I’m currently in the process of downgrading my NAS - from 4 7k RPM HDDs down to a mirror of 2 5.x k RPM ones. It seems a bit difficult to find low-rpm specimen with a capacity above 10 TB.
Which HDDs are able to be put in a low-RPM kind of power saving mode?
Any special (S)ATA protocol commands that might facilitate such a desirable behaviour?
I wouldn’t mind if those HDDs spun up to 7k RPM under high load, but there SHOULD be an intermediate power-saving state that spins them at low-ish RPM, rather than spinning them down to 0 completely.
We see the era of consumer-HDD models declining and thus low-rpm models.
2.5" drives being nearly extinct except for some external USB HDD products and they’re all SMR to keep up capacity higher than flash.
3.5" like WD Green or Blue which had an emphasis on low-noise and low-power are gone. Only two main branches left are NAS and Datacenter where these issues aren’t a concern. No one uses HDDs on or near their desk anymore.
Spinning up and down uses a lot more energy than keeping them at fixed rpm. One of the reasons I never let my drives spin down at all.
And we’re talking about maybe 1-2W difference per drive. That’s not much even by European standards.
I recommend getting 5TB (all SMR) 2.5" drives or SATA SSDs with good power states (sleep = <50mW)