understanding Western Digital GP drives

A

ALL4AMD

I Go to Court for Fun.
Joined
Jun 5, 2002
Messages
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I am making this thread for those that still do not understand that Western Digital's GP line of drives do not change their RPM.

"For each GreenPower drive model, WD uses a different and invariable RPM. Throughout the product line, RPM ranges between 5400 and 7200"

Western Digital​
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invariable - Not changing or subject to change; constant

What this adds up to is the 1TB drives spin at a certain RPM while the 500GB drives spin at a different RPM.
 
As my idol Carl Sagan once said, it's a binary choice? Either 5400 or 7200 RPM, correct?
 
The reviews i've seen were able to measure the RPM from an audio frequency or something. End result is the 1tb's run at 5400 rpm, and i think the other GP's they tested also ran at 5400 rpm.
 
ALL4AMD said:
please sticky
Click to expand...

I'm curious why we should sticky this. In order to keep the forum a little cleaner, we generally like to limit stickies to important or repeated questions. I don't recall having many other threads related to this particular question. Hopefully if someone does have this question they are able to find the answer using the search function.
 
UICompE02 said:
I'm curious why we should sticky this. In order to keep the forum a little cleaner, we generally like to limit stickies to important or repeated questions. I don't recall having many other threads related to this particular question. Hopefully if someone does have this question they are able to find the answer using the search function.
Click to expand...

see thats the problem. everyone sees 5400-7200 RPM and thinks the drive is variable RPM. no will search for to see if it is variable or not.

people repeat saying its variable when its not.
 
ambientZ said:
The reviews i've seen were able to measure the RPM from an audio frequency or something. End result is the 1tb's run at 5400 rpm, and i think the other GP's they tested also ran at 5400 rpm.
Click to expand...

& I thought it was possible to estimate/approximate the rpm from the Access Time as well (& compare it to previous WD drives of different spindle speeds)

PS: Glad to see an effort on making this clear... reading around (not just here) it's surprising how many ppl assume the drives are capable of varying rpm
It would be pretty funny to see a demonstration 3 weeks from now from WD showcasing the variable rpm capability as a firmware unlock or something
 
So in other words the RPM is variable across the product line? Is this just a marketing gimick to tack a larger number on slower 5400RPM drives?
 
God dammit, I don't get it.

The 1TB's spin at 7200 and the 500GB's spin at 5400? Is that what 'variable accross the product line' mean?
 
At 7.5w / 0.5w standby, I'd say its a great investment for a raid home server.

5 drives in hardware raid 5 (38 w), Intel mobile processor (35 w) and you could get a 4 TB server running under 150 watts.
 
WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY:

WD is trying to get people out of the mindset that higher spindle speed = higher performance.

Variable across the line means that different sized drives have different RPMs. 1 TB's have say 5400, 750's have 5400 and 500's have 7200, or something like that.

The slower spindle speed makes them quieter and cooler, and they lose almost no performance because of it. I've yet to see side-by-side reviews/comparisons of GP vs. ordinary WD drives, but if you want to save power and have a cool & quiet server, get GP drives.
 
It also makes it so that WD can release newer versions at different RPMs without having to change the model number.

In the future we may see spindle speed lotteries!
 
ALL4AMD said:
I am making this thread for those that still do not understand that Western Digital's GP line of drives do not change their RPM.

"For each GreenPower drive model, WD uses a different and invariable RPM. Throughout the product line, RPM ranges between 5400 and 7200"

Western Digital​
-------------------------------------------------
invariable - Not changing or subject to change; constant

What this adds up to is the 1TB drives spin at a certain RPM while the 500GB drives spin at a different RPM.
Click to expand...

Sounds like marketing gobbledy-gook.

Shame on WD.



 
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