What is performance difference between WD Black and Green?

Just wondering if there's a significant difference between the Western Digital Black and Green drives? I am talking about desktop drives at the moment, I know the Black has 32MB cache and green has 16MB cache, but how much of a performance difference is there?

 

I am pretty sure all of the green drives are 5400rpm to 7200rpm, and the black series are 7200rpm. The performance will be faster on the black series, depending on the drive you get. Currently the fastest 7200rpm desktop harddrive is the Hitachi E7K1000

K-TRON

 

Right, but how noticeably faster? I have a Western Digital Raptor 150GB, which I've had for nearly three years now. That sucker was so much noticeably faster when I got it initially. It's still very quick, but a lot of the newer drives compete well with it, of course it's still hard to compete with a 10,000 RPM when others are 7200 RPM but technology has progressed rather well.

I guess the point I'm getting at, is if I load a 1GB file are we talking half a second difference or many seconds?

 

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m.aspx?page=6

 

A 10,000rpm drive will always be faster than a 7200rpm drive just based on seek times alone.
To be honest the Raptor X was probably Western Digitals fastest drive. I have used machines which had it, and machines which have the velociraptor, and honestly the velociraptor system seems alot more sluggish. Western Digital does not manufacture enterprise drives, so if you want faster loading times, I suggest you get a high density 10,000 or 15,000rpm hard drive.
The Hitachi 15K450 series is extremely fast, and would be that jump in performance over your current 150gb 10,000rpm drive. However it is a bit costly. Your next best bet is a SSD for speed.
However if you are on a budget, like $100 and you want performance like a 10,000rpm drive, I suggest that you get two Hitachi 7K1000's and put them in raid 0, or get two Western Digital WD64000AAKS and put them in raid 0.
Both are excellent drives, and they will perform exceptionally well.
Hitachi has the fastest 7200rpm drive, which is the E7K1000, which can do about 120mb/sec

K-TRON

 

Thanks, significant difference.

 

Is there any drive like the hitachi that performs just as well but isnt as big? (cheaper)

 

The second fastest 7200 rpm harddrive is the 7K1000.B, which is near identical in performance to the WD1TB black edition drive. I know the 7K1000.B is offered in numerous sizes, however the fastest variant of the 7K1000.B is the 250gb and the 750gb model, being the HDT721025SLA380 and the HDT721075SLA360 respectively. These drives are the fastest 7K1000.B models because they have limited head movement, so the drive only uses the outer parts of the disc where the speed is nominally faster. Thus minimum write speeds are much higher

For value, the WD640AAKS is a very good drive, and can be had for about $60. You may be able to get the smaller 250gb or 750gb hitachi for less money, but its up to you which one you want to buy.

K-TRON