I have two of these in two separate PC’s & both outperforms the WD Black (formerly Caviar Black) as well as WD RE4 (2010 through 2012 SATA-2 versions), of which while I still have all of the latter, some in active use, others as backup drives.
The 2TB WD Gold is the fastest of all, and quiet as a mouse, chances are that if anything is heard, look elsewhere, it’s not the HDD. With a 128MB cache (4x more than any of my others), fast as greased lightning, and just like the WD Black & former RE4, has the industry leading 5 year warranty.
Both of mine were purchased as OEM drives on promo at Newegg, so cost was below that of a 2TB WD Black with the lower 64MB cache, although am sure it’s also a good choice. It’s just that I’m a ‘prosumer’, and not just with HDD’s, also SSD’s, have the Samsung 512GB 950 PRO, recommended for datacenters. The ‘EVO’ line is for consumer use & why just like the WD Black, very few businesses will deploy either.
The way I see things, if a component is certified for datacenter or server usage, will likely last for many years in a Home PC, once out of warranty, will still be an excellent backup drive for a decade, if not longer. That stated, it’s best to have items of importance backed up to two sources, whether another HDD, cloud storage (GMail offers 15GB for free, Amazon 5GB, grandfathered OneDrive customers who opted in up to 30GB (15 of that for Camera Roll), there’s lots of options for extra backup space. Don’t depend on a single drive for backup & be sure to disconnect after every backup or data transfer.
I also keep an internal backup HDD installed, usually a semi-retired RE4, to make a fast backup prior to Windows Update, installing new software or reinstalling the OS. This allows for a fast recovery, although due to the Malware threats of today, it’s inadvisable to rely on an internally installed backup drive, unless can be disconnected once finished, there’s software based controllers for this, although I feel safer by disconnecting the SATA cable.
At any rate, I cannot think of any valid reason why not going with the WD Gold over Black, and especially the WD Blue line, unless one is so cash strapped that only the latter is all one can afford. 128MB cache, 7,200 rpm, close to 200MB reads & writes, 2 Million hours MTBF, low acoustics (some of the SATA-2 WD Caviar Blacks are noisy) & last yet not least, WD’s 5 year warranty with fast turnarounds. I once needed the latter benefit & from the time I initiated RMA to the time I received an (upgraded) replacement was a total of 11 days. Sent in a 750GB WD Caviar Black (SATA-2) & received in exchange a 1TB of the same model line. WD didn’t have to do that, yet they did & that alone meant a lot to me, not so much the drive upgrade as the fast customer service. Note that the HDD wasn’t failing, the SMART tests showed all to be good, and had there been silicone washers installed like now, I may had never noticed the vibration, or could had let it go until there were more warning signs, yet the HDD was only a couple of months old, and that’s within the timeframe to watch for troubles.
Usually, most HDD’s will last less than 6 months before issues, or over 10 years. Since I was within that first window, figured it best to RMA the drive. That’s the type of service that WD gives, whereas their major competitor provides the runaround, I was an owner of one of the infamous Barracuda 7200.11 series from 2009, and no doubt, the memories is still in many thousands of owners minds.
Speaking of which, that’s what I want is peace of mind, and just as my long trusted WD RE4’s, I expect the WD Gold to be even better.
Cat
