Is there performace difference (not during parity or pre-clear) fo 5400 vs. 7200 drives?  In UNRAID that is.  I.e. limited by Netowork speed etc.

 

Hitachi is no more. HGST (purchased by WD) is now the brand. But my understanding is that the HGST brand is operated separately and the technology is different than WD.

 

Whether it is Hitachi or HGST, I have been buying them almost exclusively. Probably have 25 drives (2T-4T). They are like the energized bunnies. These are desktop drives, cheapest they make - not NAS - mostly 5400 RPM but several 7200 RPM too. I take very good care of my drives and never had one fail. I had 2 WD 2T - one was bad out of the gate, got a refurb, then the other one failed out of warranty (except Amex covered it). The Seagate experience was worse. Very flakey behavior with the 2T. One have no smart errors but randomly locked up my array. Hardest diagnostic I ever had. Another I still have. No smart errors and tried to use it for a parity build on a backup array. It was the parity disk. 7200 RPM. 2T. Was getting 5MB/sec parity build speed. Swapped out for 5400.RPM Hitachi and all is well.

 

Never tried WD Red or Seagate NAS. Maybe they are great. But since HGST are often cheaper and have proven themselves, model after model, over and over for me, I usually go that way.

 

YMMV

 

I currently have a mix of greens and the old Hitachi deskstar before the buyout, and I have upgraded two drives with the 3tb reds and so far so good.