SPCR

Does anyone know if both the 1TB and 750MB WD RED 2.5" drives are single-platter drives, and/or if they are both equally quiet?

toronado455 wrote:Does anyone know if both the 1TB and 750MB WD RED 2.5" drives are single-platter drives

http://rml527.blogspot.it/2010/10/hdd-p ... _1201.html

Interesting. So they are both 2-platter drives. Probably both make the same amount of noise then?

toronado455 wrote:Interesting. So they are both 2-platter drives. Probably both make the same amount of noise then?

Probably.

I got two RED 2.5" 1TB drives and installed in a PC to try them out. So far very impressed!

I just have them hanging from zip ties for now (i used little plastic wire clips as "hooks" screwed into the drive) just to minimize transmission of vibration to the chassis.

There is no audible sound that I can detect - neither on read/write, nor spinup (on PC boot), nor idle. Absolutely silent in my system - which just means they are quieter than the 5 fans (CPU cooler, exhaust, PSU, and two intake) and cannot be heard above the noise of these fans. However, I don't think my fans are noisy, in fact I can't really hear the fans until I am quite close to the PC.

Performance seems excellent as well. I have them configured in a Windows 10 "Storage Spaces Pool" (with mirroring ON) and with Bitlocker Encryption ON. They are connected to the two available 6GBPS (SATA III) ports on the motherboard. They seem to be very responsive and a huge improvement over the troublesome Samsung HD502 drives (which seem to be getting worse).

I may eventually transfer these to a Synology NAS, but just wanted to try them out in a regular Windows box first to see how they perform.

If I run a benchmark I will post it here. Any suggestions of a free benchmark application?

Thanks for the acoustic info. Don't think you need to run benchmarks - they are slow 5400rpm drives meant for media and data storage.

CA_Steve wrote:Thanks for the acoustic info. Don't think you need to run benchmarks - they are slow 5400rpm drives meant for media and data storage.

Well sure, I only am using them for data storage. Benchmark would be just to compare with the Samsungs. Even though both are 5400 RPM, these new drives are a lot faster. Makes a big difference when running backups. How fast I can run a backup is really my main "benchmark".

nods. The increased arial density is the main reason newer drives are faster than older drives at the same rpm.

Didn't know about the arial density. How much speed difference would you attribute to the REDs being 6.0Gb/s (SATA III) vs the Samsungs 3.0Gb/s (SATA II)?

None. Don't think an HDD can saturate SATA 2 let alone SATA 3.

If you wanted to do a real world benchmark - measure the time to do the same backup to both old and new drive.

CA_Steve wrote:None. Don't think an HDD can saturate SATA 2 let alone SATA 3.

Thanks. I didn't know that.