WD will be transitioning WD Green™ hard drive models into the WD Blue™ family of drives. The company is simplifying the hard drive selection process for customers by streamlining its model families for mainstream PCs to only the WD Blue line.

All currently shipping WD Green models will remain available through their lifecycle, as they transition to the WD Blue label. WD Black™ models will remain in the PC drive family, yet designed for high-performance applications such as gaming and workstations and for those building high-end systems for creative professionals.

WD’s color-coded product portfolio enables customers to easily choose the right hard drive designed for their intended application. Its other colors include WD Red™ for network-attached storage (NAS) appliances and WD Purple™ for video surveillance systems. WD’s datacenter drives are identified with gold labels.

“The market for mass storage has expanded broadly beyond the PC,” said Amy Tan, Senior Sales Manager, South Asia, WD. “Every application for storage requires different hard drive attributes for optimal data recording and preservation, and every drive WD designs has a specific purpose. What can be easier for customers than matching a color to their application? Moving forward, they will only need to know whether they are building PC, high-performance, NAS, video surveillance or datacenter systems.”

The new WD Blue model numbers inherit the same nomenclature as the prior WD Green generation products, but end with a ‘Z’ instead of an ‘X’ (example: WD60EZRX to WD60EZRZ).