Is a 7200 RPM WD Blue 2.5" HDD going to be faster for a RAID 5 than a 5200 RPM Red 2.5" for same?

[Alastair_L]

I have two HGST 1TB 2.5" 7200 RPM drives in the Thunderbolt RAID case I have. I want to make a RIAD 5 and need two more drives. Not sure what to get. I want reliability (in terms of HDD failure) and performance more than EE. Quite would be nice. Any suggestions?

 

[Alastair_L]

Actually I just found a good price (half) on the WD 7200 Black 2.5" Black are supposed to be WD's performance drives, and it's 7200 RPM over 5400 RPM (apologies for typo of 5200 RPM in the Original Question).

 

[George Mulligan]

7200 is typically faster of course. The other spec you want to look at for large data handling arrays is cache. A 256MB cache will go a along way in improving read/write times across RAID arrays.

 

[Alastair_L]

Doing a bit more research on the Newegg site, WD RED come with 3 yr warranty and upgradeable Firmware plus "3D" anti-vibration protection designed for RAID and Server room environments with lots of potential vibrational and acoustic interference. Plus power management for EE but I believe I read elsewhere they don't spin down either, so you'd need to be switching the RAID off when not in use. But this is just what I've read, I'd like to see data to provide supporting evidence.