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#1
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
An ad at newegg got me curious. AS much as possible in layman's words,
what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard drives. newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price. I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the "gold" series is aimed at the business sector. Both models have the same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5"). The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black performance" model (64MB). In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade drives. In this instance, they're priced the same. So I'm trying to figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy. I prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience for the "black performance" drive. Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the "black performance" drive?. Thoughts about what other issues to consider? In terms of what I do on my pc, 95% is email and browsing. The rest is just playing CRPG games from around the year 2000 - Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, etc. |
#2
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On Mon, 5 Feb 2018 18:21:31 -0000 (UTC), "Yes" wrote:
| An ad at newegg got me curious. AS much as possible in layman's words, | what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance | series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard | drives. newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB | Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache | 3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD | Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s | 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price. | | I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the | "gold" series is aimed at the business sector. Both models have the | same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5"). | The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that | the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black | performance" model (64MB). | | In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives | to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise | drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade | drives. In this instance, they're priced the same. So I'm trying to | figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy. I | prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience | for the "black performance" drive. | | Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the | "black performance" drive?. Thoughts about what other issues to | consider? I see both drives are warrantied for 5 years. The biggest difference is probably the 128mb vs. 64mb cache. I might opt for gold based on that with both being the same price, although the actual noticeable difference in use is likely negligible. Larc |
#3
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
Yes wrote:
An ad at newegg got me curious. AS much as possible in layman's words, what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard drives. newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price. I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the "gold" series is aimed at the business sector. Both models have the same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5"). The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black performance" model (64MB). In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade drives. In this instance, they're priced the same. So I'm trying to figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy. I prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience for the "black performance" drive. Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the "black performance" drive?. Thoughts about what other issues to consider? In terms of what I do on my pc, 95% is email and browsing. The rest is just playing CRPG games from around the year 2000 - Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, etc. The terminology is mostly rubbish. Before you buy something, read the reviews on Newegg or Amazon and see if you can spot rubbish before you buy it. The last two higher-end WDC drives I got, they "park the heads". I don't buy high end drives so I can sit here waiting for them to spin up again. I didn't particularly plan on my desktop behaving like a laptop. My older WDC drives (Black and RE) don't do this. (Probably around a half dozen of them.) Basically, all the shortcomings of these drives were listed in reviews. Even the "funny noise" the 2TB WDC RE drive makes, the reviewers were spot on the money. Mine makes exactly the same noise, at shutdown. The basic rule of thumb is, the more mechanical noise a drive makes, the sooner it will wear out. Drives intended to operate in an array (8 drives in the same housing), they have an additional feature, where a piezo actuator right at the head level, makes small corrections to the tracking, at really high speed. This is much more responsive than servo tracking implemented at the voice coil. As a consequence, the various drive families are rated for "how many drives can sit next to one another and hum, without throwing off the other drives". A higher end drive should be array compatible and have that additional tracking feature. You don't need this feature, if you only have one HDD and one SSD in your desktop. All the drives use FDB motors. WDC arranged some to be fixed at the bottom, others to be fixed both top and bottom. (Motors are not made by the hard drive companies, and companies like Nidec make motors for HDDs.) The doubly fixed ones, should be low friction, and not make a bearing noise at shutdown. Yet, I have a POC here that makes a noise at shutdown. And everyone who bought one of those drives, got the same shafting. It sounds like the motor is a low-end fixed-at-the-bottom motor. This is actually the first FDB motor that ever made a noise, which in 2017 was a disappointing development (and not a one-off accident either, it's a design change). Caveat Emptor, and don't drink the Koolaid. I've