Hard drive terminology question

[John]

Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?


Thanks,

John

 

[Paul]

Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?


Thanks,

John

Most of what you're going to see and read, is marketing horseshit.

Now, why do I say that ? The manufacturer makes claims, that are not
backed up by technical information or pictures. You have to take them
at their word, that there is some ethereal difference between drives,
in their construction. Are better motors used in one than the other ?
Is the plating on the platters different ? Since the recording densities,
mechanical tolerances are all the same, why would you do something
different ?

The WD Black, would be a 7200RPM "performance" drive. Basically,
seek speed is as fast as the ideal response curve can make it
(critically damped head movement).

Green would be detuned a bit. Perhaps the head takes an extra millisecond
or two on a full stroke. In return, perhaps the drive uses a bit less
power. It's also possible that the drive has two rotation rates, and
slows down when idle. (That may apply to drives 2TB or above. 3TB
drives are now available, if you want them.)

I've seen some marketing information from Seagate, that claims
some of their drives are rated "8x5" versus the more expensive ones
being rated "24x7". Now, IBM tried that trick years ago, making such
a claim. And leaving it to users to interpret as a real requirement
or not ("drive needs to rest between usages ???"). At that time, it
was theorized that the lubricant on the disc caused the difference,
but the lubricant turns out to be a couple molecules thick layer
of material, and not a "liquid" as we know it. The lubricant
consists of two layers. A couple molecules thick "bonded" layer,
and a couple more as a microscopic liquid on the surface. And that
reduces the idea that the lubricant "piles up" on the outer
edge of the disc. It's not a conventional liquid and should
not be envisaged as such. It's more like a "wax" or a "polish".

*******

I have an alternate selection method for you. Go to Newegg,
select the drive type you're interested in (like internal SATA),
then sort by ratings. Then, read the Feedback tab, where
real customers report whether they got a DOA drive, whether
it died after a week or a month or if it was still working. I
think that kind of real field data is more valuable than
the marketing fluff.

To give you some idea where quality counts, I recently bought
a couple identical drives. Both drive pass the manufacturer's
diagnostic (so can't be returned because I think they're
"smelly"). Both have acceptable SMART statistics. Yet, one
drive has a "smooth" benchmark curve, while the other one is
"bumpy". The fun begins, when you do real file transfers.
The disks span a benchmark transfer rate of 125MB/sec outer
to 60MB/sec inner. And yet, when transferring large files (many
gigabyte in size), transferring from one disk to the other will
be 60MB/sec on a large file in one direction, and a bumpy 30MB/sec
in the other direction. It would seem, that one drive is already
using a large percentage of its spare sectors.

Now, if I was shopping for that drive, would it matter that
the drive was "black", had a "dual processor", had a 64MB
cache, when it sucked donkey balls and was bested by my
80GB 5 year old disk ? I think not.

Read the reviews and select your sour lemons that way.

What counts on a drive, is that it doesn't lose your data.
At one time, it might have made sense to compare benchmarks,
and select the "hot" product. But now that drives have
dropped in quality, you really want to buy the product
with fewest DOA.

Hell, it might even make sense now to buy a 2.5" drive,
if it turned out to be more reliable than the 3.5" one.

Drive quality has dropped this year. The consolidation of
the market, to basically two major players, means we'll be
seeing more of this. There is no reason for either company
to clean up its act. They'll compete on price, rather than
quality. No niche players to try to do it different.

Oh, one other thing. Seagate has disabled AAM on my new drive.
Apparently a company called Convolve is trying to enforce
some kind of patent, and it looks like Seagate has disabled
AAM as a pre-emptive measure if a patent judgment goes against
them. I'd hoped I could crank down the seek and suffer
a little extra noise for some performance, but apparently
there is nothing to adjust. No question, the new drive is
quiet. I can't hear it over the fans. I can't hear
it seek.

http://www.3dgameman.com/forums//archive/index.php/t-20488.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate_Technology

"In later products such as Seagate Barracuda 7200.12, the quiet
seek mode is set at the factory and cannot be adjusted by end users."

