HD to accompany SSD... Difference b/t Caviar Black or Green?

[sotiredofsoup]

I am choosing a HD to accompany my SSD startup/OS disk in my HackPro and I'm wondering if my media disk makes that much of a difference. The Caviar Greens run cheaper $/GB than the Blue or Black from what I've seen. Would there be much of a difference using a Green as a scratch disk?

[strausd]

I think the main difference is rpm. The Caviar Black spins faster at 7200 rpm so you can get faster reads and writes whereas the Caviar Green is somewhere between 5400 and 7200. Some people say that the green one will actually stay at 5900 and rarely go over, but I do not have any experience with it. Also, it uses less power because of this, which will save you money on your energy bill. I think it also goes to sleep sooner too, but I could be wrong about that.

[tomscott1988]

The green drives are more energy efficient, spinning between 5400 and 7200 so with this drive you would find slower, these drives in my opinion are better served as backup discs. The black and blue drives run at 7200rpm so are more appropriate. Im not sure on this, but i think the black drives are more suited to server grade and blue desktop. So depending on your money situation i would buy a faster drive. Theres no point in adding a slow drive to accompany an SSD because its speed will be even more noticeable when you are used to the SSD.

[mism]

Oddly enough I ordered a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive today (having read this thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=970966 )

WD describe them as:

Green: "cool, quiet, eco friendly"

Blue: "performance and reliability for everyday computing"

Black: "maximum performance for power computing"


So Black is the fastest before getting into their 'enterprise' range. I think the green runs slower when it can, and spins down more often.

This guy seemed to like the 2TB version of the black:

http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2010/20100716_WesternDigitalCaviarBlack-hdd.html

Hard drives always split opinion, people hate the make that failed on them. WD seem like a good choice and the Caviar Black at £75 suited me well. I may get a green for backup at some point.

[Hellhammer]

If you are going to use the drive as storage, the Green is fine. However, if speed is needed, the Black is better choice. Blue is like the middle model but sadly there is no 2TB version.

[sotiredofsoup]

Yeah, that's why I was looking at the Green... the 2TB drive. Cost isn't the main issue, but I was thinking it'd be nice to have a quiet hard drive and I was wondering if anyone else tried it. I'll scope out deals on the Blue and the Black (I saw the 1TB Black deal on NewEgg today) and probably buy a Green for Time Machine backups.

[Giuly]

I'd go with a 3TB one. (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=970742)