bought my last WDC for a while. I'm waiting for when I'm really short on space, before I go shopping again. If they want to play games with us, well go right ahead, and I'll sit this dance out. The details of my experience aren't important, and like a weather report, I'll recommend "more frequent reading of reviews from customers to spot lemons" as my generic advice to you. There were some discussion threads, where users noticed Black and Green drives *having the same seek time*. This is Not Right, and should not happen. Were lower-end drives substituted for Black drives ? Well, read the reviews, as I cannot police every drive model number here. I've noticed some funny **** too. I cannot say anything about the last two Seagate 4TB drives I bought, because they're only used as backup drives, and don't have a lot of service hours. Unlike previous Seagate purchased, by some miracle, "they haven't been behaving flaky". But 100-200 hours on a drive is nothing, and who knows what will happen next week. My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS with 38,964 Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer curve, there isn't a mark on the drive, neither are there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a miracle. (I have plenty of other Seagates here that belong in the Rogues Gallery.) And that one doesn't park the heads either, so it's been flying heads the whole time. I guess someone at the factory, "washed his hands before he assembled that one" :-) It's too bad all the drives couldn't be like that. Paul |
#4
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On 02/05/2018 2:20 PM, Paul wrote:
Yes wrote: An ad at newegg got me curious.Â* AS much as possible in layman's words, what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard drives.Â* newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX.Â* I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price. I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the "gold" series is aimed at the business sector.Â* Both models have the same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5"). The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black performance" model (64MB). In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade drives.Â* In this instance, they're priced the same.Â* So I'm trying to figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy.Â* I prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience for the "black performance" drive. Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the "black performance" drive?.Â* Thoughts about what other issues to consider? In terms of what I do on my pc, 95% is email and browsing.Â* The rest is just playing CRPG games from around the year 2000 - Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, etc. The terminology is mostly rubbish. Before you buy something, read the reviews on Newegg or Amazon and see if you can spot rubbish before you buy it. The last two higher-end WDC drives I got, they "park the heads". I don't buy high end drives so I can sit here waiting for them to spin up again. I didn't particularly plan on my desktop behaving like a laptop. My older WDC drives (Black and RE) don't do this. (Probably around a half dozen of them.) Basically, all the shortcomings of these drives were listed in reviews. Even the "funny noise" the 2TB WDC RE drive makes, the reviewers were spot on the money. Mine makes exactly the same noise, at shutdown. The basic rule of thumb is, the more mechanical noise a drive makes, the sooner it will wear out. Drives intended to operate in an array (8 drives in the same housing), they have an additional feature, where a piezo actuator right at the head level, makes small corrections to the tracking, at really high speed. This is much more responsive than servo tracking implemented at the voice coil. As a consequence, the various drive families are rated for "how many drives can sit next to one another and hum, without throwing off the other drives". A higher end drive should be array compatible and have that additional tracking feature. You don't need this feature, if you only have one HDD and one SSD in your desktop. All the drives use FDB motors. WDC arranged some to be fixed at the bottom, others to be fixed both top and bottom. (Motors are not made by the hard drive companies, and companies like Nidec make motors for HDDs.) The doubly fixed ones, should be low friction, and not make a bearing noise at shutdown. Yet, I have a POC here that makes a noise at shutdown. And everyone who bought one of those drives, got the same shafting. It sounds like the motor is a low-end fixed-at-the-bottom motor. This is actually the first FDB motor that ever made a noise, which in 2017 was a disappointing development (and not a one-off accident either, it's a design change). Caveat Emptor, and don't drink the Koolaid. I've bought my last WDC for a while. I'm waiting for when I'm really short on space, before I go shopping again. If they want to play games with us, well go right ahead, and I'll sit this dance out. The details of my experience aren't important, and like a weather report, I'll recommend "more frequent reading of reviews from customers to spot lemons" as my generic advice to you. There were some discussion threads, where users noticed Black and Green drives *having the same seek time*. This is Not Right, and should not happen. Were lower-end drives substituted for Black drives ? Well, read the reviews, as I cannot police every drive model number here. I've noticed some funny **** too. I cannot say anything about the last two Seagate 4TB drives I bought, because they're only used as backup drives, and don't have a lot of service hours. Unlike previous Seagate purchased, by some miracle, "they haven't been behaving flaky". But 100-200 hours on a drive is nothing, and who knows what will happen next week. My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS with 38,964 Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer curve, there isn't a mark on the drive, neither are there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a miracle. (I have plenty of other Seagates here that belong in the Rogues Gallery.) And that one doesn't park the heads either, so it's been flying heads the whole time. I guess someone at the factory, "washed his hands before he assembled that one" :-) It's too bad all the drives couldn't be like that. Â*Â* Paul Great drives, I have 2 of the same ST3500418AS, one in each machine about 23,000 hrs on each, same results, no bad blocks or relocated sectors on these either, Really quite and running at 32 deg. C. Rene |
