A new complaint is that Western Digital is calling its 7200 RPM drives “5400 RPM class” and, in fact, firmware of drivers report circulating at 5400 RPM through the SMART interface. However, the redditor / u / Maroko has recently begun to prove or disprove these findings, and using different types of product hard drives has run certain tests to determine their speed is a real opportunity.
The 5400 RPM WD drive actually revolves around 7200 RPM
This user has placed a sample of hard drives of the product in an empty cardboard box to spray external sounds. This time he placed a Blue Yeti microphone that was held directly to the hard drive and made with spectral analysis of sound disc extracted using Adobe Audition. The surprise was when the result was a 120 Hz frequency of two WD 8 TB models “5400 RPM class“.
120 Hz on the hard disk spin is as follows 120 cycles per second, multiplied by 60 seconds per minute gives us the result of 7200 RPM exactly, the actual spin speed of these hard drives advertised as 5400 RPM. We can say that WD declares them to be “5400 RPM class” as if it were a parallel, but that the firmware itself provides false information is very sensitive because directly the manufacturer is lying to users.
That faster than advertised is good … or not?
At first glance this would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? After all, who wouldn’t choose a hard drive with high rotation speed, because it’s fast? Unfortunately the fast spin speed does not mean that the search latency can be very low (which is high throughput), and it comes with a huge increase in sound production and power consumption.
That increase in noise and energy consumption is what has led many users to suspect that these WD hard drives are not operating at the advertised speed. When a user buys a 5400 RPM hard drive he knows that it is because he wants low noise and low usage even if he does a little less work, but we also come back to the same thing: the problem is that the manufacturer makes data details and does not report properly to the user.
By comparing the datasheets between the 5400 RPM Seagate Barracuda and the “5400 RPM class” WD Red which, based on the tests we have shown above, actually at 7200 RPM, we can see a clear difference in power consumption (8, 8W vs 5.3W).
Western Digital Responds: It’s a Marketing Strategy
Of course, the manufacturer was contacted as a result of the findings and the representative had to appear first to respond:
“In some selected products, Western Digital has published firo speeds within the ‘phase’ or ‘performance phase’ rather than publishing a certain rotation speed. We also customize selected hard drive platforms and HDD-related features to create a wide variety of these platforms to meet market or application needs. By doing so, we can make hard drives cheaper and pass that on to customers. All Western Digital products are tested to meet the specifications provided in the product data sheet.
