# Performance with new WD Blue.



## lexluthermiester (Jan 21, 2018)

Building a system with a new WD Blue 1TB 72k 64MBb drive. The normal surface tests I do usually start with drives getting about 145MB to 140MB per second and as it gets to the end of the drive, which would be the inside tracks, it drops down into the 100MB to 95MB range. But with this drive, it started at 178MB per second and only dropped down to the 150MB to 145MB per second range. On the third run and the results are the same. The system used to "break-in" drives has not changed in over two years.

That said, has anyone else had a similar experience? And has WD changed there design/manufacturing methods to increase performance? I'm not finding anything solid through search, either through Google or Bing(ick! Felt dirty even using it).


----------



## crazyeyesreaper (Jan 21, 2018)

Its simply tech advancing forward. Look at a 500gb drive from a decade ago vs today. Its nearly twice as fast. I have an old WD Black 500gb first gen drive gets like 70 mb/s same drives today get nearly double. 

Disc data density along with faster cache has resulted in incremental improvements that leads to the HDD speeds we see today. Sadly 4k read and writes are still garbage which is why SSDs feel so much faster.

That said performance varies more due to quality standards having dropped after the Tsunami a number of years ago.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 21, 2018)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> Its simply tech advancing forward. Look at a 500gb drive from a decade ago vs today. Its nearly twice as fast. I have an old WD Black 500gb first gen drive gets like 70 mb/s same drives today get nearly double. Disc data density along with faster cache has resulted in incremental improvements that leads to the HDD speeds we see today. Sadly 4k read and writes are still garbage which is why SSDs feel so much faster. That said performance varies more due to quality standards having dropped after the Tsunami a number of years ago.


But 30MB to 40MB per second in a single model line up? I'm on drive number 2 with the same new performance level. I'm wondering what WD has done to bump it up that much.


----------



## Xzibit (Jan 21, 2018)

Well the cache and seek performance was increased across the blue/blacks awhile ago 2012-13.  They also started using less platters. I believe the WD10EZEX blue was one the first to be updated back in 2012.


----------



## Jetster (Jan 21, 2018)

I used a WD10EZEX for a couple of years. Just got rid of it, never tested the speed but I never had any issues with it. And I was constantly moving large videos back and forth from an SSD


----------



## Xzibit (Jan 21, 2018)

Jetster said:


> I used a WD10EZEX for a couple of years. Just got rid of it, never tested the speed but I never had any issues with it. And I was constantly moving large videos back and forth from an SSD



The only thing i hate about blues is there too cheap. Some time 40% below equal Blacks and for non-essentials its too tempting.

Although they are too loud for my taste.  Blacks are much quieter now.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 21, 2018)

Xzibit said:


> Well the cache and seek performance was increased across the blue/blacks awhile ago 2012-13. They also started using less platters. I believe the WD10EZEX blue was one the first to be updated back in 2012.


I'm a system builder. This has just been over the past few weeks. The drives in question are in the exact same box with the same model number. The chassis and PCB look the same. Thus my surprise. The only thing that is different, that I can tell, is the firmware of the drives, but even that is only off by one number.


Xzibit said:


> Although they are too loud for my taste. Blacks are much quieter now.


They're all almost dead quiet now.

Just put in a drive from my last shipment and it's testing out at the previous level of performance. The newer drives definitely have something new to them.


----------



## Xzibit (Jan 21, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> I'm a system builder. This has just been over the past few weeks. The drives in question are in the exact same box with the same model number. The chassis and PCB look the same. Thus my surprise. The only thing that is different, that I can tell, is the firmware of the drives, but even that is only off by one number.
> 
> They're all almost dead quiet now.
> 
> Just put in a drive from my last shipment and it's testing out at the previous level of performance. The newer drives definitely have something new to them.



I bought a Blue retail package (Different SKU but it comes with a WD10EZEX) around 4 months ago. Funny enough it was to replace a WD10EZEX that was going bad. They still make seeking and spin up noises when you put large files on them. Not as much as before. But not quiet at all. The Blacks I have are almost silent.  Cant hear them unless you take the cases apart.


