[Placid Storm]

I understand that a green hard drive uses less power and a black hard drive for some reason has a longer life. What do all the other colors mean, I googled this question a lot with no answers I decided to admit defeat. What do the colors really mean? Is there a chart where we can see what they mean? Is it just a way to keep consumers confused? I am sure the color means something and I want to know what it means. I am considering a new hard drive for my Dell 1545 But I am considering two drives. The 320 GB Black Drive and the 500 GB Blue Drive.

I think I may have figured it out after looking close at the drives. The Black drives appear to run at 7200 rpms and have a 16 mb buffer while the blue run at 5400 rpms and have an 8 mb buffer. Does anyone carry a 2.5 inch green hard drive because that sounds like a smart decision for my laptop.

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This might help somewhat.

green = low power / low performance
blue= medium power / medium performance
black = high power / high performance

[rshaffer61]

This might help somewhat.

green = low power / low performance
blue= medium power / medium performance
black = high power / high performance

[Placid Storm]

Thanks for the input, but now I am left with deciding on battery life or drive performance. Would upgrading from a six cell battery to a nine cell battery help at all?

[rshaffer61]

May give you another 30 minutes to a hour of battery time at best I believe.

[Spyderturbo007]

Depending on your storage needs, you might want to take a look at a SSD (Solid State Drive). That will provide you with a very nice speed increase over a standard 5,400rpm drive along with a longer battery life. But if you are looking for storage, that's not going to be the right thing for you.

One thing I've read about the Caviar Black drives that I liked was that the spindle is secured at both the top and the bottom. According to the conversation I had with one of the WD techs, the Caviar Green and Blue drives are only secured at one end.

[rshaffer61]

Another point is since this is going into a laptop then you might want to consider the Black since it according to what I read can handle the work load you would be putting it under.

[Placid Storm]

I was looking for a solid state drive but can't find one that fits a laptop. I probably will go with black because I play a lot of videos and stuff over my network.

[rshaffer61]

Black is the workhorse and since I personally know what you use your system for I would highly suggest a HD that can stand up to the work load you put them through.

[Spyderturbo007]

Provided you are using the correct interface, such as SATA or PATA, any 2.5" drive should work. I recently posed this question and that was the answer I received from dsenette.

[Mychael]

This might help somewhat.

green = low power / low performance
blue= medium power / medium performance
black = high power / high performance

Yellow = Enterprise class drives Or would you still call them black as the top of label is black but bottom with drive name is Yellow.

[rshaffer61]

I would consider Yellow = High speed\High Performance\High Stability