Another new technology is the 4KB sector. Normal drives use
512 byte sectors. To increase density by a small percentage,
drives within the next two years will switch to 4KB sectors.
The term for this is "Advanced Format". This may cause
performance problems with older OSes. Apparently, Windows 7
just got a patch to properly support that technology.
For the time being, I would recommend against Advanced Format,
as you really don't want any grief due to that. Some Western
Digital drives shipped with the words "Advanced Format" on the
label, but I've seen at least one picture of a disk drive label,
where that information was missing. Bastards! If this feature
is so advanced, it's worth printing on the label!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888

HTH,
Paul

 

[Shaun]

"John" wrote in message
Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?


Thanks,

John

Another factor to keep in mind is that Seagate had many hard drive failures
over the last year or two. In my small family, 3 seagate HDD failed within
1 year of buying them, I will not buy another Seagate harddrive. The
Caviar black harddrives by western digital have a 3 or 5 year warrenty on
them, they are faster, they have dual processors (I suppose that means
faster). The black hard drives are just a bit more expensive than there
other drives, so I bought one for my new computer. Hitachi is suppose to be
good too.

Shaun

 

[VanguardLH]

Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?

The "green" has nothing to do with efficiency. It's just a color scheme
to designate a technology family. They had blue, black, and now green
drives. They could've used iolite, obsidian, and emerald for names,
too. Whether you want their green drive depends on which operating
system you use but never mentioned and if you do a fresh install of the
OS or migrate from a prior version.

New disk types are emerging that disrupt the old scheme of 512KB per
sector used in prior hard disks. They are sometimes referred to as
"green" disks because Western Digital assigns that color scheme to this
new line. Seagate calls them by Advanced Format Drives (AFDs) or Smart
Align Technology. This new disk uses 4KB sized sectors internally but
maps to the standard 512MB sectors on its interface? This misalignment
can cause lots of problems. These work by using 4KB sector sizes on the
platter and translating in their interface to 512KB; however, there is a
problem in misalignment since some versions of Windows start a partition
at sector 63 instead of 64. You could end up with a very slow external
hard disk due to misalignment because of the need to do
read-modify-write instead of just a write.

Read:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888/2
http://dl.paragon-software.com/free/Paragon Alignment Tool - ...
http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/partition-ali...
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=805

 

[Flasherly]

Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?

My Samsungs are up if and when WD buys out Samsung, or so I've
noticed.

Mostly green, one black, in modern HD-speakesque. Green is 5400rpm w/
a regulatory shut-down chip. All pretty and in distinctive EcoGreen.
Not sure about BIOS flashes and if it could be overridden. Useages.
For USB docking stations the Greens run reasonably or, if you prefer,
noticeably cooler than a Black, non-Eco variant spinning at 7200rpm.
I'd personally prefer the Black Editions mounted behind the front case
plane and its fan.

'Intended audience' may be reading a bit much. Performance wise, of
course, the Black is a better value dollar for dollar at the same
capacity as a Green drive. No latency shut-downs and 25% faster
rotation speeds to move data. Practicality at 1.5T and up is likely
another matter for a multimedia station, which isn't especially
demanding if only streaming audio visual. Past the latency factor
some encounter with Green drives shutting down.

I wouldn't know as my Blacks suffice at present over a little smaller
capacity, and the Greens absorb the bulk of storage as USB docking
station devices. Hope it isn't a problem if I decide to switch to
Greens, though it could be an annoyance.

MTBF is the wrong or incorrect question to ask. You read the reviews
and look for problematic and specific issues, often addressed from
BIOS flash updates from the manufacturer. You're asking people about
why they're buying a model of car, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota or Nissan,
since all have nice cars that are supposed to last long. Would you
tell me my Hyundai isn't going to last as long, say, as your Toyota
you paid twice as much for?

ISTR -- sorry. I only get something I drive off the lot with
available maintenance entry points and half a chance of fixing cheap
on parts -- don't do hybrids, electric cars, tax rebates, or future
cost depreciation analysis. Too complex for my brain -- ask somebody
else.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?

The green ones are as you deduced low power versions. One of the ways
they do that is with lower RPMs. They're spinning slower so you have
to wait longer for the data to end up under the head.

 

[VanguardLH]

The green ones are as you deduced low power versions.

