WD greenpower 1TB drive

[Will Rickards]

Have I gone crazy?
I'm considering the WD greenpower 1TB drive.
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I know it isn't the best performer. But I think because my PC is in my living room I'm considering the drive for the noise and power level consumption aspects. Even though it is probably 5400RPM.

What I ideally want to do is replace my 2 250GB drives with 2 1TB drives. One is for the data the other is the backup. And then replace my 15K RPM scsi boot drive with a sata flash drive - specifically one of those new samsungs with native sata interface that actually perform better than a traditional drive - they have been announced but aren't available.

But considering it is western digital. I have to ask myself, have I gone crazy?

 

[ddrueding]

Others will have stronger opinions on this, but I think it is more crap for being 5400RPM (which it is) than for being WD.

I actually bought 2 of these 1TB drives over the weekend. I got them, copied a data set to them, and put them in a safe. I will never use them again.

When I first saw the SSD drives hit the mainstream retailers, I was sure that they were behind the times already, and that this market would explode onto the scene with quickly dropping prices and lots of competition. The market hasn't really done any of that, and I'm holding off on any more predictions or anticipations until the first useful generation (the one you refer to) is in the market.

 

[Mercutio]

I give a crap about them being 5400rpm drives. I have no problem with that at all. No one is buying 1TB drives to be super-fast. Objectively, though, if they're going to be slower, there needs to be more of a price differential than is currently available since there's no normal pricing penalty for buying 7200rpm products any more. It works out to something like than 10% less to get the crappiest product on the market. WD's old 5400rpm models were closer to 15% or 20% less costly than the 7200rpm units, and at that point, they might've actually made sense.

Plus, they're WD drives, and that alone means they're better fit as construction material than storing ones and zeros.

 

[P5-133XL]

For average computer usage, I would avoid it like a plague. The only rational that I can see for their usage is for off-line backups, where performance is inconsequential and large capacity with cost per GB being the over riding criteria. I'm trying to skip-over the reliability issue ...

Noise and power have their place, but the difference between that drive and others is not that signifigent. Almost all the standard IDE/SATA drives are quiet enough to be below background noise threshold and specificly quietier than an average PS fan. The power savings difference is also relatively insignificant being that the savings is less than 10W on a system that probably uses 250-300W total. If I am concerned with power and noise, the first thing I would do is choose a low-power CPU, a high-efficiency and low-noise power-supply, a fanless video card, and an upper-end CPU heat-sink/fan. The hard drive is a low priority because it just isn't the big problem that the other components are.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd say that performance is inconsequential for media storage and playback; 802.11 or 100Mbit ethernet are both going to present more of a bottleneck than the drive.

I'd say media storage and playback is the primary application for a 1TB drive. Personal or small business backup, maybe. Enterprise-grade anything is more about getting a proper number of spindles to achieve reliability in a disk array anyway.

 

[P5-133XL]

I will agree, that for 10/100 network-file sharing the HD performance is not important, but for that application, reliability is and then you are dealing with WD and a consumer-level drive.

Media-storage is a valid application with capacity and cost/GB being generally more important than performance.

P.S. I agree with you Merc., that the cost should be much more discounted than it currently is for a 5400RPM drive.

 

[ddrueding]

I would raise the point that a 1TB 7200RPM SATA drive is actually something to want for performance as well. Higher data density increases STR and essentially short-strokes the drive if your needs are more modest, helping seek times as well. Not as much as an SSD, but it likely does as well as a Raptor or other 10k SCSI drive.

 

[Mercutio]

We've long since established that STR is very rarely an issue for common desktop computing apps.

 

[ddrueding]

...other than booting (OSs optimize for STR during boot) and Gaming (level loading) and linear AV applications and Photoshop virtual memory stuff. But if it weren't for those, I would be using a laptop drive to save on energy, heat and noise. Is hard drive performance really a factor in anything else?

 

[Handruin]

...other than booting (OSs optimize for STR during boot) and Gaming (level loading) and linear AV applications and Photoshop virtual memory stuff. But if it weren't for those, I would be using a laptop drive to save on energy, heat and noise. Is hard drive performance really a factor in anything else?

Yes, code compiling. I do a lot of work inside VM's (and building VM's) on my desktop at work and be it a SCSI 15K RPM cheetah U320 livith in my system, I would still like it to be faster. I constantly transfer files around for testing of builds, etc and the drive is typically the bottleneck from what I've seen.

