Yesterday I talked about the Western Digital Red drives for NAS devices. While I will always recommend an SSD drive to PC users, sometimes you want a platter drive for long term storage and large media requirements. You can get 5TB drive for under $100 but a 1TB SSD will cost you around $200-300.

Introducing SSHD Hybrid Drives

Recently drive manufacturers came out with hybrid drives (SSHD) that combine standard platter discs with small solid state (SSD) cache in addition to the standard memory cache. These drives will intelligently prioritize frequently used data on the SSD portion of the drive. No operating system support is required for this functionality as it is built into the firmware of the drive.

While Seagate has similar technology, I wouldn't touch a Seagate drive if you paid me. They used to be a good manufacturer but they have really fallen from grace.

5400 RPM or 7200 RPM?

The WD Blue drives come in both 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM versions. The price difference isn't a huge factor so I would always recommend 7200 RPM drives. While the WD Reds primarily were 5400 RPM, these are NAS drives and it is recommended the WD Blues are not used in NAS enclosures (except for simple two drive Raid 0/1 options). The disk thrashing would destroy the write lifespan of the SSD portion of the disk.

Size

WD Blues currently are available from 500GB to 6 TB and are a decent option if you space requirements are not economical for SSD. In almost all cases I would recommend SSD, but WD Blue and WD Black are a good options for backup disks and storing large sequential media like pictures and videos.

You can get the 1TB 7200 RPM version on Amazon for only $44 shipped.

_{All images are from Amazon product pages}