Newer drives often claim lower power consumption or power saving modes.
That's hardly new. The biggest change with the "green" drives is the
different internal 4KB sector size instead of the traditional 512KB
along with sector misalignment (if the old scheme is employed in an old
OS or through migration from old to new OS).

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=120

The other changes to the "green" product line are incremental. The
Advanced Format Technology by both Western Digital and Seagate is a
major change and can cause problems, like reduced performance (with a
newer drive performing worse than older drive), in older OSes or without
proper alignment. See my other reply here. The OP's comment "in the
market" says nothing about which OS he will be using.

One of the ways they do that is with lower RPMs. They're spinning
slower so you have to wait longer for the data to end up under the
head.

WD doesn't specify a rotational speed for their "green" drives; see:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf

Instead they specify it as "IntelliPower". Sometimes you just feel like
driving over their marketing idiots. God forbid they make it sound
simple, like saying "Variable (5400-7200)". WD defines IntelliPower as
"A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching
algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid
performance." Oh yes, so much clearer, uh huh. They don't want users
to interpolate performance based on rotational speed so they hide it
behind marketing babble.

Reminds of the sham of "Name Brand Tools" when, in fact, it wasn't a
brand name at all but instead the name of the company was "Name Brand".
Yeah, don't tell consumers the truth because they probably won't
understand it so, sure, you're protecting them from confusion but using
confusing terminology.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Green would be detuned a bit. Perhaps the head takes an extra millisecond
or two on a full stroke. In return, perhaps the drive uses a bit less
power. It's also possible that the drive has two rotation rates, and
slows down when idle.

WD's IntelliPower marketingspeak is deceptive IMO. I agree that a
lower rotation rate is possible at idle, but only if the heads are
parked off the platters on the loading ramp.

See the following Hitachi document:

Power and Acoustic Management:
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/tech...340075B4DF/$file/WP_PowerAcoustic_25March.pdf

The following document states that "for each drive model, WD may use a
different, invariable RPM."

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/greenpower/technology.asp

Caviar Green drives actually rotate at a fixed 5400 RPM.

I've seen some marketing information from Seagate, that claims
some of their drives are rated "8x5" versus the more expensive ones
being rated "24x7". Now, IBM tried that trick years ago, making such
a claim. And leaving it to users to interpret as a real requirement
or not ("drive needs to rest between usages ???"). At that time, it
was theorized that the lubricant on the disc caused the difference,
but the lubricant turns out to be a couple molecules thick layer
of material, and not a "liquid" as we know it. The lubricant
consists of two layers. A couple molecules thick "bonded" layer,
and a couple more as a microscopic liquid on the surface. And that
reduces the idea that the lubricant "piles up" on the outer
edge of the disc. It's not a conventional liquid and should
not be envisaged as such. It's more like a "wax" or a "polish".

Drives now execute "patrol seeks" during idle periods to prevent the
heads flying over the same area for an extended time. I believe IBM's
Deathstar firmware update may have implemented this corrective action.

Seagate has disabled AAM on my new drive.

Have you tried Seagate's SEAAAM utility?
http://www.silenthardware.de/images/bilder/dirkvader/SEAAAM.EXE

Another new technology is the 4KB sector. Normal drives use
512 byte sectors. To increase density by a small percentage,
drives within the next two years will switch to 4KB sectors.
The term for this is "Advanced Format". This may cause
performance problems with older OSes.

I think that the performance problems only occur when the file system
is "misaligned". For example, an older OS such as Windows XP
partitions the drive such that the beginning of the first partition is
at LBA63. In order for the partition to be aligned, it must coincide
with a 4KB physical sector boundary. You could manually edit the
partition table so that partition 1 begins at LBA64, or you could use
a partitioning utility that is 4KB aware. Vista and Windows 7
automatically align every drive, including non-AF models, by starting
the partition with a 2048 sector offset. The cluster size for NTFS is
usually 4KB, so this means that once you align the beginning of the
volume, then all its clusters will be aligned.

