Is WD Green good enough to pair up with SSD?

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  1. Posts : 112
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #11

    ignatzatsonic said:
    I have a year old 3 TB green that has not exhibited any head parking issues and I do monitor it. There is a WD application that can supposedly cure the head parking issue if it ever appears.

    Not sure why I'd ever use a black in this day and age when SSDs are the best idea for an OS and apps regardless. If you have to put an OS on a spinner for whatever reason, then yeah, maybe a black.
    I thought WD green has a 8 seconds head parking by default to save energy? Not sure why you do not have encounter it. Google: WD Green 8 seconds head, and you will see lots of articles of it.

    I thought of using WD Black (to store data) because the the WD Green has the 8 seconds parking that people mention it will shorten the lifespan and slow down when accessing WD Green after it has idle for 8 seconds. I am not sure if I access a file (e.g. MS word/excel) I would need to wait 3 to 5 seconds for WD Green to wake up or not before the file is opened.
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  2. Posts : 112
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #12

    People using WD Green, when WD Green is idle, how long do you need to wait for it wake up before it open a file? For example it has idle for 30 seconds, now you access a MS Excel file, what is the delay (how many seconds) before the file is opened?

    Comparing with WD Black what is the difference of delay (seconds) of opening a file?

    Thanks
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  3. Posts : 12,012
    Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, 64-bit
       #13

    pcwin said:
    ignatzatsonic said:
    I have a year old 3 TB green that has not exhibited any head parking issues and I do monitor it. There is a WD application that can supposedly cure the head parking issue if it ever appears.

    Not sure why I'd ever use a black in this day and age when SSDs are the best idea for an OS and apps regardless. If you have to put an OS on a spinner for whatever reason, then yeah, maybe a black.
    I thought WD green has a 8 seconds head parking by default to save energy? Not sure why you do not have encounter it. Google: WD Green 8 seconds head, and you will see lots of articles of it.

    I thought of using WD Black (to store data) because the the WD Green has the 8 seconds parking that people mention it will shorten the lifespan and slow down when accessing WD Green after it has idle for 8 seconds. I am not sure if I access a file (e.g. MS word/excel) I would need to wait 3 to 5 seconds for WD to wake up or not before the file is opened.
    I'm well aware of the issue. My green has never had the issue. When I bought the drive a year ago, I pounded Google on the subject. All the complaining seemed to be about earlier generations.

    I do not repeat not see any lag at all. I don't use any sleep or hibernate modes on my drives.

    You can monitor head parking via SMART. The attribute is "Load/Unload Cycle Count" aka LLC.

    I think the drives are rated for 300,000 LLC.

    I checked as I write this: my current LLC is 7156---a little over one per hour. That's in 6240 hours of operation since I bought the drive almost 14 months ago.

    Roughly 17 park cycles per day. It's consistently been around 17 since I bought it.

    Some earlier WD drives would suddenly reach 100,000 or more in weeks after having very few for months, with the solution being to run a WD utility called wdidle3 to change the default value of 8 seconds for head parking. You create a boot disk with the app and only the WD connected (at least ideally). It’s a DOS utility and you use the s/300 switch to set the head parking to once every 300 seconds, which eliminates the runaway high numbers.

    I can only report my experience. Obviously, if you are worried don't buy a green.
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  4. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #14

    ignatzatsonic said:
    I have a year old 3 TB green that has not exhibited any head parking issues and I do monitor it. There is a WD application that can supposedly cure the head parking issue if it ever appears.

    The greens with 1 TB platters are faster than the typical "fast 7200 rpm" drives of say 2011 or 2012 vintage.

    If you need more than 1 TB total capacity and did not intend to put an OS on it, I'd go with greens or maybe reds.

    If you do NOT need more than 1 TB total capacity, I'd go with blues.

    If money is not a big deal, I'd look at the Hitachi line if I wanted more than 1 TB total capacity. More expensive, but anecdotally more reliable.

    Not sure why I'd ever use a black in this day and age when SSDs are the best idea for an OS and apps regardless. If you have to put an OS on a spinner for whatever reason, then yeah, maybe a black.

    Warranty terms can differ a bit, so pay attention to that if you would ever even consider returning a bad drive to the manufacturer or vendor. I would not, so I don't care about warranties--at least for data drives.
    The Greens should never be used for an OS drive but that's a moot point because the OP stated he was going to use an SSD for the OS.
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  5. Posts : 112
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #15

    When WD Green parked its head, does it mean there is totally no moving parts inside the disk and safe to unplug the sata/power wire? (not sure if anything is still spinning or not when the head is parked)
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  6. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #16

    pcwin said:
    When WD Green parked its head, does it mean there is totally no moving parts inside the disk and safe to unplug the sata/power wire? (not sure if anything is still spinning or not when the head is parked)
    No, it merely slows down from full speed. WD doesn't publish the actual speeds of the Greens so one guess is as good as another. Most people consider it to be a 5400 rpm drive although some believe it may spin up to as much as 5900 rpm.

    I checked the SMART attributes on one my Greens and it showed 336 start cycles and only a 338 load/unload cycle count. Keep in mind I start using a backup program as soon after I insert the drive into the hot swap and the drive finishes indexing, then remove the drive after the program finishes and the heads have time to park. The drive is hot (connected to SATA data and SATA power) when I unplug it. I let it set a few second more to let it slow down some before pulling it out and gently moving it to the drawer it is stored in.

    To be able to plug in and disconnect a drive hot that is connected directly to a SATA port, you have to make sure the SATA port the dock or swap bay (or the drive itself if it is mounted internally) is connected to has been set in the BIOS or UEFI to AHCI and Hot Swap.
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  7. Posts : 112
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #17

    When accessing a file in WD Green vs WD Black, can you guys notice the difference/lag between these 2 drives? Do you actually feel the difference that much that you know you are accessing a file in a WD Green or WD Black.
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  8. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #18

    pcwin said:
    When accessing a file in WD Green vs WD Black, can you guys notice the difference/lag between these 2 drives? Do you actually feel the difference that much that you know you are accessing a file in a WD Green or WD Black.
    Yes, the Black is noticeably snappier.
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  9. Posts : 12,012
    Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, 64-bit
       #19

    pcwin said:
    When accessing a file in WD Green vs WD Black, can you guys notice the difference/lag between these 2 drives? Do you actually feel the difference that much that you know you are accessing a file in a WD Green or WD Black.

    I do not notice any difference when opening random files.

    It might make some difference if you were comparing them as boot drives and were measuring boot speed. Or maybe you wouldn't even notice that. Greens got a bad rap as "slow" and so you see the same stuff just copied and pasted from web pages of years back. Everyone says "don't use them as boot drives", but when did you last see a comparison of green versus black on a boot drive for recent versions of the two? Anyone with $70 has long gone to SSDs and could care less about the boot speed comparison.

    But you don't intend to use them as boot drives regardless, so it's a moot point.
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  10. Posts : 112
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
    Thread Starter
       #20

    If I download a file and save it to a WD Green vs WD Black, is there a difference of time it will take to download finish?

    Lets say downloading a 1GB file takes 1 hour to save to WD Black, does it take a longer time (maybe 1 hour 30mins) to save into WD Green?
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