Because I am trying to put a NAS together with four inexpensive drives, I am looking at the smaller capacities 6 TB and down. I was surprised that all of the NAS drives offered currently have spindles speeds of only 5400 rpm. Even 1 TB desktop hard drives of a few years ago spun at 7200 rpm, unless it was a “green” drive, where the slower speed was geared toward lower power consumption.
Will I be able to find any 7200-rpm 4 TB NAS drive, if I look hard enough?
5400 rpm drives may actually spin at 7200. Just make sure the NAS drives are CMR and not SMR for recording tech.
You can find small 7200rpm NAS disks. However, 5400rpm is not a bad thing. Advantages are:
As for specific drives, you definitely want CMR disks. Use this database to confirm that the disk you want to buy is CMR. As for specific models:
When buying a disk (possibly second-hand), go for specific and exact model numbers. Do not just buy “WD Red Plus 8TB”, but buy “WD80EFZZ”.
Additional questions: When you are concerned with speed, what will the NAS and network configuration look like? What will be the configuration of the storage pool? Even 5400rpm disk in slower configuration (RAID-Z2) can easily saturate 1Gbit network. With faster configuration you can get up to 2.5Gbit and in unlikely use-cases (like striping without redundancy) even up to 5Gbit speeds.
Yes, older NAS drives for us consumers were generally running at 5200/5400 RPM. Enterprise drives were 7200 or 10,000 RPM. Times change and I’m sure there is a financial reason for the changes to more 7200 RPM drives. And I could see physics playing a part as well.
The manufacturers have this thing called “RPM CLASS” where they tell you it operates “like” the RPM it is trying to represent. So is it a drive 5200, 5400, 7200 RPM? Very good question. All you get to read is 7200 RPM Class, so it can be any actual physical RPM value, even some values you never heard of such as in the 6000’s or so I’ve heard (not personally seen).
I believe most drives are 7200 RPM “Class” these days, probably due to the data density as it can transfer more data while the platters rotate slower. The only way to actually know rotational speed is to run a test on the drive to see what it’s harmonics are.
This is just my personal opinion, if you do not “need” a super speedy drive, then use a 5200/5400 RPM drive if you can find them. In general they generate less heat and are quieter. If you need a 7200 RPM drive, check all the specs of the drive, looking at read/write/seek/IOPS/latency. Understanding this kind of data may be new for some people but if you don’t know what you are looking at, then Google “hard drive latency” for example. Everything is at your fingertips. What could be more difficult is finding a spec sheet on the drive you are looking at purchasing. I had a heck of a time yesterday locating a spec sheet for a Toshiba drive. I found something that gave me some basic information, but it wasn’t a spec sheet, but I’m not done looking. i will find one or write Toshiba for one.
@DominikHoffmann I’m not sure if I answered your question to your satisfaction, if not, let me know here I can do better.
I doubt pretty much anything but 7,200 RPM drives are made in the 3.5” form factor at this point. For low power consumption, I’d heartily recommend helium filled ones. Trouble is, low capacity He-filled units are likely only available from refurb vendors like goharddrive.com
In the smaller 2.5” form factor, pretty much all spinners now use SMR, IIRC. some older, low capacity units might be available as CMR but I doubt they’re going to have enough capacity to make it worth your while.
Thanks very much to all of your very insightful responses!
