The Western Digital Blue (1TB) SSD Review: WD Returns to SSDs
by Billy Tallis on October 11, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- Western Digital
- SanDisk
Random Read Performance
The random read test requests 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, which is filled before the test starts. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The WD Blue's random read speed is a bit slower than the X400 but the difference is not big enough to change the rankings and it is still above average.
The WD Blue draws slightly less power than the SanDisk X400, which is enough for it to retain efficiency that is good by the standards of planar TLC SSDs.
 |
|||||||||
The WD Blue's random read performance scales well with increasing queue depth, eventually reaching a maximum that is almost as high as the top SATA drives. The performance at QD16 is also notably better than most budget SSDs.
Random Write Performance
The random write test writes 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test is limited to a 16GB portion of the drive, and the drive is empty save for the 16GB test file. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The SanDisk X400 went a long way toward closing the gap in random write performance between TLC and MLC drives, but a substantial gap still remained. The WD Blue comes in just shy of the X400 but is much faster than the OCZ Trion 150.
The WD Blue doesn't set any overall record for power efficiency, but it does slightly improve on the X400's efficiency and raises the bar for planar TLC.
 |
|||||||||
The WD Blue shows minimal random write performance scaling with queue depth, increasing from QD1 to QD2 but remaining constant thereafter.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
Decoherent - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
There aren't a lot of reasons to use vendor-specific software (which often sucks) when you can use Macrium Reflect's free version, which is much more powerful. It's helped me sort out some other weird problems, too, such as fixing wrong UEFI entries that I couldn't figure out.jwcalla - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I don't think I would trust WD anything when it comes to storage.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Why not? This is just a SanDisk drive with a few minor firmware tweaks. Besides that, WD was the industry leader before SSDs were a thing. Sure picking between Seagate, Quantum, Maxtor (omg that 4.3GB Bigfoot drive...how I missed your 3 months of dog slow performance before you started making the click o' death), and WD (I guess Toshiba and Hitachi too) was like picking between which rusty razor you'd prefer to slit your wrist with, but at least with WD drives you clould get a good gusher going before the blade broke.LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I loved the Quantum Bigfoot, it was as great way to increase capacity for storage drives without having to wait for aerial density to increase.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Oh the idea was sound. Going back to a 5.25 inch chassis to increase capacity seemed like a decent idea even though we'd long ago shifted to 3.5 inch drives. The problem with the Bigfoot was reliability. I had one I personally owned die on me and quite a few we sold to customers (12GB models) came back dead within less than 6 months. I remember all the hassles of getting RMAs done for those things. On the other hand, Quantum's 3.5 inch drives seemed fairly reliable. I wonder if there was a problem with heat expansion doing bad things to the read/write heads due to the larger platter size. It wasn't a problem with older 5.25 inch hard drives because they were usually full height and ran at a lower RPM than the Bigfoots.LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I don't even remember what speed they ran at. Was it the full 5400rpm, or something slower like 5200 or 4900?BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
I don't remember all the specs and had to look them up. The originals and the CY series ran at 3600 RPM and the TX, and TS series brought it up to 4000. If I recall correctly, when the Bigfoot was still in retail channels, a lot of 3.5 inch drives were ticking along at 3600 to 4200 RPM. 5400 RPM drives came along later and I don't know if Bigfoots were even in production when they were being sold as high performance storage solutions (well, non-SCSI drives anyhow...spindle speeds for SCSI devices were quite a bit higher).This is half from memory and the rest was from a couple of quick web searches so take all that with a grain of salt or two. I could be a bit off as it's been a long time.
mikato - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
"I don't think I would trust anything when it comes to storage."That's better. Have backups that work.
But anyway, why all the dumping on WD? I don't think it is warranted.
barleyguy - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
There have been many periods in the past where WD had very high failure rates. Because of that, many of us that have been around awhile have been bit in the butt by WD and don't trust them anymore. In the late 90s and early 2000s for instance, WD's failure rate was so high they had a wait queue and callback system set up for RMAs.That said, I think for last few years WD has been very good, so maybe it is unwarranted in the short term.
In particular I really like the WD Blue. They aren't fast, but they seem to be a very reliable drive, and throwing them in a RAID array with an SSD boot disk results in a pretty solid system.
Gigaplex - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Their main competitor, Seagate, has also had very high failure rates. Mikato was correct, don't trust any of them. There's no need to dump on WD more than the others.