What speed hard drive would be best for playing of recorded shows? i'm sure 7200rpm is best but is a 5400 just as good? it is being run on a rocket fish SATA 2 bay docking station via USB 3.0. the reason for the question is need for more space of previously recorded movies and shows.
Edit: so after looking at the replies thus far i've looked at amazon and found a Seagate Iron wolf 7200 rpm nas drive, 128mb cache, 6TB for 194.99. Is this a good option to consider?
If you are good with a 4TB or less, WD makes hard drives that have special firmware for DVR applications. What makes these drives unique is they’re higher tolerance for read/write errors.
What this means is the drive will NOT attempt to correct errors. In regular data storage this isn’t a good thing. But when talking large video files, it’s not an issue.
The gain is a drive that creates much less heat from less stress and a MUCH longer life.
The 4TB model is WD40EURX
Edit: I wanted to add that some websites will tell you the model I listed above has been replaced with the Purple series drive. NOT TRUE!
The Purple series is specifically designed for surveillance RAID systems. 95% write 5% read (or something like that).
In a consumer TV DVR it’s 50/50.
A plain old WD Red (5400 RPM) is has more than enough bandwidth (150MB/s) to saturate a GigE connection.
A WD Red Pro (7200 RPM) would be over-kill.
For those considering a replace drive for whatever purpose, you may want to think twice about Western Digital. First was the SMR debacle with their WD Red NAS drives, and now their 5400RPM drives are really power-hungry 7200RPM drives:
(I chose to tack this onto an ancient thread mostly because the title and content were still relevant.)
Wow, that's really going spec crazy!
The data sheet on my WD40EFRX 4TB WD RED NAS drives states
Rotational speed (RPM)4 : IntelliPower
4. A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM.
For my WD100EFAX 10TB WD RED NAS drives it's
Performance Class : 5400 RPM Class
They both meet my specs for price, performance and warranty
The point was that "5400 RPM Class" is meaningless claptrap ... it's really a 7200 RPM drive masquerading as 5400. It spins at 7200 RPM, uses as much extra energy as a 7200 RPM drive, creates as much additional noise as a 7200 RPM drive, but has a modified firmware to make it perform like a 5400 RPM drive.
For those who are hard drive shopping, caveat emptor.