Can anyone think of a good reason to get the black if the enterprise SE is only $5 (=+5%) more? They both have a 5 year warranty, both are 7200rpm, both are 6Gb/s, the enterprise SE has double the cache (128 vs 64) and the SE is rated to run 24/7/365 while the black is not. So is there anything I'm overlooking that might swing me towards getting the black instead of the enterprise SE?
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Western digital black vs enterprise SE
- Thread starter eobard
- Start date
- Thread Starter
- #4
Yeah, I was just wondering if there were other factors I wasn't aware of, something like how the red and purple are statistically the same drive but the purple is "optimized for writes" supposedly. If there is no difference with the black and the enterprise SE then why does the lesser of the two exist? It seems like there should be more to this than I am aware of.
At least in Poland Purple is much cheaper than Red or other two. All are also designed for something else but in most cases will work the same. Tbh there is so little difference between new HDD that I would look at something designed for 24/7 work with longer warranty and not too expensive.
If you can get enterprise series in about the same price as other then just get it as it's probably the best option.
If you can get enterprise series in about the same price as other then just get it as it's probably the best option.
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2015
The Black is designed for consumer use. Most people power off their machines on a daily basis, and even if they don't the drive goes to sleep when using default Windows power settings.
The Enterprise drive is designed to be powered off as few times as possible over its lifetime.
There are differences in motors and circuitry between the drives, even if the stats pages are exactly the same. Plus, warranties are different between the drives so even if the duration of the warranties are the same, it's likely the legalese isn't.
- Thread Starter
- #7
That's the kind of "other factor" I was suspecting was lurking under the surface.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2014
Hi @eobard!
Both drives are very good and performance oriented, so the best choice will depend on your personal preference - both will do a great job. Other than that the biggest difference when it comes to comparing consumer and enterprise drives are in the design.
The desktop drives in a personal computer system are generally designed for running applications, supporting operating system load and runtime requirements as well as program/application load and runtime requirements.
Enterprise class drives on the other hand work similarly, but under more extreme conditions. They run multiple enterprise applications and handle a higher workload with a greater emphasis on a reliability and availability. They provide operating system and application load and runtime support, but they also may provide application and/or storage services to the network, which requires large capacity data storage that is always available and reliable.
@Woomack, I partially agree with you that any drive will do the job, but I personally won't recommend WD Purple for a desktop environment because the firmware features of the HDD (such as error correction for instance) are modified in a way to accept larger number of errors in the name of the goal for consistent speeds. Basically, WD Purple has optimized writing speeds, special error correction features and is generally developed and tuned for DVR and other surveillance systems, and although it can work, there may be some data corruption due to the error correction feature of the drive that is designed to record videos with no frame losses.
Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.
Cheers!
Both drives are very good and performance oriented, so the best choice will depend on your personal preference - both will do a great job. Other than that the biggest difference when it comes to comparing consumer and enterprise drives are in the design.
The desktop drives in a personal computer system are generally designed for running applications, supporting operating system load and runtime requirements as well as program/application load and runtime requirements.
Enterprise class drives on the other hand work similarly, but under more extreme conditions. They run multiple enterprise applications and handle a higher workload with a greater emphasis on a reliability and availability. They provide operating system and application load and runtime support, but they also may provide application and/or storage services to the network, which requires large capacity data storage that is always available and reliable.
@Woomack, I partially agree with you that any drive will do the job, but I personally won't recommend WD Purple for a desktop environment because the firmware features of the HDD (such as error correction for instance) are modified in a way to accept larger number of errors in the name of the goal for consistent speeds. Basically, WD Purple has optimized writing speeds, special error correction features and is generally developed and tuned for DVR and other surveillance systems, and although it can work, there may be some data corruption due to the error correction feature of the drive that is designed to record videos with no frame losses.
Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.
Cheers!