----------



## micropage7 (Jan 21, 2018)

have you check how it sounds? normal or something that may lead to faulty
have you tried to change the sata cable or another sata port, just to make sure its the HDD
i have bad experience with WD blue
got 3 dead just about one year


----------



## IceScreamer (Jan 21, 2018)

I was looking to upgrade to this drive, my old WD is really really loud, and just 160GB. And that performance difference is huge compared to my old one.


----------



## Jetster (Jan 21, 2018)

My blues were silent. At least compared to my Enterprise drives. Blacks are overrated, I mean there nice but way overpriced. If you can get them at a good price then great. I've owned a few over the years.  All are about the same speed. 90 to 160 depending on the file sizes. A bunch of small files will transfer slower


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 21, 2018)

I got 1 TB WD Blue also and have same numbers ... here's comparison with my other drive (1TB Seagate Baracuda):


----------



## Vario (Jan 21, 2018)

Xzibit said:


> Well the cache and seek performance was increased across the blue/blacks awhile ago 2012-13.  They also started using less platters. I believe the WD10EZEX blue was one the first to be updated back in 2012.


The WD Blue WD10EZEX was slightly faster than the Black model.
I had 3 blues EZEX but gave one away, I still use two of them and they are very fast.

Then in 2015 they made the Greens the new Blue.  Avoid the 5400 RPM ones if you can.
source: https://techreport.com/news/29251/western-digital-paints-its-green-hard-drives-blue-in-rebranding
http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/WD-Blue-1TB-2012-vs-WD-Black-1TB-2013/1779vs1822


----------



## newtekie1 (Jan 21, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> I'm a system builder. This has just been over the past few weeks. The drives in question are in the exact same box with the same model number. The chassis and PCB look the same. Thus my surprise. The only thing that is different, that I can tell, is the firmware of the drives, but even that is only off by one number.



The recently upped their platter density.  That is why the performance numbers went up.  Up until recently I believe they were using two 500GB platters in the WD Blues, and they have now switch to a single 1TB platter.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 21, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> The recently upped their platter density.  That is why the performance numbers went up.  Up until recently I believe they were using two 500GB platters in the WD Blues, and they have now switch to a single 1TB platter.


Thought of that, but the chassis's for the slower and faster drive are identical. The manufacture dates are only two months apart, the slower one is Aug and the faster is Oct.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 24, 2018)

BiggieShady said:


> I got 1 TB WD Blue also and have same numbers ... here's comparison with my other drive (1TB Seagate Baracuda):
> View attachment 96208
> View attachment 96206View attachment 96207


Here's the test from this new one.

That's a big jump in performance. Not too shabby!


----------



## BiggieShady (Jan 24, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> new one


Nice, the one I have is model from at least 6 years ago


----------



## newtekie1 (Jan 24, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Thought of that, but the chassis's for the slower and faster drive are identical. The manufacture dates are only two months apart, the slower one is Aug and the faster is Oct.



On the outside they will look identical, all the changes are internal.


----------



## basco (Jan 24, 2018)

and watch out the bench software itself is not compareable with version 5.2.1 and 6.0.0.
sequentiell test gives 100\150mb\s difference to the 4KiBQ32T1  test.
rest stays the same


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 24, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> On the outside they will look identical, all the changes are internal.


If they have dual platters, there will be a difference on the outside to make room for the extra space needed inside the drive.


----------



## crazyeyesreaper (Jan 24, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> If they have dual platters, there will be a difference on the outside to make room for the extra space needed inside the drive.



I have multiple drives here with varying platter densities outside shells are the same. Granted they are Samsung HDDs


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 24, 2018)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> I have multiple drives here with varying platter densities outside shells are the same. Granted they are Samsung HDDs


WD's are different.


----------



## John Naylor (Jan 24, 2018)

Over the years a mechanical drive was typically half as fast on the inside edge of the platter as the outside.  Personally I was never a fan of the Blue.   Benchmarks are a great tool is ya spend each and every day copying entire HDs from one ot another.   But I prefer to use application based tools which tell a different story.  If I used a WD HD, it would usually be  a black.  If ya look at the THZG test charts, bit out of date now, in gaming the Black came in at 6.45 MB/s in gaming, while the Blue came in at 4.01 MB/s.  The black's 5 year warranty also was a big advanatge over the Blue's 2 year.  However we stopped using HDs 7 years ago... each build now contains an SSD for OS and programs and an SSHD for data or gaming as the case may be.  By comparison, the SSD scored 9.76 MB/sec in those tests.  have installed 20+ SSHds in last 7 years with 0 failures to date and quarterly testing shows full health.