WD drives have a jumper that is specified for use with XP. This jumper
aligns the file system by transparently adding a +1 sector offset to
each LBA. This means that when the OS is accessing LBA63, the drive is
actually accessing LBA64. The ATA standard enables a drive to report
whether such an offset is in force, although such reporting is
optional. AIUI, WD's Advanced Format drives report zeros for the AF
bytes of the Identify Device information block. AFAICS, this would
make it difficult, if not impossible, for an OS to identify an AF
drive.

See the following thread:
http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WD20EARS-Windows-7-partitioning-and-formatting/m-p/181530#M5325

Seagate drives, OTOH, handle misalignment issues transparently in
their firmware, using SmartAlign. Normally a misaligned drive would
need to execute a read-modify-write cycle to update the data in a 4KB
physical sector. This requires an additional rotation of the platters.
Seagate avoids this by writing to cache. That is, instead of a
read-modify-write_to_platters cycle, Seagate drives employ a
read-modify-write_to_cache cycle. They also make use of the read
look-ahead cache.

See this thread
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/How-exactly-does-SmartAlign-work/td-p/53003

This appears to be the applicable patent:

US Pat. 12138022 - Filed Jun 12, 2008 - SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY, LLC

Buffer Management for Increased Write Speed in Large Sector Data
Storage Device:
http://www.google.com/patents?printsec=abstract&zoom=4&id=GxbLAAAAEBAJ&output=text&pg=PA3

BTW, I'm assuming that all current drives still use 512-byte LBAs.
Once they begin to use 4KB logical sectoring, then this will pose a
problem for older OSes.

- Franc Zabkar

 

[Paul]

Have you tried Seagate's SEAAAM utility?
http://www.silenthardware.de/images/bilder/dirkvader/SEAAAM.EXE

I couldn't get that link to work directly, so I picked up an archived copy.

http://replay.web.archive.org/20051...ardware.de/images/bilder/dirkvader/SEAAAM.EXE

Virus scan is clean.

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan...cb99025847fa04692e3814186091c14efb-1305661176

MS-DOS executable, COFF for MS-DOS, DJGPP go32 DOS extender

With a hex editor, I see "Copyright 2000 Seagate Technology" inside
the executable, so it looks like it's been around a while

C:\somedir> seaaam.exe /?

Automatic Acoustic Management Utility v1.01
Copyright 2000 Seagate Technology, Inc., All Rights Reserved

Usage: seaaam.exe [options] [argument]
/q Set the AAM level to Quiet on all capable devices.
/p Set the AAM level to Performance on all capable devices.
/l # Set the AAM level to # on all capable devices.
/d Disable AAM on all AAM enabled devices.
Note: Use only one option at a time.

I don't see any list option ?

OK, tried it without arguments, and it runs in a command prompt window.
But, like Seatools, it's not finding my "controllers" (ICH9R SATA, non-AHCI).

Do I have to run it from MSDOS, and if I do, what are the odds it'll
find my "controllers" ?

Paul

 

[Franc Zabkar]

I couldn't get that link to work directly, so I picked up an archived copy.

http://replay.web.archive.org/20051...ardware.de/images/bilder/dirkvader/SEAAAM.EXE

Virus scan is clean.

http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan...cb99025847fa04692e3814186091c14efb-1305661176

Sorry, I cut-and-pasted from an old thread:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barrac...or-Seagate-Barracuda-7200-12/m-p/50644#M19423

I also scanned the file for malware at that time.

OK, tried it without arguments, and it runs in a command prompt window.
But, like Seatools, it's not finding my "controllers" (ICH9R SATA, non-AHCI).

Do I have to run it from MSDOS, and if I do, what are the odds it'll
find my "controllers" ?

I haven't used it, but I would expect that it would be looking for a
PATA drive. Perhaps you need to set your controller to legacy or
compatibility IDE mode in your BIOS setup, and then try executing
SEAAAM from DOS. That said, I didn't realise that the utility was so
old. Perhaps you should confirm with Seagate whether it is applicable
to current models, especially if it uses vendor specific ATA commands.

- Franc Zabkar

 

[Paul]

Sorry, I cut-and-pasted from an old thread:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barrac...or-Seagate-Barracuda-7200-12/m-p/50644#M19423

I also scanned the file for malware at that time.