 

[ddrueding]

Yes, code compiling. I do a lot of work inside VM's (and building VM's) on my desktop at work and be it a SCSI 15K RPM cheetah U320 livith in my system, I would still like it to be faster. I constantly transfer files around for testing of builds, etc and the drive is typically the bottleneck from what I've seen.

That is still STR, no?

 

[Handruin]

The large transfers, yes, but compiling isn't straight STR that I'm aware of.

I thought you were asking generically where HD performance was still a factor. That's where I was directing my comments.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup, you read me correctly. I was just curious whether that was seek bound or STR. My general impression is that seek always helps everything a little, but STR helps big things a lot. I'm welcome to any comments either way.

 

[LunarMist]

Performance of a hard drive is significant when working with large files. For example my typical Photoshop files for the 16.7 MP body are around 500MB each and sometimes larger. Opening and saving such files is not entirely drive bound, but performance differences between generations of drives are obvious in some cases, especially when drives begin to fill.

 

[Mercutio]

...other than booting (OSs optimize for STR during boot) and Gaming (level loading)

How much time does the average computer user spend booting up or playing games with long level loads? I'd go so far as to suggest that an average gamer in 2007 is probably playing Bookworm or Bejeweled and not Crysis.

and linear AV applications and Photoshop virtual memory stuff.

Average computer users don't do that either.

What do average computer users do? They work with lots of little, crappy files. They browse the web (disk cache), make office sorts of documents, and transfer tiny little MP3 and JPG files around from solid state memory devices. Sometimes they burn CDs or DVDs, but even there, their optical drive is more a limiting factor than their hard disk. In a business setting, they're probably accessing large database systems that are not local to their computer.

 

[ddrueding]

Merc,

Let me know if I missed this. What it sounds like you are saying is that performance of hard drives really doesn't matter for most users. And what I'm saying is that the only times hard drive performance does matter for users, they are STR-limited.

 

[Mercutio]

Let me know if I missed this. What it sounds like you are saying is that performance of hard drives really doesn't matter for most users. And what I'm saying is that the only times hard drive performance does matter for users, they are STR-limited.

I'm saying that the only time hard disk performance is a major issue for most users, it's seek time (lots of little files) rather than STR that is the more important component in performance. People generally aren't doing the things that make a drive's STR a factor in overall system performance, or at least not on the level where minute differences in STR capability actually matter.

An application loads. What's happening? The disk is hitting the main program binary and whatever dozens of library files it happens to need in order to start. Lots of seeks. Lots of small files.

Vista's indexing service is a massive performance killer. What's it doing? Lots of seeks.

The everyday stuff you do with your PC isn't faster because you have a single drive that can burst to 90MB/sec; it's pretty much in spite of the fact that desktop drives have been stuck at 7200rpm for the last nine years.

 

[ddrueding]

That works. Thanks Merc.

 

[mubs]

Performance of a hard drive is significant when working with large files. For example my typical Photoshop files for the 16.7 MP body are around 500MB each and sometimes larger. Opening and saving such files is not entirely drive bound, but performance differences between generations of drives are obvious in some cases, especially when drives begin to fill.

What OS and how much RAM do you use to Photoshop files that big? XP Pro 32-bit and 2GB RAM crashed for me when I was trying to merge two 150MB TIFF files. Page file was set to 2GB.

 

[ddrueding]

Mine crashes on photomerges of files that large as well. I'm running with 4GB of RAM and 16GB of Page, so I don't think it's actually a memory limitation (even though the error says it is).

 

[Mercutio]

Photoshop, last I heard, had its own memory manager, and also, is made by Adobe, which I think is the Symantec of graphic arts software companies.

 

[sechs]

I'd say that performance is inconsequential for media storage and playback

I'm going to have to disagree with this.

Seek time is important, particularly in a multi-user environment. When starting, switching, or seeking through media files, you don't want to have wait. When there are multiple users accessing the same data, you don't want to have to be waiting for each other to get playback data.

I can tell you, having "upgraded" my media server from some smaller, but faster-seeking Hitachi drives to Seagate ones, some tasks have become noticeably slower.

 

[Mercutio]

If you're talking about a Barracuda drive that ends in -A or -AS, then yes, they're slow. They have firmware issues.

It's generally not an issue, though.

 

[LunarMist]

What OS and how much RAM do you use to Photoshop files that big? XP Pro 32-bit and 2GB RAM crashed for me when I was trying to merge two 150MB TIFF files. Page file was set to 2GB.

What is this merger you are describing? The 16.7 MP single images are rather small, but there are around 5 image layers on average. The 6x9 scans are more cumbersome to work with.