The average failure rate by brand is oft bandied about but this suffers much from completely irrelevant server testing by backblaze (where protection features of consumer drives actually accelerate failure in server applications) and like anything else it's not about "the brand" it's about the model.   Both change year to year and even 6 month testing period to testing period.  Average RMA rates by brand foer the last two testing periods (12 months) are:

HGST = 0.97%
Seagate =0.83%
Toshiba =  0.93%
Western = 1.15%

This pales in significance compared to individual models which have RMA rates up to 10%  Faster rpm and larger drive models, as expected, have higher rates.  For example the 3TB WD Black 3 TB has a current 6 month failure rate of 5.08% while the 2 TB is just over a quarter of that.  Also there are slight differences between model designs.  The Seagate BarraCuda 2 TBo (ST2000DM006) had a RMA rate of 0.79% whereas the Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB (ST2000LM015) had a RMA rate of 1,47%.  Averaging popular models over the last two 6 month reporting periods...(1 TB wasn't broken out).

1.34% = WD Blue 2 TB (2 yr warranty)
1.02% = Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB  (2 yr warranty)

0.95%  = Seagate Desktop SSHD 2 TB  (5 yr warranty)
0.90%  = WD Black 2 TB  (5 yr warranty)

Point I am getting at is the things that benchmarks tell me are generally not performed on a daily basis and therefore not relevant to selection or what you need to worry about when troubleshooting.  If you use the box primarily for gaming, then those gaming  test results would all I'd be concerned about.  My box is used 9 - 5 as a CAD Workstation and SOHO file server ... the SSHDs 8 GB hybrid SSD performs well here as whatever files are frequently used are stored there.  As a gaming box, if you the type of gamer who polayes one or two games ata atime, you will also benefit from an SSHD.... if like my youngest son, who plays 4 or 5 games per nite and often different ones each day, any performance gain is lost.

In short, when having performance concerns whether for selection or troubleshooting, my suggestion is to base yoiur investigations on applications benchmarks... applications which you actually use and representing what you normally do.   One caveat ... Office suite type benchmarks which contain scriots perfoming a sequence of hundreds of individual actions are meaningless.   A user has to press 1 or more keys between each of those actions and these render any script useless since the user is the bottleneck.

 by You may have to pay 50% more for the 5 year warranty drives nut failure rate is 34% better (BTW, that's just between 6 and 12 months of operation.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 24, 2018)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> I have multiple drives here with varying platter densities outside shells are the same. Granted they are Samsung HDDs


Took a picture to show the difference.



The drive on the left is a single platter WD, the new one I've been talking about. The one on the right is also a WD, is the same 1TB capacity, but is the dual platter configuration newtekie1 mentioned above. The one on the left is more recessed.


----------



## crazyeyesreaper (Jan 24, 2018)

Well either way single plater vs dual platter is why performance has changed.  Interesting to see WD changed the shell. But its just a shell.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jan 24, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> applications which you actually use and representing what you normally do.


As mentioned in the OP, that's actually how I discovered the performance difference. As a good practice to qualify drives I put into systems, I always do a triple set of full surface scans. The utility I use reports the speed of the process real-time and logs it to a graph which is displayed at the end of each run. The CrystalDiskMark screen shot was to actually show the performance as taking a screenshot from within the bootable utility I use is not worth the trouble. CrystalDiskMark got it within an statistical margin of error of the scanning utility, so I'm willing to trust it.


crazyeyesreaper said:


> Well either way single plater vs dual platter is why performance has changed.  Interesting to see WD changed the shell. But its just a shell.


Should have been more clear, the drive on the right is a WD, but not the older Blue I was talking about in the OP. Was using the one on the right to demonstrate as an example.


----------



## AsherJames55 (Jan 27, 2018)

I used to be a huge WD fan until I had one die on me and I was unable to recover the data. I've since switched to seagate. My other gripe with WD is they external drives seem to take forever to wake up from sleep mode and allow files to start reading and writing. Other brands seem to be a lot faster to wake up.


----------

