Both devices provide excellent performance in extreme temperatures and deal with high heat quite well. They are also ROHS compliant which means that their drives do not contain any hazardous materials.
They both are manufactured by the same company and offer very similar features. Both have a 2-year warranty and both of them are equally durable.
Here the Seagate Barracuda:
- is more reliable as has a higher MTBF value.
- offers more product diversity and has a higher storage capacity.
- and has a higher transfer speed.
On the other side, the WD Blue:
- is designed with No Touch Ramp technology which protects the drive against wear.
- can be upgraded easily through Acronis software.
- and has more advanced hardware.
Table of Contents
Side By Side Comparison:
| Technical Specs | Western Digital Blue | Seagate Barracuda |
| Product Type | Desktop Hard Drive | Internal HDD |
| Technology | No Touch Ramp Load Technology | Multi-Tier Caching Technology |
| Halogen Free | No | Yes |
| Interface | SATA | SATA |
| ROHS Compliant | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Format (AF) | Yes | No |
Overview of Seagate Barrracuda:
This device provides very reliable performance and has a storage capacity of up to 8TB.
It is very efficient in its operation and has a great transfer speed. It consists of a power mode that can be activated to reduce energy usage.
It’s Multi-tier Technology maximizes its data transfer flow. But it consumes more power which makes it less energy efficient.
Overview of WD Blue:
This device on the other hand, is designed with No Touch Ramp Load Technology which protects it against wear.
It can be upgraded any time you want due to Acronis Software.
It also provides rescue services to prevent data loss. But in terms of reliability, it is not given a high rank.
Looking at their Designs:
Both the contenders have a rectangular shape with Barracuda having wider corners. Seagate Barracuda has many further shapes on its structure while WD has a straight top shape without any internal shapes which makes its design very smooth.
WD Blue is also very easy to hold as its structure involves fewer screws. It is also more compact and has more weight than its competitor.
But Barracuda has a more attractive silver covering as compared to its competitor which is of blue color.
On the other hand, Barracuda has wider dimensions.
| Parameter | Western Digital Blue | Seagate Barracuda |
| Weight | 6TB= 640 grams | 6TB = 610 grams |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 101.6mm x 26.1mm x 147mm | 101.85mm x 26.11mm x 147mm |
| Operating temperature range | 0-60 Degrees | 0-60 Degrees |
What about their Hardware?
When talking about their hardware, Barracuda and WD Blue has a SATA 6GB/s interface which means that if supported with sufficient bandwidth it can provide a transfer speed of 550MB/s.
Blue has a form factor of 3.5 inches and offers more advanced hardware configuration than its competitor as it consists of an Advanced Format (AF) sector that is used to store data on magnetic disks in hard disk drives that exceed 512, 520, or 528 bytes per sector.
Features offered by WD Blue:
- It is built with No Touch Ramp Load Technology which safely positions the recording head off the disk surface and protects the drive against wear.
- It can easily be upgraded by Acronis Software which will copy your data to a new drive and you will not have to reinstall your operating system.
- It is a very long-lasting and trustable hard drive as it passes through the FIT (Functional Integrity Testing) test in which the hard drive goes through 600,000 hours of testing.
- It offers CMR Recording Technology which aligns the poles of a magnetic element perpendicular to the surface of the disk in a hard drive and SMR Recording Technology which increases storage density and overall, per-drive storage capacity.
- It has a Cache size of up to 256MB and is ROHS compliant.
Features of Seagate Barracuda:
- It’s designed with Multi-Tier Technology that logically separates the different application-specific, operational layers and maximizes reading/writing data flow.
- Disc-Wizard Software in its design helps you to easily add a new hard drive to format partitions, transfer data, and also back up data for increased protection.
- It offers a cache size up to 256MB and has a workload rate limit of 55TB/year.
- You can switch on its power mode in order to make the hard drive more efficient as then it will consume less energy which will also lead to fewer electricity bills.
- It has a storage capacity of up to 8TB and its interface optimizes burst performance.
Which Drive has More Storage Capacity?
Barracuda is available in 7 sizes and has a storage capacity of up to 8TB.
On the other hand, WD Blue is available in 6 sizes and has a storage capacity of up to 6TB. Barracuda has a higher storage capacity along with more product variety.
Due to this, Barracuda definitely becomes a better choice if you are looking for more space to store your data, and it also offers more variety to its customers as it is available in more sizes.
Which Drive Transfers Data at a Faster Speed?
A high transfer speed is highly important as it provides efficient streaming and large amount of data easily gets transferred in the shortest of times.
Barracuda operations will take place at a faster speed than its opponent and it will download large files quite conveniently.
Barracuda offers a transfer speed up to 220MB/s while Blue offers a transfer speed up to 180MB/s. Without any doubt, we can say that Barracuda has more transfer speed than its competitor which makes it more efficient and fast.
How well do they Deal with High Temperature?
There are some threshold levels on every hard drive and if the temperature increases and goes beyond these levels the hard drive will find it difficult to operate.
Temperature affects hard drive longevity and if its temperature is out of range for a long time, the chance of hard drive failure will significantly increase.
Both the contenders have an operating temperature range of 0 to 60 oC and a non-operating range of -40 to 70 oC for all their available sizes.
They both have the same operating and non-operating temperature ranges which leaves no room for argument. So, they both will be equally good against extreme temperatures.
Are they Reliable?
The reliability of a storage device can be defined as the probability that a system will perform its intended function correctly for a specified period of time.
This is related to the MTBF (Mean Times Between Failures) value which indicates the average time between failures and system breakdowns.
So, there is a simple rule of thumb when we are analyzing storage devices in terms of reliability which states that the higher their MTBF value, the more reliable the device will be considered.
Barracuda has a different MTBF value for its different sizes while WD Blue has the same value for all its sizes. So, Barracuda will be considered more reliable than its competitor as it has relatively higher MTBF value than its opponent.
| Parameter | Western Digital Blue | Seagate Barracuda |
| MTBF (million hours) | 0.3 | 0.6 |
Which Drive has a higher Cache Size?
Cache memory stores program instructions and data that are used repeatedly in the operation of programs or information that the CPU is likely to need next. A higher cache memory size will mean more efficient data retrieval.
Both Devices offer a maximum 256MB cache size. But Barracuda has a 256-cache size in 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB hard drives while Blue has a 256-cache size in only its 6TB and 2TB hard drive.
So, Seagate Barracuda once again offers more variety for its customers to decide as it offers a 256MB cache size in more sizes.