I haven't used it, but I would expect that it would be looking for a
PATA drive. Perhaps you need to set your controller to legacy or
compatibility IDE mode in your BIOS setup, and then try executing
SEAAAM from DOS. That said, I didn't realise that the utility was so
old. Perhaps you should confirm with Seagate whether it is applicable
to current models, especially if it uses vendor specific ATA commands.

- Franc Zabkar

I tried switching to compatible mode (as the disks are on SATA ports 1&2
of a six port SATA chip). No dice. In Enhanced mode, SEAAAM dies with an
error, suggesting it's trying to access legacy locations. In Compatible
mode, the program just hangs and nothing happens. I can quit with
control-C and get back to the DOS prompt.

The board has an IDE connector, but it's on a separate Jmicron controller,
and I don't expect that would even be visible to the program.

Looks like my motherboard is just no fun at all.

Paul

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?

WD Black: 7200 RPM, fastest performance, highest power consumption,
highest price, 5-year warranty

WD Green: 5400 RPM, slowest performance, lowest power consumption, 3-
year warranty

WD Blue: 7200 RPM, middle performance (a lot closer to Black than
Green), 3-year warranty

Blacks may also differ from Blues by having more platters but fewer
cylinders, to improve seek times.

MTBF probably isn't useful information because it assumes the product
doesn't age, which may be why you see million-hour MTBFs for products
rated to last only 15,000-50,000 hours of operation time.

16-page review of these WD drives and other brands (benchmark results
start on page 5):

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/hdd-2010.html

Sometimes you can get a WD Black cheap by purchasing a WD external USB
2.0 drive because WD puts all sorts of drives in their externals. The
cardboard box has a sticker with the model and serial numbers printed
on it, and if the model number ends in "NETG", the internal drive is a
Black, but if it ends in "NESN" it's a Green. However even if you get
a Black this way, its warranty will be for only one year.

 

[RayLopez99]

To give you some idea where quality counts, I recently bought
a couple identical drives. Both drive pass the manufacturer's
diagnostic (so can't be returned because I think they're
"smelly"). Both have acceptable SMART statistics. Yet, one

A smelly drive?

BTW SMART I once calculated slows down a hard drive by about 2%, but I
always leave it on since it works about one-third of the time in
preventing potential hard drive failures. So the very slight decrease
in performance is worth it for me.

RL

 

[TVeblen]

Newer drives often claim lower power consumption or power saving modes.
That's hardly new. The biggest change with the "green" drives is the
different internal 4KB sector size instead of the traditional 512KB
along with sector misalignment (if the old scheme is employed in an old
OS or through migration from old to new OS).

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=120

The other changes to the "green" product line are incremental. The
Advanced Format Technology by both Western Digital and Seagate is a
major change and can cause problems, like reduced performance (with a
newer drive performing worse than older drive), in older OSes or without
proper alignment. See my other reply here. The OP's comment "in the
market" says nothing about which OS he will be using.


WD doesn't specify a rotational speed for their "green" drives; see:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf

Instead they specify it as "IntelliPower". Sometimes you just feel like
driving over their marketing idiots. God forbid they make it sound
simple, like saying "Variable (5400-7200)". WD defines IntelliPower as
"A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching
algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid
performance." Oh yes, so much clearer, uh huh. They don't want users
to interpolate performance based on rotational speed so they hide it
behind marketing babble.

Reminds of the sham of "Name Brand Tools" when, in fact, it wasn't a
brand name at all but instead the name of the company was "Name Brand".
Yeah, don't tell consumers the truth because they probably won't
understand it so, sure, you're protecting them from confusion but using
confusing terminology.

The other thing the Green drives do is park the heads and go into a low
power mode when idle for a preset period of time.
I've seen a few posts in troubleshooting because on some of these drives
the parking and power-up issues mimic the symptoms of a failing drive -
access lag and a false "click of death" sound - even though the drives
test out fine.

 

[TVeblen]

Terminology has changed since I was last in the market for a hard
drive, and I'd appreciate help to put them into context as I think
about what to buy.

Looking at the descriptions for Western Digital drives, they have
started using the terms green and black for some of their products.
I'm guessing that green suggests energy efficiency. What is "black"
supposed to mean? Are there other colors being used and what are they
supposed to suggest?

