDD, I won't look at anything lower than the Seagate Ironwolf, WD Red Plus or maybe Pro or Toshiba drives and I always triple check that the drives aren't using Shingled Magnetic Recording. I have a couple of the Seagate Ironwolf drives and a Toshiba N300 and am happy with them. When it comes to HDDs I need space and reliability and the performance of those drives for HDDs is good.
 
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Saying I should use a SSD instead of just ridiculous, sorry. I already stated that this is just a storage drive and I am not running my OS off of it. I need large amounts of storage for music, documents, photos, etc. A SSD in no way helps with any of that, even a 5400 RPM HDD has enough data throughput to playback high-bitrate 4K video unless it's fragmented to hell, a SSD is just going to be a waste as it's speeds will in no way benefit me for these tasks while costing far more. HDDs still have SSDs beat by far in price-per-gig. Asking me to cut my storage amount in half or to go double what my budget is just to have a SSD in place of a HDD for data that in no way benefits being on a SSD is just bad advice.

WD Red Plus is also intended for RAIDs, I have 5 of those in a RAID setup myself in a different system, they are a rather odd choice for a single non-RAID storage drive.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Saying I should use a SSD instead of just ridiculous, sorry. I already stated that this is just a storage drive and I am not running my OS off of it. I need large amounts of storage for music, documents, photos, etc. A SSD in no way helps with any of that, even a 5400 RPM HDD has enough data throughput to playback high-bitrate 4K video unless it's fragmented to hell, a SSD is just going to be a waste as it's speeds will in no way benefit me for these tasks while costing far more. HDDs still have SSDs beat by far in price-per-gig. Asking me to cut my storage amount in half or to go double what my budget is just to have a SSD in place of a HDD for data that in no way benefits being on a SSD is just bad advice.

WD Red Plus is also intended for RAIDs, I have 5 of those in a RAID setup myself in a different system, they are a rather odd choice for a single non-RAID storage drive.
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If you want to waste your money on drives which are slower than those from probably 15 years ago and won't likely last very long, go for it. We're not going to stop you but don't say we didn't warn you.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Saying I should use a SSD instead of just ridiculous, sorry. I already stated that this is just a storage drive and I am not running my OS off of it. I need large amounts of storage for music, documents, photos, etc. A SSD in no way helps with any of that, even a 5400 RPM HDD has enough data throughput to playback high-bitrate 4K video unless it's fragmented to hell, a SSD is just going to be a waste as it's speeds will in no way benefit me for these tasks while costing far more. HDDs still have SSDs beat by far in price-per-gig. Asking me to cut my storage amount in half or to go double what my budget is just to have a SSD in place of a HDD for data that in no way benefits being on a SSD is just bad advice.

WD Red Plus is also intended for RAIDs, I have 5 of those in a RAID setup myself in a different system, they are a rather odd choice for a single non-RAID storage drive.
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The problem with current consumer desktop HDDs, including the ones that you listed, is that they are far slower than even 20-year-old HDDs in terms of write speed. And they are much more prone to failure than older or more expensive HDDs.

That said, I will disagree with the advice to get an SSD for what you’re planning to use it for, knowing that SSDs are not really meant for long-term backups or archives. Instead, I would recommend spending a few more dollars for a “gaming” HDD such as the WD Black at the very least.
 
E4g1e said:
The problem with current consumer desktop HDDs, including the ones that you listed, is that they are far slower than even 20-year-old HDDs in terms of write speed. And they are much more prone to failure than older or more expensive HDDs.
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I understand they are being made quite cheaply, and with new tech like SMR that cheaply crams in more space at the cost of speed and reliability. But slower than IDE drives from 20 years ago? That's a bit of an exaggeration.

E4g1e said:
That said, I will disagree with the advice to get an SSD for what you’re planning to use it for, knowing that SSDs are not really meant for long-term backups or archives. Instead, I would recommend spending a few more dollars for a “gaming” HDD such as the WD Black at the very least.
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It's probably best to point out that on top of the 250GB SSD I already have in this system for my OS and apps, I have another 1TB one on the way for my games. That's part of why the budget, I needed to afford both that SSD and a HDD on the gift card. I was just seriously starting to run out of space on the measly 300GB HDD and that's with already skipping a few hundred gigs of data. So I am good on any sort of fast storage I would need, have a 250GB drive for my OS and apps and a 1TB drive for my games, I just needed at least 2TB of mass storage to replace my 300GB drive.
 
