1.5TB/2TB WD Green Mobile Hard Drives

The mobile internal HDDs mentioned in the title come with a hefty size increase, being 15mm thick. Would these fit in any current laptop offering out there? I'm thinking specifically desktop replacements, probably 15", 17", and 18.4". So far reports are negative, so why would they even offer it?

 

Hey adyghost,
You might find this interesting. Starting from my post (the last one) on page 1 of this thread here
I do believe different laptops will take different specs. Yet, I have a m18x and there isn't exactly anywhere I can put it.
So I do wonder what laptop is purposefully designed to take a 15mm drive

 

Thanks TBone, read your posts. It seems like these drives are mostly intended for server solutions, but then why would they market them as mobile internal drives? It's clear from their site that these drives are part of the notebook line Western Digital is offering.

 

The only logical reason is that since Intel and Co is pushing ultrabooks at us with max 7mm drive z-Height requirements and WD sees fit to offer 15mm z-Height drives: must mean we each need to purchase 2 and 1/7th ultrabooks for every 1.5TB or 2TB WD drive we plan to purchase.

That's how they plan to resurrect the PC economy. :laugh::laugh::laugh:

 

^ Nice one The old Blue 750GB and 1TB were 12,5mm. They weren't aimed to the mainstream as well, but there are notebooks and let's not forget optical bay caddys, that accept them. But 15mm?! That's ridiculous!

 

They're called "mobile" because that's the form factor 2.5mm, 5V. Yeah 15mm is a bit thick, as most ODD caddy's are only 12.7mm high and will accept 12.5mm HDD's. There are workstation laptops though that will accept them, however it's aimed at low power storage servers or NAS machines.

 

Maybe they are going to show up in external USB HDDs? I think some of the higher capacity units already are 12.5mm, so what's another 2.5mm if it means hitting the 2TB capacity point? Also, adyghost might be right about this being targeted towards servers, because server oriented drives (Seagate Constellation, WD 2.5" VelociRaptor) are in the 15mm size.

 

I'm not aware of any current notebook that accepts a 15mm thick storage drive. I have a feeling these are designed for HTPCs and other SFF desktops.

Either way I wouldn't trust a WD Green drive. In my experience they have a higher failure rate relative to WD's other offerings. I'd be willing to bet they are drives that didn't pass more rigorous QA tests.

 

I agree about the WD green drives, even desktop ones. I made the mistake of buying a bunch for my WHS and they have caused me nothing but trouble. But already invested hundreds of dollars into them, not really ready to just scrap them. They just take a long time to start from powered off and can cause interruptions during video playback. However I've managed to work around most of the issues, but still not ideal. Not sure how these ever made it to market.

 

I think it's the 'green' features built into the firmware that are the problem, not anything physically wrong with the drive that means it is lower quality than other drives.

 

The ones I've seen problems with have physically failed; the motor or some other component inside would no longer work.

 

Of the two WD Green drives i bought both failed.
It seems that the power saving firmware stuff makes them crap out quicker.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

IRRC WD offers firmware to flash your green drive to blue. Or to at least stop the head park feature that kills them...

 

Blues are 7200RPM while Greens are 5400RPM (regardless of their marketing jabber) so I don't think you can flash a Green to a Blue, but getting rid of the head parking sounds worthwhile.

 

Yeah; why would WD allow a green to be a blue?

A Blue is also 5400 RPM - a Green can spin slower... a Black is 7200 RPM (or, has this changed?).

 

My drive is a blue and is 5400 rpm.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

I just installed a 2TB WD Green Mobile, which was 15mm thick, i used the optical drive bay for the harddrive..