Yes, agreed, I didn’t know about the class markings… But I’m still not sure if all of the 5400 class hdds are indeed 7200.
If it’s a 3.5” WD drive that’s been made recently, chances are good that it’s 7,200 RPM. “5,400 RPM class drives” are IIRC another bone-headed 2020 creation by WD marketing, similar to the underhanded way that WD polluted their red “NAS” brand with SMR drives.
An inexpensive clue is the acoustic frequency the drive operates at. Each speed produces different harmonics - past HDDs could operate at 5,400,7,200, 10,000 or even 15.000 RPM based on what brand / flavor drive you were buying.
That’s how folk figured out that their WD “5400RPM class” drives were in fact gelded 7,200 RPM drives that infamously combined the power and heat characteristics of 7,200 RPM drives with the performance of 5,400 RPM drives.
IIRC, since 2020, WD no longer produces 3.5” drives operating at 5,400 RPM, only Seagate.
If you want something lower power, try finding the drive capacity you’re looking for with a helium fill. Lower capacity helium-filled HDDs (and this is a moving target) may only be available used from vendors like goharddrive.com. That’s where I got my 10TB helium HGSTs.
Good luck!
There is no high capacity 5400 drive at Seagate, either.
There are no new NAS-grade 5400 rpm drives, full stop.
The choice is between 7200 rpm HDDs and SSDs.
What a load of nonsense. Those drives all die within weeks, and come pre-shipped with failing heads and/or bad sectors scattered across the platters. I think they source their “recertified” drives from a dumpster somewhere.
I highly discourage everyone against purchasing harddrives from that website.
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Dude. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. 
The more people that learn about this, the worse it is for us who are already in-the-know.
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from that website? I must tell ya I’m against buying any sort of used hdd drives in the first place! bad guy or good guy, no matter who was the previous owner.
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I’m just curious why high capacity hdd can’t be 5400 prm drive. Is this a technical difficulty?
Allow me to disagree. My experiences with goharddrive.com have been very professional and easier to deal with than when I have had to RMA drives from Seagate or WD. Yes, there is the possibility that GoHDD may out of business at some point but so far they have stuck around and they’ve been a great supplier for me.
Of the drives I bought from them a few had to be RMA’d when they failed their qualification tests. Two have failed their SMART tests in the 5 years since, one in the 5-year warranty, the other outside. No data loss occurred and 10TB helium-filled drives for less than $100 with a 5 year warranty is a screaming deal.
I don’t really care that the drives had several thousand hours on them already as I have been adding 8000+ per annum without issues while benefitting from a power draw comparable to a 5,400 RPM drive while performing like a 7,200 RPM drive.
There are certainly no technical limitations against that. The few remaining manufacturers have determined that there is no market for such drives.
7200 RPM HDDs are now the low cost bulk storage option that replaced slower 5400 RPM drives and the new performance segment is covered by SSDs.
Slower rotational speeds would negatively impact resilvering times on large capacity HDDs. If noise and low power is important for the intended usage, you have a choice of 7200 RPM helium-filled drives or SSDs.
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Well, it’s great that they have 3-5 year warranty, but changes that the used drive will fail compared to unused brand new one - is just high. And I can’t afford RMA processes back and forth overseas, delivery and TAX processes are too expensive for me. I pray not to have initial problems with upcoming new drives, because sending them back is just a nightmare!
For those who live closer this may be a good option.
I wonder if from manufacturers point of view, 5400 and 7200 are just pure specifications, and do not dictate how long one drive or another will last. Maybe how joeschmuck mentioned, it’s better to rely on warranty numbers.
no, not at all. Integrity is more important, but the fact is that arriving new drives with the same speed are actually quitter than my old drives. At least on spec sheet.
I certainly don’t claim to know everything in this regard, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the suggestion that there’s a difference in service life based only on rotational speed.
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In the US, we primarily deal with the inconvenience of Seagate and WD playing games with their external vs. internal 3.5” HDD pricing. That in turn led a lot of folk to shucking external enclosures, whose empty shells they have to keep until the warranty period is over. It better be pristine also, or the OEM will deny warranty coverage.
The warranty process can be pretty annoying unless it happens close to the date of purchase - in which case the amazons / Best Buy’s / etc. of the world take the product back.
Outside the US, prices can be much higher, so I understand your reticence re: buying used. At the same time, I’d rather buy a used helium HE10 than a new air-filled drive since He10s have performed so well for me. Plus, I know it’s a CMR.
Anyhow, best of luck.
All things equal (and they likely are not), a 5,400 RPM drive should challenge the spindle motor / bearings far less than a 7,200 RPM drive. The steppers for the heads are likely quite similar.
But it’s silly to assume that drive OEMs would use the same quality bearings and spindle motors across all drives. Rather, it is likely that spindle motors and bearings are adjusted by RPM class to minimize costs while still meeting minimum warranty / reliability goals.
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…and of course that’s the point. Though I don’t think bearing failure is all that common a failure mode.
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Click of death! Stiction! Head crash! So many fun ways for drives to fail spectacularly when in most NAS use it likely manifests as creeping SMART errors indicating unhappy / unrecoverable blocks. But that’s because NAS’ do such a good job of monitoring SMART stats, if set up correctly, while consumer grade systems may not.
I ordered mine from B&H Photovideo. Funny, can’t remember time when I bought a computer part there, mostly I’m getting camera gear from this store. Their return policy is as good as Amazon’s, maybe even better, because last time I bought a lens on holidays, their return time range nicely changed from 30 days to 90 days.
I hope they do things exactly like you described here 
The drives I bought WD120EFBX are actually helium filled CMR drives.
I’ve never heard that as well. I think it has more to do with manufacturing tolerances which result in parts binning to ensure the defect rate is kept as low as possible.
A spindle motor array that fails validation at 7200 RPM could be repurposed in a 5400 RPM drive instead of being discarded. The fact that 5400 RPM drives are no longer offered could mean that yields have improved and that low capacity drives sales are sufficient to absorb parts that failed validation at 7200 RPM. Or that such parts are unsuitable for drives with a high platters / heads count.