Largest 5400rpm storage?
Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 5:04 am
I've been using some WD80EFZX disks for a while now. They're definitely a lot noisier than the smaller WD Red/Green disks, which I assumed was simply due to the high platter count or possibly a quirk of the Helium design. The 6TB disks are pretty loud during seek but quiet during idle. The 8TB disks are just noisy in general. It took me a little while to notice, but the only explanation is that they're actually 7200rpm disks, despite the fact that all the marketing material says 5400rpm. I don't really understand why WD would need to lie about that.
Looking up this phenomenon online, I quickly happened across this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLurlh_DrWU
Clearly from the 120Hz vibration, that's a 7200rpm disk, so I wrote it off initially as someone having erroneously recorded a WD Red Pro. But they haven't - I now have one in an external caddy, listened closely to it and it sounds identical to this video. Without question it's a WD80EFZX on the label, not a WD8001FFWX, so my conclusion - even the standard WD Red disks are 7200rpm for 8TB. It certainly explains why they're inexplicably fast.
Thing is, by the time I'm populating my server with large numbers of 8TB disks, I don't want them to all be 7200rpm, it's too much heat and noise and I don't need that level of performance. Looking at other manufacturer's product ranges, the current generation all seem to be 7200rpm at higher capacities. The only large capacity option I've seen lower is the ST8000AS0002 - can anyone confirm if they are any good, and indeed 5900rpm as per the label?
Thanks
Sam
Looking up this phenomenon online, I quickly happened across this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLurlh_DrWU
Clearly from the 120Hz vibration, that's a 7200rpm disk, so I wrote it off initially as someone having erroneously recorded a WD Red Pro. But they haven't - I now have one in an external caddy, listened closely to it and it sounds identical to this video. Without question it's a WD80EFZX on the label, not a WD8001FFWX, so my conclusion - even the standard WD Red disks are 7200rpm for 8TB. It certainly explains why they're inexplicably fast.
Thing is, by the time I'm populating my server with large numbers of 8TB disks, I don't want them to all be 7200rpm, it's too much heat and noise and I don't need that level of performance. Looking at other manufacturer's product ranges, the current generation all seem to be 7200rpm at higher capacities. The only large capacity option I've seen lower is the ST8000AS0002 - can anyone confirm if they are any good, and indeed 5900rpm as per the label?
Thanks
Sam