Western Digital launched two new Solid State Drives (SSD) product lines under the WD brand yesterday of which one is already available for purchase.
WD Blue and WD Green Solid State Drives are the company’s first WD-branded SATA SSDs. The flash memory comes from SanDisk, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of flash memory which Western Digital acquired earlier this year.
The main distinction between WD Blue and Green is the following one: WD Blue is designed for professional use, WD Green for regular use.
WD Blue drives are already available, while WD Green drives will become available later this quarter.
Side note: Western Digital launched consumer Solid State Drives back in 2010 under the SiliconEdge brand.
WD Blue SSD
WD Blue Solid State Drives are offered as 2.5″ and M.2 modules with capacities of 250 Gigabyte to 1 Terabyte.
The two larger models, 1TB and 500GB offer identical performance specifications. They connect via SATA III 6 GB/s interfaces, and offer up to 545MB/s read and 525 MB/s write speeds. The random read (IOPS) is up to 100k, the random write (IOPS) uz to 80k.
The 250 Gigabyte model is slightly slower with 540 MB/s read, 500 MB/s write, 97K random read and 79K random write performance.
The drives differ significantly when it comes to endurance. Endurance determines the total amount of data that can be written on the devices.
The 1TB WD Blue model offers 400 Terabytes of writes, the 500 Gigabyte model 200 Terabytes, and the 250 Gigabyte model 100 Terabytes.
For comparison’s sake: Samsung’s EVO 850 Pro offers 150 TB on the 128GB, 256GB and 512GB models, and 300 TB on the 1TB and 2TB models.
The 250 GB 2.5″ WD Blue SSD retails for $79, the 500 GB model for $139.99, and the 1TB model for $299.99. The M.2 versions for $89.99, $159.99 and $319.99 respectively.
This falls in line with Samsung’s EVO 850 which costs about the same for the same amount of storage.
WD Green SSD
WD Green Solid State drives come with capacities of 120GB and 240, and as 2.5″ or M.2 modules.
Sequential read speed is up to 540MB/s on both drives, write speed on the 240GB model up to 465 MB/s, on the 120GB model up to 430 MB/s.
The random read speed is up to 37k IOPS, the random write speed up to 68K IOPS on the 240GB drive, and up to 65K IOPS on the 120GB drive.
Endurance-wise, the 240GB model is good for 80TB of total data, the 120GB for 40TB. Pricing has not been announced yet for WD Green SSDs.
Closing Words
Third-party benchmark tests are not available yet. You may want to wait with the purchase until those become available.
It is unclear yet if Western Digital will create a WD Black SSD in the future as well. WD Black drives are designed for performance.
Now You: SSD or platter-based hard drive, which do you prefer?