Western Digital hard drives: The differences between Black and Blue Series

[TazarZero]

For a while now, I've been curious to know what the differences are in the Western Digital Caviar Series.
So far as I know, Black is high performance, Green is eco-friendly and slow, but I'm not sure what the Blue series has to offer, other than a lower price tag.
Can anyone clearify what the techinical differences are between Black and Blue? For high performace reasons, I bought the Black series for my tower, but what would I have been missing out on had I gone for the Blue series?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dividebyzero]

In theory, the Black is supposed to be the faster drive. In actuality, there isn't much between them. Speed rather depends on platter size and cache - The Black drives are either 32 or 64Mb cache, while the Blue drives top out at 32Mb.
Black drives carry a five year warranty, while Blue drives are three years which is probably of more significance.

 

[TazarZero]

Thank you, zero. Cache sizes have always been a part of my research on buying hard drives, but with the Blue series, I thought that maybe I hadn't come across a drive with 64Mb for Cache. Never crossed my mind that maybe they just weren't made. Thanks again for clearing this up for me.

 

[tipstir]

I just got two more Blue TB with 32MB Cache. I never had an issue. Black is fast but noisy and the Green is slow because it's green to save power. Smaller sizes has 16MB for Cache