question about Hard-drives

[BigBoi1881]

Im thinkin of gettin a new HD and wanted to know if their is any significant difference between a 5400RPM and 7200RPM Hard-drive besides price. Thanks alot

[Hellmund]

Well basically it's speed, the faster the spindle speed the lower the seek time. That basically means it can find the data faster, the main problems with drives with high spindle speeds though is that they have to reduce the data density, the why those 15k SCSI drives are only 18gb whereas there are some HUGE 5400rpm drives. It is a noticably difference though if you can afford it. It is also a good idea to get a drive with as large a cache as possible as that can make a difference as well.

[elroy]

Unless you have a need for the absolute max speed it's probably not worth the money. Yes there is a difference but not much. Buy a big 5400 rpm with a 2mb buffer [cache]. Also not much difference between ata66 and ata100. The ata speed only applies to the data that is being read from the cache, once the cache is emptied the data comes from the platter and is much slower. A lot of people split hairs in this business and want bragging rights of having the "fastest", "newest", "best" etc. I'm buying a new 40gb Maxtor 5400rpm ata66.