Question Should I buy a WD Red or a WD Blue HDD ?

[mzama.mzama]

Hi
I want to buy a new HDD 4tb but I heard wd red is better for using in desktop then the blue one

So I want to buy a 4 TB for gaming and storage stuff
The red one and the blue one has the same price and same rpm 5400
So what should I buy?
I care about the lifetime bc I will save my important files there

And is there any better suggestion then wd?

 

[Lafong]

WD is generally as good as any.

You need a little luck for longevity. My WD is nearly 9 years old. It's a Green.

You can buy on the basis of published specification differences if you want, but I wouldn't expect that to be critical for typical uses.

 

[USAFRet]

I care about the lifetime bc I will save my important files there

In which case you need to have an actual backup.
Another copy or two, saved on some other device.

Of my last 3 'dead' hard drives...
1x Toshiba
1x Seagate
1x WD

In all 3 cases, 100% of the data was recovered from my backup routine.

Brand is mostly irrelevant.

 

[mzama.mzama]

You need a little luck for longevity. My

In which case you need to have an actual backup.
Another copy or two, saved on some other device.

Of my last 3 'dead' hard drives...
1x Toshiba
1x Seagate
1x WD

In all 3 cases, 100% of the data was recovered from my backup routine.

Brand is mostly irrelevant.

thank you but what about my question about blue or red? for normal desktop using like gaming and storage media file

 

[USAFRet]

thank you but what about my question about blue or red? for normal desktop using like gaming and storage media file

Whichever is CMR, not SMR.
Investigate this.

 

[Pextaxmx]

Whichever is CMR, not SMR.
Investigate this.

just curious - is there any evidence that CMR is better in terms of longevity? I do understand though, CMR requires much less background data organization activities.
Practically speed of HDDs is not at all relevant anymore. CMR = super slow, SMR = super slow compared to any SSD

 

[Misgar]

The Western Digital Blue data sheet shows two versions of the 4TB hard disk:-
The 4TB WD40EZAX is CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording)
The 4TB WD40EZAZ is SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording)
https://documents.westerndigital.co...duct-brief-western-digital-wd-blue-pc-hdd.pdf

The Western Digital Red data sheet (not Pro version) shows the WD40EFAX is SMR.
https://documents.westerndigital.co.../product-brief-western-digital-wd-red-hdd.pdf

In 2020, Western Digital received considerable negative press, because they marketed SMR Red drives as suitable for NAS use. Their data sheets did not specify some WD Red drives were SMR and not CMR, as most people expected. If you suffered a drive failure in a ZFS NAS array of Red SMR drives, "resilvering" a replacement disk could take days instead of hours and in some instances fail completely.

When this marketing omission was discovered, WD introduced a new range of Red "Pro" drives, for people who wanted (and expected) CMR drives. Of course WD Red Pro (CMR) cost more than WD Red (SMR).
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/

The OP does not mention which models of WD Red and WD Blue are on sale locally, but I recommend checking the part numbers very carefully.

Although I have SMR drives in various computers, I now buy WD Purple (Video) CMR drives for data storage. An SMR drive can be slower during bulk data write operations, especially after deleting thousands of files from the drive. I've also used Hitachi, Toshiba and Seagate NAS and Enterprise drives (better quality, longer life?).

If you want good performance with faster random access gaming file retrieval, consider a 7200RPM drive (I'm assuming your boot drive is an SSD). For general data backup, 5400RPM drives are fine and may run cooler.

Given the choice of WD Red vs Blue, I'd go for the WD40EZAX Blue, because it's CMR. I'd avoid the WD40EZAZ Blue and WD40EFAX Red because they're both SMR. For fast gaming performance choose CMR not SMR, but unless you run benchmarks, you might not see any significant speed difference.

 

[mzama.mzama]

The Western Digital Blue data sheet shows two versions of the 4TB hard disk:-
The 4TB WD40EZAX is CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording)
The 4TB WD40EZAZ is SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording)
https://documents.westerndigital.co...duct-brief-western-digital-wd-blue-pc-hdd.pdf

The Western Digital Red data sheet (not Pro version) shows the WD40EFAX is SMR.
https://documents.westerndigital.co.../product-brief-western-digital-wd-red-hdd.pdf

In 2020, Western Digital received considerable negative press, because they marketed SMR Red drives as suitable for NAS use. Their data sheets did not specify some WD Red drives were SMR and not CMR, as most people expected. If you suffered a drive failure in a ZFS NAS array of Red SMR drives, "resilvering" a replacement disk could take days instead of hours and in some instances fail completely.

When this marketing omission was discovered, WD introduced a new range of Red "Pro" drives, for people who wanted (and expected) CMR drives. Of course WD Red Pro (CMR) cost more than WD Red (SMR).
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/

The OP does not mention which models of WD Red and WD Blue are on sale locally, but I recommend checking the part numbers very carefully.

Although I have SMR drives in various computers, I now buy WD Purple (Video) CMR drives for data storage. An SMR drive can be slower during bulk data write operations, especially after deleting thousands of files from the drive. I've also used Hitachi, Toshiba and Seagate NAS and Enterprise drives (better quality, longer life?).

If you want good performance with faster random access gaming file retrieval, consider a 7200RPM drive (I'm assuming your boot drive is an SSD). For general data backup, 5400RPM drives are fine and may run cooler.

Given the choice of WD Red vs Blue, I'd go for the WD40EZAX Blue, because it's CMR. I'd avoid the WD40EZAZ Blue and WD40EFAX Red because they're both SMR. For fast gaming performance choose CMR not SMR, but unless you run benchmarks, you might not see any significant speed difference.

thank you so much but there is wd red plus and it is CMR too and same price as blue

 

[Misgar]

The WD Pro Red CMR drive is a good choice if you want to load/save game data at a reasonable rate. Just make sure it's not the WD Red SMR drive if you want better random write speeds. If the WD Blue is the CMR version and not SMR, it's not a bad choice either.

Ideally you'd be better off using a 4TB NVMe Gen 4 SSD for game data, but I appreciate NVMe drives are significantly more expensive than 4TB hard disks and your motherboard may not have the appropriate interfaces.

I don't have anything larger than 2TB NVMe Gen 4 drives in any of my machines, but I have dozens of hard drives for data backups. Remember, you can never have too many copies of important data.