WD Black actually a Blue?

[HellDiverUK]

Just got a new WD Black this week. It's a 1TB WD1003FZEX, and I was surprised to find a very light single platter drive with the cheap Blue-style 'stamped tin' top cover, not the heavier 'stainless steel/black insert' cover as is usual on the Black.

It's speed seemed slow on my testing, though I wasn't particularly worried as it was going in as a system drive in a NAS box. The 1TB Black looks physically identical to a 500GB Blue (WD5000AAKX) I have (OEM, came out of an Asus PC).


Seems some folks on various forums have deemed this particular model to be a Blue with a different label and an extra 3 yrs warranty.

WD1003FZEX CAVIAR BLACK poor access time explained... - WD Community
Western Digital 1TB WD1003FZEX poor access time

I'm also thinking I might just use the 500GB Blue, as it's a known quantity with flawless service for 6 months. I don't like paying £60 for an upgraded drive that's no faster than the original, and just uses more power for no performance gain.

I know I've posted two threads about WD drives in a row, and I'm really not bashing WD in any way, I still really like their drives, but some of their marketing tactics recently are getting a bit dodgy.

 

[Patrick]

Confirms my practice of buying only >1TB drives for years now.

 

[HellDiverUK]

Buying a 2TB drive when you're only going to need ~200MB of space at any one time is a bit of a waste, though. Shame my stock of 80GB WD 800JB have finally dried up.

 

[Patrick]

Buying a 2TB drive when you're only going to need ~200MB of space at any one time is a bit of a waste, though. Shame my stock of 80GB WD 800JB have finally dried up.

For those types of scenarios I often just buy inexpensive SSDs. The Crucial MX100 256GB is $109. While more than 1TB drives, getting less vibration/ power consumption is usually worth the extra $50.

Then again, I now have stacks of SSDs so this may not have been the best plan.

 

[HellDiverUK]

Hmm...I do have some old SSDs lying about, though they're not the most reliable, I just had a Crucial M4 128GB die totally on me, so I'm reluctant to use an even older 64GB one. May be it's time to use that 30GB Kingston I never found a use for?