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Western Digital Announces the WD Blue and WD Green Consumer SSDs

btarunr

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Western Digital Corporation today announced WD Blue and WD Green solid state drives (SSDs), the first WD-branded SATA client SSDs. The new SSDs complement the company's industry leading family of hard drives for PCs and workstations, providing a full portfolio of WD storage devices for virtually any application.

The ultimate solution for building DIY PCs, extending the life of current PCs or upgrading existing storage, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs boast near-maximum speed of SATA drives, best-in-class endurance and MTBF and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification, resulting in quick boot times and increased program responsiveness. Consumers benefit from the combination of reliable storage with an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, coupled with reduced power and less heat when compared to HDDs. Both include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance and capacity monitoring. For consumers who are looking for instant-on responsiveness, durability, low power consumption, and ultra-thin, ultramobile form factors, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs are the perfect options.



"There is significant demand among our core WD resellers and consumers for a broad set of flash-based storage options," says Eyal Bek, senior director, Devices Bsiness Unit, Western Digital. "The expansive reach of the WD channel enables availability of a Western Digital SSD solution. We are very proud to have developed and launched WD Blue and WD Green SSDs, and believe they'll provide the instant-on, reliability and capacity benefits our customers have been demanding."

Pricing and Availability
  • WD Blue SSD: For customers looking for enhanced SATA performance, WD Blue SSDs are optimized for multitasking and resource-heavy applications. Perfect in either a notebook or desktop PC, WD Blue SSDs are available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors. The WD Blue SSD offers up to 545MB/s and 525MB/s sequential read and write speeds, and endurance up to 400 TBW. Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) ranges from $79.00 USD to $299.00 USD and will be available immediately to select customers worldwide.
  • WD Green SSD: WD Green SSDs deliver essential-class performance, and are a great option for everyday use. Available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors, WD Green SSDs deliver an ultra-low power-draw, enabling PC users to work longer between battery charges. WD Green features sequential read and write times of up to 540MB/s and 405MB/s and endurance up to 80TBW. WD Green SSDs will be available later this quarter to select regions and customers.
Both WD Blue SSDs and WD Green SSDs are protected by a 3-year limited warranty.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
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Can someone confirm or deny if the blue SSDs are re-badged Sandisk units or is or a completely new design?

either way, the slight expectation i had for new price standards is gone as if it never existed. We are getting there, just slower than we should have.
 
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Well well well it has begun!
 
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Can someone confirm or deny if the blue SSDs are re-badged Sandisk units or is or a completely new design?

either way, the slight expectation i had for new price standards is gone as if it never existed. We are getting there, just slower than we should have.


We have to wait for a review\teardown really.
 
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Green SSD really ? Because regular SSD draws what ? - 3W of peak power ? Come on. Green series didn't make sense even on mechanical drives IMO.
 

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Green SSD really ? Because regular SSD draws what ? - 3W of peak power ? Come on. Green series didn't make sense even on mechanical drives IMO.

In this case, green just means cheap and crap I think...
 
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In this case, green just means cheap and crap I think...

Yep, when I actually read the news I got it, but still....they rehash what their users already know from previous branding they have done. Which probably makes sense, but it is a double-edge tactic. I don't think first-hand associations in people will be for "everyday use" .
 
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Green SSD really ? Because regular SSD draws what ? - 3W of peak power ? Come on. Green series didn't make sense even on mechanical drives IMO.

Green just means the series, not green as "eco". They mentioned it, but it's just series really...

Green = Crap but cheap
Blue = Mid range
Black = High end
RE/Velociraptor = Enthusiast
Red/Gold/Pink/Rainbow = special purpose like surveillance

Though it's interesting to see WD finally going SSD. Too bad they have no 2TB drives, really interested if this is just Sandisk drives with new sticker or new design. Either way they'll be pretty good imo.
 
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Green just means the series, not green as "eco". They mentioned it, but it's just series really...

Green = Crap but cheap
Blue = Mid range
Black = High end
RE/Velociraptor = Enthusiast
Red/Gold/Pink/Rainbow = special purpose like surveillance

Though it's interesting to see WD finally going SSD. Too bad they have no 2TB drives, really interested if this is just Sandisk drives with new sticker or new design. Either way they'll be pretty good imo.
I want a 2TB Rainbow drive, thank you very much.
 
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Kinda ok though... for performance wise it's not consistent or as durable as Samsung's 850 & 950 Series lineup IMO...
 
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If these are the Extreme drives, they are. Sandisk Extreme were kinda the only drives that had consistent great performance afaik.
 

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Green SSD really ? Because regular SSD draws what ? - 3W of peak power ? Come on. Green series didn't make sense even on mechanical drives IMO.
What about the throttling of Samsung 950 Pros under heavy load? There are differences.
 
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Green just means the series, not green as "eco". They mentioned it, but it's just series really...

With their mechanical HDD's green meant low power/eco, it's kinda lol that their SSDs are just using green/blue to differentiate size.
 
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Well well well it has begun!
indeed! it's weird actually, in my eyes.. the blue ones look nice enough, and their endurance rating seems reasonable enough, the greens on the other hand look like cheap crap for office use.
 
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I'm surprised Seagate still has nothing for consumers. And they've bought SandForce long ago, haven't they?
Sandforce is garbage, i'm glad they didn't actually do anything significant with it.
 
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Aww they could have made the PCB green and had a black PCB if they ever came out with that edition. Missed opportunity for the most colorful drive company.
 
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What about the throttling of Samsung 950 Pros under heavy load? There are differences.

The Samsung 950 PRO is actually a PCIe drive and as such not directly comparable to these SATA drives. It has about 4x the performance of these WD SATA SSDs, even when throttled. So these performance numbers had to come from somwhere, I guess.

What Samsung did was just tuning the performance of these drives to be as high as possible for its intended usage. During normal desktop usage, these drives will not throttle. The enterprise versions of said SSDs were tuned differently, had a bit lower initial performance, but don't throttle in typical environments even under heavy load.
 

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The Samsung 950 PRO is actually a PCIe drive and as such not directly comparable to these SATA drives. It has about 4x the performance of these WD SATA SSDs, even when throttled. So these performance numbers had to come from somwhere, I guess.

What Samsung did was just tuning the performance of these drives to be as high as possible for its intended usage. During normal desktop usage, these drives will not throttle. The enterprise versions of said SSDs were tuned differently, had a bit lower initial performance, but don't throttle in typical environments even under heavy load.
Ah, forgot truly about that, my bad. Haven't just gotten into these so much, at least yet.
 
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Enterprise isn't quite consumer, is it? Besides, who cares about 60TB drives. Most people even today don't have 2TB HDD's, let alone SSD's...
 
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Ew M.2 SATA SSDs :/
 
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