For your write-rarely purposes, it's not going to matter, and 5400 vs 7200 RPM probably won't matter either. (And I've seen reports that some of the WD drives actually spin faster than advertised; I don't know if that particular Blue is one of them.) Left to myself, from those two, I'd probably pick the WD for no especially good reason.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Saying I should use a SSD instead of just ridiculous, sorry. I already stated that this is just a storage drive and I am not running my OS off of it. I need large amounts of storage for music, documents, photos, etc. A SSD in no way helps with any of that, even a 5400 RPM HDD has enough data throughput to playback high-bitrate 4K video unless it's fragmented to hell, a SSD is just going to be a waste as it's speeds will in no way benefit me for these tasks while costing far more. HDDs still have SSDs beat by far in price-per-gig. Asking me to cut my storage amount in half or to go double what my budget is just to have a SSD in place of a HDD for data that in no way benefits being on a SSD is just bad advice.

WD Red Plus is also intended for RAIDs, I have 5 of those in a RAID setup myself in a different system, they are a rather odd choice for a single non-RAID storage drive.
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Oooooooooooook, You say you have a need for "large amounts" of storage, but are only looking at a 2TB drive. If you were looking for 20TB of storage in a single device, sure spinners are great, cost effective devices. Do as you wish, but as I and others have suggested it is a poor choice at this size profile (performance, reliability, noise/power etc.)
 
thedream829 said:
I didn't even know they still sold 2TB HDDs. Just get the cheapest SSD bro.
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The cheapest SSDs aren't worth the money. This is for a data storage drive anyway, a HDD is more appropriate for this use case.
 
For your use case of data storage, either would be fine. I'd favor the Seagate for the speed probably in this situation but it doesn't really matter.

I didn't know that WD had finally released a Blue in 7200rpm though.
 
Ranulfo said:
For your use case of data storage, either would be fine. I'd favor the Seagate for the speed probably in this situation but it doesn't really matter.

I didn't know that WD had finally released a Blue in 7200rpm though.
Click to expand...

The original WD Blue was 7,200 R.P.M.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Yeah not sure why you wouldn't get an ssd for this
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Because as I and others have explained, a SSD for this usage would be pointless. They are not the end-all answer to every storage problem.

GoldenTiger said:
or a 12tb hdd like this Seagate factory recert for $105
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Because not only is that more than twice my budget, but it's also not a new drive but a refurbished one, I would not trust a HDD that had issues before and was refurbished.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Because as I and others have explained, a SSD for this usage would be pointless.
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its not in your op and not everyone reads everyone elses responses, i didnt....
so as i said before, get whichever is cheaper. they are both fine brand-wise and both are spinners, so its doesnt matter.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Because as I and others have explained, a SSD for this usage would be pointless. They are not the end-all answer to every storage problem.

Because not only is that more than twice my budget, but it's also not a new drive but a refurbished one, I would not trust a HDD that had issues before and was refurbished.
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Instead it makes perfect sense to have 3 different drives in a system for just over 3TB of storage. What an asinine setup. Buy a 2TB SSD and keep your OS and games on it and get rid of that stupid 250GB boot drive. Then wait for a sale on an 8TB+ HD and use it for storage, don't waste your money on anything else. Hard drives only make sense at this point in time for large amounts of storage. If you need storage like you claim you do, buy something big. If you don't need large amounts of storage on this computer, mount a share from your system with the 5 WD Red Plus's in it.
 
ND40oz said:
Instead it makes perfect sense to have 3 different drives in a system for just over 3TB of storage. What an asinine setup. Buy a 2TB SSD and keep your OS and games on it and get rid of that stupid 250GB boot drive. Then wait for a sale on an 8TB+ HD and use it for storage, don't waste your money on anything else. Hard drives only make sense at this point in time for large amounts of storage. If you need storage like you claim you do, buy something big. If you don't need large amounts of storage on this computer, mount a share from your system with the 5 WD Red Plus's in it.
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A 2TB SSD is outside of his budget. Please catch up reading the thread if you want to be helpful.
 
ZodaEX said:
A 2TB SSD is outside of his budget. Please catch up reading the thread if you want to be helpful.
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Maybe he should expand his budget a tad then. You can get 2tb ssd for as cheap as $80 nowadays. A 2tb hdd for only a little less in absolute $ is ridiculous in 2023.

Cyber Akuma, that hdd is enterprise grade, it is far more reliable than a junky hdd like you're looking at, and is fully restored to like new.
 
ZodaEX said:
A 2TB SSD is outside of his budget. Please catch up reading the thread if you want to be helpful.
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Please try to keep up. He already has 1TB SSD on the way for games, he should send it back and buy a 2TB SSD instead and then wait for an actual hard drive worth buying goes on sale. In the mean time, map a drive for that array of WD Red Plus's he has if he really needs space on this PC for "storage".
 
Return the 1 TB SSD. Buy a bigger SSD.

As long as you plan to power on the computer semi-regularly I wouldn't be afraid of long term storage on an SSD. The only case I can think of for a small HDD is fully offline long term storage and backups. I do this now at home. Basically I use HDDs like a tape. Write and remove.

Speed is only a part of it and not the biggest part either. SSDs are far more reliable in my experience.
 