What do the color codes mean in practical terms relative to their
"standard" products, such as what are the benefits of using one over
another, MTBF (operating life), heat, noise ... For what circumstances
would I choose a "black" drive rather than one that does not have a
color code? Who is the intended audience to buy the drive?

ISTR that Seagate also markets some hard drives using color codes. Are
they the same as that used by Western Digital?


Thanks,

John

From WD marketing:

Blue: (Professional) Reliable Cool Quiet - "Complete Capacity Coverage"
- Generic Part # - 3 Year Warranty

Green: (Eco) Cooler, Quieter, Eco-Friendly - Generic Part # - 3 Year
Warranty

Black: (Enthusiast) Fast, Feature Rich - "Areal Density-Specific Part
#s" - 5 Year Warranty

 

[Paul]

I tried switching to compatible mode (as the disks are on SATA ports 1&2
of a six port SATA chip). No dice. In Enhanced mode, SEAAAM dies with an
error, suggesting it's trying to access legacy locations. In Compatible
mode, the program just hangs and nothing happens. I can quit with
control-C and get back to the DOS prompt.

The board has an IDE connector, but it's on a separate Jmicron controller,
and I don't expect that would even be visible to the program.

Looks like my motherboard is just no fun at all.

Paul

I ran "hdparm -M /dev/sda" from Linux and both drives return "254"
meaning there at max speed already. I didn't bother to try changing to 128
or anything for a test.

Paul

 

[Paul]

A smelly drive?

BTW SMART I once calculated slows down a hard drive by about 2%, but I
always leave it on since it works about one-third of the time in
preventing potential hard drive failures. So the very slight decrease
in performance is worth it for me.

RL

A retailer will ask you why you're returning a product, and I have
no proof the product is defective. Therefore, I'd have to answer
that "this product stinks!" A.K.A smelly.

Paul

 

[John]

Thanks for all the responses. I didn't realize my simple question
would generate as many as it did

One person asked which OS I planned to use - right now, I use Win XP
Pro, SP3. I'm thinking I might upgrade to Win 7 or move to Linux.
Haven't decided. XP's handled everything I use, so no immediate need
to change.

I'm sad to hear about the decline in overall manuf. quality (DOA).
Right now, I have two older WD 40 Gb E-IDE drives (I think about 7
years old, lost track) that seem to work fine AFAICT and one Seagate
500 Gb SATA drive (about 1 year old) that also seems to work fine.

When I bought the drives, my main concern was quality and how long they
would last. Those still are, but I now also have to take into account
how well they will work and last in a less than ideal environment - I
live in a coastal area with relatively high humidity, hot summers (avg
95+ degrees - guess) and my a/c is not the best. I usually run
business apps and one or two games (fairly low graphics). Am now
starting to play around with speech recognition software and a FOSS GIS
package but not into photoshop type stuff. My pc (and drives) are used
every day, but not 24 hrs/day

@Paul, I do read the NewEgg customer comments, which was why I realized
I needed to ask for help here. Those comments talked about the DOA
problem, but rarely discussed how well the drives performed over a long
period of time or which type of user was most likely to benefit from
choice of one color family over another color family.

My preference is always to choose eqpt. geared to workstation/server
tempered by what I can afford. The descriptions I've seen, for
example, at NewEgg, don't indicate if the drive was designed in mind
for say a server environment, high end consumer, moderate home use,
gamer or economy minded, to use older terminology I was familiar with.

I had forgotten that info about the "Advanced Format", and didn't know
that it could generate noises like a dying drive. That could actually
influence my choice.

Thanks everyone,

John

 

[Flasherly]

Thanks for all the responses. I didn't realize my simple question
would generate as many as it did

One person asked which OS I planned to use - right now, I use Win XP
Pro, SP3. I'm thinking I might upgrade to Win 7 or move to Linux.
Haven't decided. XP's handled everything I use, so no immediate need
to change.

I'm sad to hear about the decline in overall manuf. quality (DOA).
Right now, I have two older WD 40 Gb E-IDE drives (I think about 7
years old, lost track) that seem to work fine AFAICT and one Seagate
500 Gb SATA drive (about 1 year old) that also seems to work fine.

