Review on WD Blue 1TB Hard Drive by Ronald Howlett

I gave this drive to someone and they used it for backups for 10 months with no problems. My rating is based on another unit of this drive that I bought a few months later. I've been using it as my main drive for desktop OS/programs since 05/29/2014, so it's been about 5 months now. So far there have been no problems. It's a really good deal for a desktop if 1TB is all you need. The actual capacity of this drive is 931.5 GB. It's an old marketing gimmick that can be blamed for mindlessly redefining all of our real, long-established data measurements with those silly "i" characters. I won't elaborate on that, but 931GB is true capacity measured in base 2 as all data is measured correctly. This 1TB Blue drive uses a single 1TB platter spinning at 7200 RPM. There are 2 heads (each side is 500GB). A single plate design is generally better than multiple smaller plates in terms of reliability because there are fewer failure points, easier assembly, the motor doesn't have to work as hard, and less heat is generated. Single platter drives also tend to be quieter, but I can't judge the noise level based on my configuration. There have been many discussions and tests among users on online forums including the WD forum repeatedly showing that 1TB Blue and 1TB Black work the same way. It looks like the only advantage of the 1TB Black is the longer warranty. Some black drives are faster than this drive, but the 1TB model is not. Compared to green, blue is faster due to its higher rotation speed. The green drives also have an "Intellipark" feature that makes them continue to park their heads after a few seconds of inactivity. This can lead to delayed response and additional wear. I don't like this design - I think the power management functions should remain under the control of the operating system, which can take into account user preferences and what's happening in the rest of the system. In my opinion it's ridiculous to hardcode such behavior on a hard drive. Blue behaves the way I prefer - it doesn't use "Intellipark", it stays operational until told otherwise by the operating system via power management commands. end of the line. I don't care that green and black are more expensive. Partition/Sector Alignment -------------- - Please note that this drive, like most modern drives, uses 4KB sectors (aka "extended format"). If, like me, you're using Windows 2003, Windows XP, or earlier, don't let Windows handle partitions on that drive. This is a problem even with unpatched versions of Vista and Windows 7. These older versions of Windows think physical sectors are 512 bytes when they are actually 4 KB. As a result, the partition(s) will not be aligned to the physical sectors. It will still work, but performance will decrease. There are no updates in Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and earlier versions that fix this problem, but this is not a problem if you partition with a suitable third-party utility. I think Western Digital offers a tool for this, but I've never tried it. Once the partitions are mounted, you can let Windows format them. For my Windows XP installation I used the latest version of GParted to partition the drive. GParted can be downloaded and burned to a bootable CD or installed on a USB stick. Just use the option to align your partitions on 1MB boundaries. This is an easy way to ensure they line up correctly for best performance. Then boot the WinXP installation disk and let the already created partition format. It sounds more complicated than it really is, it's a small problem, but it's simple. If you ever change partitions, again use GParted or a similar utility that does the alignment for modern hard drives. Don't use XP's built-in partitioning. But again, once the partitions are created, you can let Windows format them. Built-in partitioning has been fixed in Windows 8. According to Microsoft, it was fixed in Windows 7 after installing Service Pack 1 - you need this service pack before partitioning the hard drive, not after. Again, according to Microsoft, this is also fixed in Windows Vista *after* installing MS KB update 2553708 - I suspect this will be installed automatically for people using automatic updates, but I don't know what the fact is. This won't do you any good if you're doing a clean install and your installation disc is older than the required update. The partition alignment details I described above is an issue you will encounter with any new hard drive, it is not unique to this model. Ignoring it will affect performance, but it still works. You can see Seagate drives implying that they're immune to this, but they really aren't. All modern "Advanced Format" discs of any brand will work better if the sectors are properly aligned. But that doesn't matter - just use a modern partitioning utility and you're good to go. Disk speed" in Windows XP 32-bit. I will remove all variables and only show linear translation results with large block sizes. My drive has multiple partitions and many files, so this may affect the results. First partition (first 20GB) : 170-178MB/s linear read 3rd partition (physical range from 28GB to 628GB): 153-177MB/s linear read The last 300GB is unpartitioned so I can't test that range I don't think so "that the random access test is useful as my partitioning greatly affects the result. There is a test mode for the entire physical disk, but its results are too inconsistent. This drive is a great deal if you just want a simple, inexpensive, high-performance disk to go with Looking for 7200RPM I was tempted to try the Seagate SSHD but couldn't justify the cost compared to that when I go shopping today I would also look closely at the offerings from HGST and Toshiba, but from the WD side, this is my top choice for a general purpose 1TB desktop drive. Update: now 11/2015. This drive resides in my desktop PC, is used daily and still works perfectly. A few months ago I did a test on this drive using the Linux utility "gnome-disks". Random access performance averaged 15.7 ms. It's mediocre, but to be expected from a smooth ride. Screenshot attached. It also shows the transfer rate of the hard drive (just a read test, I didn't test the write).