#5
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On Mon, 5 Feb 2018 18:21:31 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote: In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade drives. Enterprise, yes, is a reason to qualify for more money;- then again, so are gaming- or video-tailored performance factors;- ostensibly among reasons, as much as money, no doubt to be of continued interest to bear upon a concern. Ignoring these pressing political ramifications, however, there nonetheless emerges a unique qualifier for HDDs. Being they're brunt, brute-force workhorses of computing, often outlasting major component classifications, innovations and advancements, they're also then subject to long-standing statistical arrangements. Good sources, not necessarily to be ignored, the IT server structures behind the WEB;- an affiliate of dedicated statistical patterns for a heavy reliance of HDD material, they draw from, as published in their abstracts regarding HDD performance matrices. Search for and there's certain probability indeed you shall find them. |
#6
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:09:39 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 02/05/2018 2:20 PM, Paul wrote: My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS with 38,964 Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer curve, there isn't a mark on the drive, neither are there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a miracle. Great drives, I have 2 of the same ST3500418AS, one in each machine about 23,000 hrs on each, same results, no bad blocks or relocated sectors on these either, Really quite and running at 32 deg. C. I guess those are 500 GB? My smaller ST3160023A has "3 years, 4 months, and 4 days" Power-On Hours. I think I bought it about 18 years ago. |
#7
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On 02/05/2018 6:28 PM, dogs wrote:
On Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:09:39 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote: On 02/05/2018 2:20 PM, Paul wrote: My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS with 38,964 Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer curve, there isn't a mark on the drive, neither are there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a miracle. Great drives, I have 2 of the same ST3500418AS, one in each machine about 23,000 hrs on each, same results, no bad blocks or relocated sectors on these either, Really quite and running at 32 deg. C. I guess those are 500 GB? My smaller ST3160023A has "3 years, 4 months, and 4 days" Power-On Hours. I think I bought it about 18 years ago. Yes 500GB, 8 years old. Rene |
#8
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On Tue, 6 Feb 2018 00:28:18 +0000 (UTC), dogs wrote:
I guess those are 500 GB? My smaller ST3160023A has "3 years, 4 months, and 4 days" Power-On Hours. I think I bought it about 18 years ago. I don't know how long I ran a some 200G Seagates. One SATA and a PATA are left out of possibly three maybe four original units. I've backup data the PATA, at least while MBs continue to provide the interface;- same for the SATA, which is among storage drives that don't see a lot of use, except for a powered USB docking stations. It's almost ludicrous to admit a preferred efficiency I still like about my first SSD, a Samsung 64G unit. My last 500- to 700G-class, a plattered Western Digital HDD, though, still bears a brunt of downloadable material, augmented by a couple other 250G-class SSDs, and organized accordingingly for strategical advancement a SSD provides. The WD will be next to go, placed in the dockting-station queue and replaced by a 500-class SDD. Another thing comes to mind, re the OP and Statistical Abstracts provided by IT WEB "drive rankings". HDD manufacturers are neither unaware of an unfavorable such publicity provides. At times farther research is indicated, e.g. a HDD manufacturer model may be subsequently "hidden", as an identifiable model, within and subject to objectionable characteristics. Another area is updated drive firmware ROM. One of my 2T drives was manufactured to cycle-out power states inordinately. Jacking the power cycles, thereby shortening a drive life span means. . .who needs integrity when spending more of your money on failed drive replacements is vastly more interesting. The manufacturer subsequently released a firmware patch to define a definable maximum for nonintervention of data polling. The firmware was a direct result from a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer by the IT sector. |
#9
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
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#10
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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade
On Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:20:53 -0500, Paul wrote:
| The last two higher-end WDC drives I got, they "park the heads". | I don't buy high end drives so I can sit here waiting for | them to spin up again. I didn't particularly plan on my desktop | behaving like a laptop. My older WDC drives (Black and RE) don't do this. | (Probably around a half dozen of them.) This bothers me since I'm thinking of buying another HDD. Normally, I'd opt for a 1TB WD Black without giving it a second thought. But checking around shows many recent noise complaints about the same WD model I last bought (WD1003FZEX), so I'm guessing changes have been made even in existing models. I've used only WD Black for years and have had great experience with them, but wouldn't consider anything that parks heads. Larc |
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