There's two version of WD My Book, blue and green? Premium Storage vs. Desktop Storage

I’m aware of WD’s Caviar line (black, blue, red, and green) for internal hard drives. But does that apply to external hard drives as well?

I’m wanting to buy the My Book HDD and I’m finding two different retail boxes. Green and blue. Is this telling the type of internal HDD it has (Caviar Blue, Caviar Green)? By the way I noticed the blue one says “Premium Storage” while the green one says “Desktop Storage”

2014-04-16 16_54_25-wd my book 4tb - Google Search.jpg

I bought this 7 months ago from Amazon. Interestingly though the packaging picture on Amazon’s site showed a blue box, when I got it, I got the green box… I remember being surprised back then but inspected the model number and it was the same as what I ordered. I have not been able to find the blue box anywhere in retail stores either. Have you seen the blue box in person somewhere or are these images you spotted online? If you actually found an online store that sells both of these, can you please post a link here to that product page of that store.

Otherwise, just go ahead and buy the one in green (or blue) - they are the same. Even on WD’s website they show blue box on the product page (bottom left) but when you click on the Specifications tab on that page, you see the exact model numbers and mine matches the 4TB model number despite coming in a green box. So there must not be any difference. The only time there’d be a difference is if the model numbers were different.

No, all pictures found online. I just wanted to make sure before buying this. After those server outage I read a couple of weeks ago that WD was having for their cloud lineup; I wanted to have a smart buy and opted for this instead. But knowing how slow green HDDs are, not what I’m looking for.

This would help a lot if a WD staff replied to this.

I just ran ‘hdparm -I /dev/sdb’ command on my WD My Book drive attached to my WD My Cloud EX2 NAS. It IS a WD Green (WD40EZRX) drive (see pic).

However, I don’t have any big issues with it. Yes, they are not meant to deliver the performance of a Black Drive…but the greens are also much cheaper than blacks. If you want to use the high-performance black drives then you’ll have to buy your own case, preferably with a fan or use a robust USB dock like ThermalTake’s, that I have been using for 3 years for several of my internal black drives that I use externally via USB 3.

MyBookHDD.jpg

I think that there are 2 types of the 4tb with different names as I see it at Fry’s.  I bought the “blue” box at a good price as the price “just went up” (someone goofed); think that the “green” box is named MyBook Essentials while the “blue” box is just MyBook.  The Essentials may be the older & to be discontinued version; Fry’s had the “while supplies last statement” for the Essentials version.

No idea if there is a real difference.

My blue box was DOA (won’t power up); went back twice; once to get a longer cable & the 2nd time to exchange for another blue box version; don’t recall any green box at the 4TB level, just the blue box version.

anotherpaul wrote:

I think that there are 2 types of the 4tb with different names as I see it at Fry’s.  I bought the “blue” box at a good price as the price “just went up” (someone goofed); think that the “green” box is named MyBook Essentials while the “blue” box is just MyBook.  The Essentials may be the older & to be discontinued version; Fry’s had the “while supplies last statement” for the Essentials version.

 

No idea if there is a real difference.

 …

Did you read my first post above where I said I bought the one in green box (though Amazon shows as blue box)? I’d have obviously mentioned a difference like Essentials if there was such a distinction on the green box, don’t you think??

As I said earlier, there is no distinction - the green box packaging is for the same model number as the blue box. If there was a different edition like Essentials, it would have had a different model number. This is a pic of my green box:

My Book Green Box.JPG

I’m in windows so don’t have your display info for the drive itself as to whether it was a sata I, sata II or sata III.  Anyway, the model for my 4TB is WDBF JK0040HBK; the s/n doesn’t start with “wdc”.

Could be where the drive was made; my was done in Thailand & account for the difference in model numbers & not the same as you claim.

EDIT:  After checking the WD site & looked at the installation(?) stuff, I see that several models listed with different beginning letters; also there are older models for different purposes, as in for “office”, “home”, etc, that begin with the same model number as yours as in “wd40…”.

am in linux now & do get a different model number (extension?):

/dev/sdd:

ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       WDC WD40EZRX-00SPEB0                   
        Serial Number:      WD-WCC
        Firmware Revision:  80.00A80
        Transport:          Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0

What does your latest SATA Rev show?  Also, I do see that the “firmware” is still the same.

Then, the “model number” on the box is different to the internal model number which most likely is the drive itself & not the include the enclosure and/or software; I did see that WD has drives without software that is about $10 cheaper like what Seagate does.

anotherpaul - I have the same model number and same EXACT drive as you…this is the product page of my drive on my Amazon orders list → http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E3RH61W

The model number you see in linux is the actual model of the drive inside the enclosure…which is their green 4TB drive. But the product model number (ie. of the enclosure with the drive) is WDBFJK0040HBK - same as yours. And the latest SAT Rev shows SATA Rev. 3.0…the info you gave is identical to mine (except of course the serial number which we both only disclosed partially here). There is NO difference between the one sold in blue box and the one in green box.