WD Blue 1 TB expected lifetime

[MDD1963]

I did a data migration from a drive, and, seeing it was an older computer (Dell i3-21xx or something) with a basic WD Blue 1 TB drive in it, half expected to see some issues with this drive's health, as it has 34,600 hours (or 1440+ days of 24/7 operation, or, the equivalent of 4,300+ 8 hour days of operating hours on it! Realistically, was probably 8 years of 10-11 hour days)

What did CrystalDIskInfo show? <drumroll....!> Good health, and no reallocated or pending reallocated sectors. (I'd have put money on this drive showing something wrong being that old!) This might even change my opinion somewhat of WD Blue drives...

Suspect the only issue was the 1 TB OS drive only had 20 GB of free space on it.... As customer (military, leaving permanently, no room to travel with it) was leaving and did not want, she said keep it (and the two old drives, two DVDs, two DDR3 RAM sticks, and wireless card, etc., she only wanted her data off of it.

Win-win!

 

[Porthos]

All spinners go in the scrap pile. I will never sell a used drive to anyone much less a spinner.
Might be inclined to use it as a drive for Macrium auto image backups in a tower. SSD as the main drive.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I give away old spinners to people that need them, they have zero value, and they go out the door with a verbal and written warning about the fact they're too slow to be useful, and prone to fail anytime.

But as for life, they have an average of 4 years of useful life from the time they are manufactured. That time expires regardless of the drive's use, it can sit brand new in a box for 4 years and still "die". Such is the nature of the gas sleeve bearings used.

One of the many reasons why to SSD all the things.

 

[alexsmith2709]

I see many posts giving the WD Blue a bad name. In the last 8 years i dont think i've seen more than 3 or 4 failures from them and when i was installing spinners i would use those. The main ones i would see failure were seagate and HGST.

 

[bronh242]

My first really big HDD was a WD green 1 TB. I think blue is a higher teir than green.

That HDD lasted me 15 years.

When I bought a next spinning HDD I immediately bought a western digital.

 

[Porthos]

When I bought a next spinning HDD I immediately bought a western digital.

Spinners for me were always WD Black's.

 

[Sky-Knight]

There are no "tiers".

WD Green = low cost, low speed, intermittent use
WD Blue = low cost, moderate speed, light use
WD Black = moderate cost, high speed, medium use
WD Red = low cost, low speed, heavy use

Each line is intended for a different purpose.

I've used Blacks for ages for my platter needs. I've replaced more blues than I'll ever be able to know, but that's only because that's the primary drive type used by OEMs all over the world to build machines. Now that SSDs have taken over the blues I see will fade. Well, except the WD Blue SSDs I keep installing in stuff.

 

[Philippe]

What about WD Gold / 5 year warranty?

 

[Porthos]

What about WD Gold / 5 year warranty?

WD Gold to be Replaced by HGST DC UltraStar HDD

 

[HFultzjr]

Back in the day, almost all I used were WD Black.
Now I don't use any spinners, except for storage of info that may never be used.
Backup Images, etc.

 

[Sky-Knight]

WD Gold is an entry level server drive, it's very much a black just with a better warranty. That's what I have in my desktop for bulk storage now is an 8tb WD Gold. It was actually cheaper than the black at the time...

My only complaint is the thing is noisy!

But yeah, that class of drives is basically a SAS platter drive, with a SATA interface on it.

 

[lcoughey]

I love WD blue drives because they are relatively easy for head changes. But, the bottom head usually arrives curled up into a ball.

 

[Porthos]

Back in the day, almost all I used were WD Black.
Now I don't use any spinners, except for storage of info that may never be used.
Backup Images, etc.

Same here as well.

 

[thecomputerguy]

If I'm doing that amount of work... Data backup, OS install, drivers, updates, data back in and a reinstall it's either SSD or a new computer. I haven't installed a 7200rpm drive in a computer in probably 2 years. If they're too cheap for a SSD, then it's a new computer. If they're too cheap for a new computer then they get to continue working on their garbage computer.

 

[fincoder]

What did CrystalDIskInfo show? <drumroll....!> Good health, and no reallocated or pending reallocated sectors. (I'd have put money on this drive showing something wrong being that old!)

CrystalDiskInfo is a good first start when checking drives. If it says BAD or CAUTION then it saves any more testing. But if it says GOOD it just means that the SMART statistics don't show an issue. If you really want to know whether a drive is good you need to run a full surface scan test (e.g. WD DLG Diag).

 

[mikeroq]

I try to replace every spinner with an SSD. Even if the drive tests good if it's got high hours I still want to replace it. I think I replaced a drive that had like 70k hours on it recently.

 

[River Valley Computer]

I try to replace every spinner with an SSD. Even if the drive tests good if it's got high hours I still want to replace it. I think I replaced a drive that had like 70k hours on it recently.

From an electrical engineering viewpoint the drive with 70,000 hours on it will probably last longer that one with 20,000 hours over the same time frame. The reason being that the 70K one was never probably shut down whereas the 20K drive was probably turned on and off often. Any device, and particularly a rotating electrical device, turned on and off a lot, fail from inrush of current every time it is powered on.