Yrrah wrote:
VanguardLH :

Does anyone have comments about the quality/reliability difference
between WD Black and WD Blue? Their ads say the Blue line is for
everyday perforamnce and the Black line is for power computing.
Usually, whne I buy an HD, I choose "power computing" on the
assumption that those should be more reliable and have a longer time
before it fails.

Blues run at 5400 RPM. Blacks run at 7200 RPM.

Not always. There are exceptions:
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-hdd#specifications


Yrrah


The small capacity tells you those are boot drives.

And they can't (or won't) make them smaller than that.
As the platters are 1TB, 1.5TB, 2TB (shingled). You would
think the production pipeline would have a lot more
variation, but that's not how it seems to work in
practice.

I got one 500GB drive here, where a 1TB platter was
used, and the drive is short-stroked. That means both
sides of the platter are used, but only the first half
of the platter gets used. The area nearer the hub is
not used. And the transfer rate has less variation
from outside to inside.

Paul