WD Black series either 3.5" (desktop) or 2.5" (mobile) always come with 5years warranty at first i thought, they cheap out with this one by cut the warranty to 3years for HDD (keeping 5years only for SSD model) but looking at their msrp price ($149.99 for 5TB?) its cheaper than the bulk-drive itself (iirc around $230) so its reasonable or even great one thing i kinda curious, is they putting WD-Black-hdd in it or just "BLACK" for the name but with red, blue hdd inside seems for WD all BLACK products = marketed as "Gaming-class"

I think black series is more reliable. I have a WD black series that I would consider my most reliable hard drive, I think it's from about 2007 and it's still going... also have a WD blue series and it lasted a little over one year before going weird, freezing when writing data, luckily I was able to read from it... :< Or maybe it's just random luck. Funny story, I have a WD3200YS, it was a friends and it was going to get thrown away because it did not work, so I asked if I could have it and took it home and banged it sideways on my desk and it made it work and it's still working today.. lol..

My 3 TB WD Black was going strong for years, but I preemptively bought a new 6 TB Black drive for my ever-expending library. I initially thought it needed to cache or that it was the computer itself, but the performance ended up being terrible compared to my old zippy 3TB Black. The difference in performance was so drastic, I thought it might have been using the same technology as the one laptop drives often use (PMR?). I was too busy/lazy at the time to request an RMA for it, but since then I have been reluctant to ever use a traditional HDD for gaming, now that SSD's are cheaper, especially QLC drives, which besides archiving, seem like they're perfect for dedicated gaming drives. The thing that gets me about these products is that they use USB 3.2 since, 1. Most hardware older than a year don't have, 2. unless these upcoming consoles are bucking trends, consoles typically are behind as far as hardware specs (The original PS4 had SATA 2, although arguably it was because they didn't anticipate the adoption of SSD's in combination of any console's underwhelming processing power), and 3. Hasn't it been long proven that spinning disks can barely saturate even USB 3.0 speeds? Does USB 3.2 have a higher power spec to where it doesn't require additional power for 3.5" drives? Edit: I completely forgot USB 3.2 is synonymous with USB C, and apparently branding is getting even more complicated than it already is with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.

I'll never understand how they keep cables that straight in advertisements. Cable magic. I could see this being helpful for people gaming on laptops with small NVMe drives or consoles. It's slightly less relevant in the desktop market, but still nice for people with OEM PCs that don't have additional drive bays (or who don't have technical know-how to install one).

KissSh0t:

I think black series is more reliable. I have a WD black series that I would consider my most reliable hard drive, I think it's from about 2007 and it's still going... also have a WD blue series and it lasted a little over one year before going weird, freezing when writing data, luckily I was able to read from it... :< Or maybe it's just random luck. Funny story, I have a WD3200YS, it was a friends and it was going to get thrown away because it did not work, so I asked if I could have it and took it home and banged it sideways on my desk and it made it work and it's still working today.. lol..

I've had good luck with Blues, Reds, and Blacks (the latter was purchased about the same time as yours and was in RAID-0 for years without issue). I always purchased drives less than 2 TB to reduce the number of platters, though, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. The original Greens and Reds with high platter counts were infamous for failures.

abit OOT but based people post, seems WD-Black reliable enough same to my personal experience too, well i just use around ~15 black drives, others green/red for nas/htpc i myself think wd-black as consumer drive built with enterprise-parts (i think the price cheaper simply from removing the enterprise-certification or something like that) it last pretty good, so imo worth extra price for it Blue is standard line, but i think its the lowest grade in WD they only give 2years warranty for it, even it should work just fine i prefer picking red or black depends on usage... havent back to enterprise line-up since old RE series hitachi ultrastar become WD ultrastar HC*** , pricewise close to black only few $ more ... probably will try some of it when there is good-deal speaking of platter, indeed more platter = more heat, higher chance of failure but they keep upgrading with newer version for example : WD 4TB RED WD40EFRX-68WTONO = 4 x 1TB platters + 8 heads newer WD40EFRX-68N32N0 = 3 x 1.33TB platters + 6 heads the temp between two is like 3℃ different, of course newer less platter cooler this site(blog-post) have good list regarding wd hdd platter/heads : https://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_9883.html *now highest capacity per-platter is 2TB keep getting 2TB seems not good idea, especially with data keep growing so we want more storage-space

KissSh0t:

I think black series is more reliable. I have a WD black series that I would consider my most reliable hard drive, I think it's from about 2007 and it's still going... also have a WD blue series and it lasted a little over one year before going weird, freezing when writing data, luckily I was able to read from it... :< Or maybe it's just random luck. Funny story, I have a WD3200YS, it was a friends and it was going to get thrown away because it did not work, so I asked if I could have it and took it home and banged it sideways on my desk and it made it work and it's still working today.. lol..

I had to repair hundreds if not 1000 of computers over the years (job related) and I've seen a ton of WD Blue's fail. Blacks... barely. While anecdotal, there's probably some truth to it.

Corrupt^:

I had to repair hundreds if not 1000 of computers over the years (job related) and I've seen a ton of WD Blue's fail. Blacks... barely. While anecdotal, there's probably some truth to it.

The problem with Western Digital Greens, and eventually Blues over 1TB is that the company added an arguably unnecessary feature called 'head parking' that ended up being super aggressive, ie. after every 8 seconds of disuse, the head would 'park' itself, presumably in an effort to save energy and prevent damage to the disk if the drive was jostled. If you can imagine, this did not bode well for reliability, and evident by the fact that Reds are nearly identical to Greens and Blues, but don't suffer the same reliability issues. In fact, albeit it's a rather roundabout hack, but you can actually change, if not completely disable, head parking with Green and Blue drives. I've owned several Blues and Greens in the past, and that I know of, not one of them has failed (I've used them for informal builds for friends and family). Ironically, the only lemon drive I've ever had was the 6TB Black that ended up having just terrible performance. Actually, at a cursory glance, it's possible even Reds and Blacks might have head parking enabled.

Gaming, what is now not gaming and where is RGB lighting for better performance?

slyphnier:

WD Black series either 3.5" (desktop) or 2.5" (mobile) always come with 5years warranty at first i thought, they cheap out with this one by cut the warranty to 3years for HDD (keeping 5years only for SSD model) but looking at their msrp price ($149.99 for 5TB?) its cheaper than the bulk-drive itself (iirc around $230) so its reasonable or even great one thing i kinda curious, is they putting WD-Black-hdd in it or just "BLACK" for the name but with red, blue hdd inside seems for WD all BLACK products = marketed as "Gaming-class"

The info says 7200RPM, where it doesnt say 7200RPM then its probably 5400 Blue or Red