When I bought the drives, my main concern was quality and how long they
would last. Those still are, but I now also have to take into account
how well they will work and last in a less than ideal environment - I
live in a coastal area with relatively high humidity, hot summers (avg
95+ degrees - guess) and my a/c is not the best. I usually run
business apps and one or two games (fairly low graphics). Am now
starting to play around with speech recognition software and a FOSS GIS
package but not into photoshop type stuff. My pc (and drives) are used
every day, but not 24 hrs/day

@Paul, I do read the NewEgg customer comments, which was why I realized
I needed to ask for help here. Those comments talked about the DOA
problem, but rarely discussed how well the drives performed over a long
period of time or which type of user was most likely to benefit from
choice of one color family over another color family.

My preference is always to choose eqpt. geared to workstation/server
tempered by what I can afford. The descriptions I've seen, for
example, at NewEgg, don't indicate if the drive was designed in mind
for say a server environment, high end consumer, moderate home use,
gamer or economy minded, to use older terminology I was familiar with.

I had forgotten that info about the "Advanced Format", and didn't know
that it could generate noises like a dying drive. That could actually
influence my choice.

Thanks everyone,

John

Some of the newer drives models are already aimed at Win7. They have
to be [re]formated specially for a lower OS - ie, XP. (Possibly) at
some disadvantage from the manufacturer's stated or design/engineered
entry point - Win7. And that's not including the possible
complications through "translating" PCI controllers and support
drivers for an older or different OS -- XP, xNix. Temperatures
shouldn't be an issue to a well-designed case with adequate cooling.
Extreme or hostile environments are entirely another matter. I also
live along the Gulf of Mexico and get along just fine with usually
fans, except for hotter times with wall-thumpers if needed. Nothing
so hostile here that a few bottles of alcohol, tooth and parts
brushes, and 60gal air compressor on the otherside of the wall, in my
garage, won't fix. Scares them dust bunnies right away. I'm not
painting cars for a living, so you can hold that thought. The computer
I'm on has been sitting here for near eight years for probably three
or four case changes (knock on a Staples office 8' conference table's
particle board). Maxtor 200Gs are my oldest . . . WD40G may be a tad
past 8 years ago. Annoys me now to think about MFF/RLL megabyte
drives turning to gigabytes and IDE.

 

[John]

Some of the newer drives models are already aimed at Win7. They have
to be [re]formated specially for a lower OS - ie, XP. (Possibly) at
some disadvantage from the manufacturer's stated or design/engineered
entry point - Win7. And that's not including the possible
complications through "translating" PCI controllers and support
drivers for an older or different OS -- XP, xNix. Temperatures
shouldn't be an issue to a well-designed case with adequate cooling.
Extreme or hostile environments are entirely another matter. I also
live along the Gulf of Mexico and get along just fine with usually
fans, except for hotter times with wall-thumpers if needed. Nothing
so hostile here that a few bottles of alcohol, tooth and parts
brushes, and 60gal air compressor on the otherside of the wall, in my
garage, won't fix. Scares them dust bunnies right away. I'm not
painting cars for a living, so you can hold that thought. The computer
I'm on has been sitting here for near eight years for probably three
or four case changes (knock on a Staples office 8' conference table's
particle board). Maxtor 200Gs are my oldest . . . WD40G may be a tad
past 8 years ago. Annoys me now to think about MFF/RLL megabyte
drives turning to gigabytes and IDE.

LOL. Yeh, I don't remember how long I've had them. ISTR that I bought
them because they fit my budget, worked with NT, I could use them in a
RAID set-up if I wanted to do so and were large enough to accomodate a
full OS install. The system I replaced - due to age and eqpt failure
- was an Intel Xeon CPU and mobo with a pair of Seagate Barracuda
SCSI drives; that one lasted about eight years. It'd be fair to say
that my eqpt usually lasts for quite a few years except when lightning
strikes (knock on wood).

It's a shame from what other posters said that quality has slipped. My
expectations were that whatever drive I buy, as long as I chose a
manuf. with a good reputation for making quality drives, the drive
should last a very long time, especially because I don't run apps that
work my eqpt to their limits.

John