[jdhawk]

I wish there was a way to underspin (RPM) some of these drives to lower noise for non-datacenter use - the quest for the Largest "Quiet" drive - is a hard one. It would be cool if these could downshift into <5000RPM mode and run much quieter.

[zootboy]

I wonder if that's even technically possible these days. Given the fact that the heads have to float on the moving air (or helium) produced by the spinning platter, coupled with modern data densities probably making the float distance tolerance quite small, there might be a very narrow band of rotation speeds that the heads require to correctly operate.

[jdhawk]

yeah - valid point. it seems like they all moved past 5400RPM at the 14TB level.