 

[ddrueding]

What is this merger you are describing? The 16.7 MP single images are rather small, but there are around 5 image layers on average. The 6x9 scans are more cumbersome to work with.

I assume he is talking about the Photomerge or HDR options under "File->Automate". At least those are the ones that crash for me at about 150MB per image.

 

[LunarMist]

OK. I don't know about those. I use other software tools.

 

[ddrueding]

Out of curiosity, what tools?

 

[mubs]

What is this merger you are describing? The 16.7 MP single images are rather small, but there are around 5 image layers on average. The 6x9 scans are more cumbersome to work with.

I have a large old photo that I scanned in two overlapping halves and was trying to merge those using Photoshop Elements 4.0 (which is all I had then). Using File --> New --> Photomerge Panorama

 

[Platform]

Have I gone crazy? I'm considering the WD greenpower 1TB drive...

When the first of these variable speed hard drives started showing up a while back -- and WD began hinting that this was "the future" of desktop storage -- many people (in and around the storage biz) were definitely not impressed with the ideas of a variable speed spindle using constant linear velocity to elevate data density nor having the data interface and controller going in and out of hibernation to conserve a little bit of power. MTBF will likely suffer with these sort of transient operating conditions. WD dealing in hype by declaring these drives as "Green" storage.

 

[sdbardwick]

The spindle speed of greenpower drives does not dynamically vary: "For each GreenPower drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM."
WDC put out a misleading announcement and people ran with it. The current greenpower page is less misleading: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/greenpower/technology.asp?language=en

 

[Will Rickards]

I decided I was crazy and bought the samsung 1TB drives.

 

[LunarMist]

No, you're not the crazy. I bought one each of the Samsung and WD 1000GB drives since I could not decide.

 

[ddrueding]

No, you're not the crazy. I bought one each of the Samsung and WD 1000GB drives since I could not decide.

It sounds like you could always use the space. How much on-line storage do you have?

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

The spindle speed of greenpower drives does not dynamically vary: "For each GreenPower drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM." WDC put out a misleading announcement and people ran with it.

Something else WD is a little bit sketchy about is the reason why these new hard drives are being referred to as "green."

WD makes these new hard drives out of recycled materials, which rot slowly over time and begin to take on a green-ish appearance due to fungal bloom. The base material that makes up the drive housing is simply an amalgam created from discarded soft drink cans, sawdust, decommissioned barges, and fecal-encrusted diapers. The base material is pressed into the shape of a hard drive housing halves which contain the spindle. An old reworked WD Caviar controller board is superglued to the bottom.

 

[[Edit]]

Something else WD is a little bit sketchy about is...

ComptuerGeneratedBaybay:

You forgot one thing: The spindle! Or, more precisely, the magnetic data platters that are stacked on the spindle shaft.

The glass platters in these new WD green hard drives are made from recycled beer and whiskey bottles collected from the various drinking establishments located on the mean streets just outside the gates of the WD factory. Recycling this glass keeps local landfill usage in check and helps save the planet.

The hue of the recycled glass shards is irrelevant -- clear, green, brown, it doesn't really matter. It also apparently doesn't matter if alcoholic beverage residue is smeared on the platter surfaces before the hard drive assembly is sealed and shipped to retail.

 

[LunarMist]

It sounds like you could always use the space. How much on-line storage do you have?

Too much, but never enough. Here is the local (internal and eSATA) storage in the primary computer. That does not include the backup/storage computer and of course piles of loose drives and 2.5" drives, etc. I don't even have a 36x48 back yet. It will only get worse.

 

[ddrueding]

~9TB? Not bad. I'm still sitting at just ~7TB local storage, but mine is all in one array, a bit easier to handle.

 

[Mercutio]

~9TB? Not bad. I'm still sitting at just ~7TB local storage, but mine is all in one array, a bit easier to handle.

I'm a big fan of lots of smaller arrays. It's easier to find enough space to move things around if one of the arrays goes (or starts to go) south.

That single array won't look so smart the first time you have a controller failure...

 

[ddrueding]

I actually feel the opposite. When I had lots of smaller drives, I was always shuffling things around. If the folder for a certain thing grew too large, I would either need to split it or move the whole thing; starting a more massive shuffle. Now I just add drives when I run low on space.

If I have a controller failure I just buy another controller. The important parts of the main array (10x750GB) is backed up to my other off-line array (6*500GB), less important to DVD.

 

[Mercutio]

It's a matter of balance, of course. But everything I have is stored in multiple layers of redundancy, and I strongly prefer things that way than take the chance that I might lose some amount of my data.