Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

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  Redditor /u/Amaroko placed this WD Blue drive on an empty cardboard box, and held a Blue Yeti mic just above it while it powered on. Spectral analysis of the audio shows a 90Hz baseline—90 cycles (revs) per second and 60 seconds per minute works out to 5,400RPM. [credit: Amaroko ]

Last week, the fine Redditors of /r/DataHoarder got upset with Western Digital again—this time, for misrepresenting the rotational speed of their WD Red Network Attached Storage hard drives. (Although the linked post brings things to a head, members of the German-language forum hardwareluxx.de began investigating the issue more than year ago.)

We found this controversy reminiscent of earlier complaints that Western Digital was not properly disclosing use of Shingled Magnetic Recording technology in their NAS drives. But the new complaint is that Western Digital calls 7200RPM drives "5400 RPM Class"—and the drives' own firmware report 5400 RPM via the SMART interface.

Recently, redditor /u/Amaroko set out to prove or disprove earlier netizens' findings. For each of several drive models, Amoroko placed a sample of that drive on an empty cardboard box, with a Blue Yeti mic held directly above it, then powered the drive on. Spectral analysis of the recorded audio using Adobe Audition showed a baseline frequency of 120Hz for two models of WD 8TB "5400 RPM class" drive.

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