Quantum Reality

What are the differences exactly, anyway?

I have a Caviar Blue 640 gig I got as a recertified HD about a month back, from the clearance bin at about $60.

Today I just picked up a couple Caviar Blacks from NCIX - 2 x 500 gig at $55 each. They were on sale from normal pricing at about $65ish according to their in-store sale website.

So because there are these different "colors", I wouldn't mind knowing the characteristics that differ among them.

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Deviance

You bought wisely, I believe it's:
Green = Power savings/economical
Blue = Mix of Power savings and performance
Black = Performance

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

KamuiRSX

Greens - Larger capacities but use less power so they are ideal for storage -500GB to 2TB
Blue are mid ranged - 250GB to 750GB - 2MB, 8MB and 16MB Cache only - conventional desktop drives
Blacks are the best - 32MB Cache - from 500GB to 2TB - High Performance

The specifics can be found by looking at their specs.

For instance

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"I'm not going there to die. I'm going to see if I'm really alive."

Mygaffer

Black is the high performance with the lowest access times. They have 5 year warranty
Blues are the mainstream drives, generally the performance is nearly the same as the blacks. Three year warranty
Greens are the power efficient, usually performance is a good deal less than the Blacks and Blues but they use less power. Generally used for storage of data, not an OS.

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drjoey1500

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the greens (or at least the 1TB) can spin down to 5900rpm.

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The_Rocker

I beleive that may be true.

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Planned Upgrades (Coming Soon):
Intel Core i7 950 D0 (Deal in progress)
6GB Kingston 2000Mhz HyperX (Deal in progress)
ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58 (Ordered)
Thermalright LGA1366 Bolt-Thru-Kit (Ordered)

Different GFX set up (Possibly 5870's)

the_beast

The Green drives do not change spindle speed. They use a single speed, which could be anything between 5400 and 7200rpm. However, all current WD Green drives actually operate at 5400rpm. The drives also stop their spindle entirely and park their heads more readily than more performance-oriented drives. The supposed variable spin speed was basically assumed by many people from marketing speak used by WD to describe Intellipower. WD have since confirmed it actually uses fixed speeds, and acoustic analysis has confirmed that all current drives operate at 5400rpm. Google it for more info.

The Seagate 'green' drives run at 5900rpm I believe.

The_Rocker

I thought the WD Green's running at 5400RPM was internet sepculation only?

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Planned Upgrades (Coming Soon):
Intel Core i7 950 D0 (Deal in progress)
6GB Kingston 2000Mhz HyperX (Deal in progress)
ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58 (Ordered)
Thermalright LGA1366 Bolt-Thru-Kit (Ordered)

Different GFX set up (Possibly 5870's)

the_beast

If you measure the frequency of the sound emitted by the drives (which you can do with your sound card, a microphone and some recording software), you find a peak at 90Hz. This is given by the rotation of the platters 90 times a second - or 5400rpm.

If you Google around you can find the evidence that backs it up.