ND40oz said:
Please try to keep up. He already has 1TB SSD on the way for games, he should send it back and buy a 2TB SSD instead and then wait for an actual hard drive worth buying goes on sale. In the mean time, map a drive for that array of WD Red Plus's he has if he really needs space on this PC for "storage".
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What does his 1TB SSD have anything to do with my message that you quoted? This thread is about hard drives, not SSDs.
 
ZodaEX said:
What does his 1TB SSD have anything to do with my message that you quoted? This thread is about hard drives, not SSDs.
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Hmm...let's see what you said:

ZodaEX said:
A 2TB SSD is outside of his budget. Please catch up reading the thread if you want to be helpful.
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Because if he has the budget for a 1TB SSD and a 2TB HD, he has the budget for a 2TB SSD.
 
ND40oz said:
Hmm...let's see what you said:



Because if he has the budget for a 1TB SSD and a 2TB HD, he has the budget for a 2TB SSD.
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Not if the money for the 1TB has been spent. And it already has.
 
Cyber Akuma I don't know what your situation is but I have a WD RED 2TB with low hours you can have for the cost of shipping.
 

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Cyber Akuma said:
Saying I should use a SSD instead of just ridiculous, sorry. I already stated that this is just a storage drive and I am not running my OS off of it. I need large amounts of storage for music, documents, photos, etc. A SSD in no way helps with any of that, even a 5400 RPM HDD has enough data throughput to playback high-bitrate 4K video unless it's fragmented to hell, a SSD is just going to be a waste as it's speeds will in no way benefit me for these tasks while costing far more. HDDs still have SSDs beat by far in price-per-gig. Asking me to cut my storage amount in half or to go double what my budget is just to have a SSD in place of a HDD for data that in no way benefits being on a SSD is just bad advice.

WD Red Plus is also intended for RAIDs, I have 5 of those in a RAID setup myself in a different system, they are a rather odd choice for a single non-RAID storage drive.
Click to expand...
I agree.
It's for storage people!
 
funkydmunky said:
I agree.
It's for storage people!
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Don't buy a 2 TB hard drive in 2023. They are worth $0.
Large hard drives have plenty of uses. The small ones are too close in price to SSDs of a similar capacity. Buy a 1 TB drive for the same money and fill it up. Buy another one when you can afford it.
 
ochadd said:
Don't buy a 2 TB hard drive in 2023. They are worth $0.
Large hard drives have plenty of uses. The small ones are too close in price to SSDs of a similar capacity. Buy a 1 TB drive for the same money and fill it up. Buy another one when you can afford it.
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Not all 2TB hard drive are worth the same amount of money or lack there of. There's a lot more nuance to hard drive prices and their value. By the way, do you have an answer to the OPs question?
 
ZodaEX said:
Not all 2TB hard drive are worth the same amount of money or lack there of. There's a lot more nuance to hard drive prices and their value. By the way, do you have an answer to the OPs question?
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The question is flawed, imho. If I ask you, should I kill Derek or Angie? Should you respond with a name or suggest not killing either?
 
ochadd said:
The question is flawed, imho. If I ask you, should I kill Derek or Angie? Should you respond with a name or suggest not killing either?
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You are mistaken. It's not a flawed question at all.
I don't even know who Derek or Angie even are, so I can comment on the validity of your analogy.
 
ZodaEX said:
You are mistaken. It's not a flawed question at all.
I don't even know who Derek or Angie even are, so I can comment on the validity of your analogy.
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The answer to which drive is better is the 7200 RPM Seagate. Purchasing neither is the correct answer. Buying a smaller SSD for the same money is good option. Using the gift card towards a future 2 TB SSD also good.

Maybe I should have used grey Pontiac Grand Am vs. white Pontiac Grand Am? The correct choice is to buy neither and kill Angie.
 
Some people here seriously don't seem to understand that a SSD over a HDD in some situations is a waste of money. A SSD literally has zero benefit over a HDD in a desktop for just using it for storage of files that do not in any way need fast access.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Some people here seriously don't seem to understand that a SSD over a HDD in some situations is a waste of money. A SSD literally has zero benefit over a HDD in a desktop for just using it for storage of files that do not in any way need fast access.
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Buying a 1TB SSD and then immediately buying a 2TB HDD for more storage before you even receive the SSD while continuing to use a 250GB SSD for a boot drive is a waste of money. The whole setup is flawed and needs to be corrected.
 
ND40oz said:
Buying a 1TB SSD and then immediately buying a 2TB HDD for more storage before you even receive the SSD while continuing to use a 250GB SSD for a boot drive is a waste of money. The whole setup is flawed and needs to be corrected.
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The SSD is for games so I can leave that 250GB SSD just for my OS and Apps, the HDD is for mass storage and to replace a 300GB HDD that is rapidly running out of space.
 
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