Storage Drives - Variable RPM

Fenix_ZA

Fenix_ZA

New member
Hey all, calling all hard drive experts. So, I wish to inquire about hard drives intended for storage and variable drive speed. I'm looking to buy a 2 or 3TB drive and only buy WD as I have about 6 Seagate door stoppers in my drawer and WD has never failed me before.

Anyway, to get to the point, the WD Caviar Green and Red (pretty much all their drives of 1TB and up) have variable RPM set at 5400-7200RPM. I believe it's designed for lower power consumption to spin at lower speeds when not accessed and only increase RPM when reading from or writing to. My question is, as a mechanical device will this not shorten it's live span vs a drive that has a fixed RPM?

Any info/advice on this will be appreciated, thanks. :cool:
 
As far as I know the main reason for portable hard drive disk failures are when the head crashes or spindle failures. Imaging shaking hard a portable hard drive which is spinning at 7200 RPM (will get broken, guaranteed).
As I know it Apple when they introduce the IPod classic with the 46 mm hard disk drives what it does is when the user access the hard drive it spins quickly dumping as much needed information to the RAM as possible and stops the HDD, caching most of the music.
This way when the user moves about causing who knows what mechanical motion induced to the HDD, the risk of HDD failure would get reduce.
So I would say in terms of portable it would actually be better.
Using Newtons 2nd : F = ma = m dv/dt.
 
In my experience, everybody has their own brand that works for them, and their own brands that die on them. Sounds like you have found yours. I'm in the exact opposite boat. Every WD drive I have ever owned has died on me, so I stick with Maxtor/Seagate, which I've never had a problem with.

The variable green drives are known to die out quicker. I always stick with fixed RPM, although I do have a 2TB green drive that I use in my eSata dock, and only turn it on when I need to use it. Had it about a year and it is still running fine. If you want your drive to last a bit longer, the 5400's generally have a bit of a better life span, but I always use 7200rpm drives for performance reasons. I just make sure to keep 2-3 backups of everything I deem critical (like my photography).
 
Fenix_ZA said:
Thanks for the replies guys. Getting the WD Caviar RED 2TB. Seems legit. :) On special at Wootware atm.
Click to expand...

Any reason for going for the Red drives? Afaik only reason you would go for them is if you use a NAS otherwise the Green drives are for you. Depends on prices of course.
 
Black > Red > Green in terms of speed

Black > Green > Red in terms of lifetime, due to speeds and drive quality. (The Black constellation drives are supposed to be Enterprise drives, hence faster and longer lifetime). ;)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top