Downgrading WD Black to Green
Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:56 am
Hey All,
I was recently shopping for another hard drive for my home server, which already has 2xWD Green in it. While browsing eBay a weird thing surfaced: WD Elements 2TB was somehow 15% cheaper than the Green drive, so I went for it. I thought I would smart out everybody and pry the Elements open to get the drive and keep the enclosure as well, betting that WD would outfit their low end enclosure with "low end" drive which is perfect for my needs. But nah, the drive in there turned out to be WD Black, which is of course totally unexpected!
Hence the question is, is there a way to make a Black drive behave like Green? From the reviews I've read, the difference in noise and power consumption is pretty dramatic. Is there a management tool for WD drives that I missed that would slow it down, enable IntelliPark and somehow allow reduced power draw? Or (a remote possibility) will a PCB swap from WD Green work? If not, is the noise level difference that noticeable?
Thanks in advance!
I was recently shopping for another hard drive for my home server, which already has 2xWD Green in it. While browsing eBay a weird thing surfaced: WD Elements 2TB was somehow 15% cheaper than the Green drive, so I went for it. I thought I would smart out everybody and pry the Elements open to get the drive and keep the enclosure as well, betting that WD would outfit their low end enclosure with "low end" drive which is perfect for my needs. But nah, the drive in there turned out to be WD Black, which is of course totally unexpected!
Hence the question is, is there a way to make a Black drive behave like Green? From the reviews I've read, the difference in noise and power consumption is pretty dramatic. Is there a management tool for WD drives that I missed that would slow it down, enable IntelliPark and somehow allow reduced power draw? Or (a remote possibility) will a PCB swap from WD Green work? If not, is the noise level difference that noticeable?
Thanks in advance!