5400rpm compared to 7200rpm HDD

[Psylocke]

is it worth spending a few more bucks to get a 7200rpm HDD?
the real question is...
should i buy a 20gig 5400 HDD
or go with a 15gig 7200 HDD??

[daveleau]

What are you using it for?

If you are using it for MP3 storage or image storage, go for the larger slower drive.

In all other cases, I would have to rec. the 7200rpm. It is significantly faster in all aspects from bootup to file retrieval.

Dave

[Entragian ][]

You can also jump to the next level and look into the 10,000 RPM SCSI drives. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif Just be ready to pay a pretty penny.

I agree, if its only used for storage and not very active, then use the 5400. Otherwise grab that 7200

Ent

[Entragian ][]

Does anyone have any benchmarks showing the different drive speeds (Same size)?? I think that visual would be best to show any difference.

[daveleau]

I have seen benchmarks with HDTach which say the 7200 is much faster but am skeptical of the results as I have never gotten good results on my own with HDTach. I don't know of another hdd benchmark.
Dave

[Fingers]

Here is a test between ATA/33 and ATA/66, but it also gives data to compare 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm. The two drives are a Quantum Fireball 5,400 13GB and a Quantum Fireball 7,200 13.6GB
http://www.hwupgrade.com/hd/ata66_vs_ata33/index.html

Just open two browser windows with the link above, click on the 5,400 page with one, the 7,200 page with the other. Right click on the task bar and choose "tile vertically", and voila; a side by side comparisons.

[This message has been edited by Fingers (edited 09-22-2000).]

[Win_98]

Instead of going with 20gig why not 60gig 5400 rpm and it is 3 time faster then 20gig. I believe 7200 are 33.33 percent faster then 5400 rpm but as the rule goes, the faster they are the more heat is build up causing to wear faster then a 5400 rpm harddrive.

[Brangwen]

In terms of speed, no contest between a 5400 and 7200 rpm HD. Get the 7200 (or faster). Period. You'll be glad you did.

Brangwen http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[NDC]

Yeah, I know that you might all think that just for a disk that will barely be accessed and is used primarily for saving data or backing up, you should get a 5,400rpm. But personlly, I think it's well worth the money to get 7,200rpm IDE drive due to the significant speed difference. I use a Ultra160 SCSI at 10,000rpm for my OS and Apps and 7,200rpm for saved data.

[techs]

I have spent some time looking into the advantages between ata33 and ata66 versus 5400rpm and 7200 rpm. when you get past the nonsense this is what it boils down to. there is a minor difference in performance between ata33 and 66. the increase is virtualy all in the performance of the cache, when it is full, or nearly full(at 2mb) and consists of the difference in transfer speed of 2 mb at 33mb per second or 66 mb per second. pretty minute!!! the sustained transfer rate of even top 7200 rpm drives, regardles of ata33 or 66 is at the very best 25mb per second. so the ata33 speed is still well in excess of the sustained transfer rate, and the only(ok,mostly) performance increase occurs between cache transfer and the system ram. In my mind the ata66 standard is preparing for the future, but the 7200 rpm speed is a real world, time saving feature. At the very least reduced latency(the time it takes for the disk to rotate so the needed info is under the drive head) makes a 7200 drive preferable. On any perfromance test outside of disk cache performance the 7200 rpm drives outperform 5400 rpm drives regardless of ata33 or 66.
I installed a 15gb maxtor 7200 rpm ata66 in a system with ata33 capability and my customer called to say he was astonished how much faster his system worked. As for ata100 i personally don't expect to be using this motherboard when drive speeds are capable of any performance increase utilizing ata100.
I think it MAY be possible that ata66 might come in handy before i replace this mobo(and yours, if it is fairly recent)so it is worth a few extra bucks for that possibility.
Now when ata100 hard drives appear, and they are 7200 rpm, and they have 4mb cache that may be a different story.
My advice is buy the faster drive if you have enough room on it, and remember it can take a looooong time to scandisk a big hard drive, and one thing is certain, you will crash eventually.

[jpeppers]

I wish I got the 7200 RPM drive!

[Win_98]

Let me see, 30gig 5400 rpm harddrive and a 20gig 7200 rpm that cost the same which would you choose? It not just a few buck more it also 33 percent more in cost! For some of us 7200 rpm isn't neccessarily at all, because fast harddrive alone can't really make up for less memory, ex. 32meg. Heck man im here using 4475 maxtor 2gig it doesn't seem too slow for me. Eitherway you can't go wrong but that just me, I don't mind being a little slower thought because bigger storage is more important to me. I rather have 60gig over a 40gig. then again I may never need it as long as my ancient harddrive is working fine hehe, could be dead anytime soon but oh well I wait till then and then I'll get a 60gig for about 200 hmm nah maybe it faster to get 2 30gig, 2 mind is better then 1.

[This message has been edited by Win_98 (edited 09-25-2000).]

[Psylocke]

I have decided to go for the speed. 7200rpm hdd will be my choice. now i gotta decide whcih brand i want. seagate maybe?

[NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech]

Everyone has their opinions on brands.

Me? Quantum all the way.

Jim

[bhess]

I thought that comparing a 15g 7200 and a 30g 5400 they were about the same because of the platter density? opinions?

[Undertow]

I own a Maxtor 13.6GB ata/66 7200RPM and I have used it at both 33 and 66. It actually took longer for the system to bootup at 66 (this may be due to my mainboard even though it has ata/66 support) and I noticed absolutely no difference in general performance under 33 or 66. I think that the higher RPM does make quite a difference though, so if your going for speed, get the higher RPM or a drive with more cache. I have had trouble with my Maxtor so I think from now on I will stick with Western Digital. I had a WD for 3 years with no problems. I also had a Quantum for a year till it failed. Many things to think about, but I would focus on MORE CACHE and higher RPM. I think my next choice will be something with 8MB of cache and 10000 RPM. I think I can only get this through SCSI, although expensive, is much more speedy.

-Undertow

[seti]

I'm loving my IBM 75gxp 20gb. It's quite literally twice as fast as my old WD Caviar (sustained data transfer). Though that's not a fair example of the performance gap between 7200 and 5400rpm drives, being that the WD is about 2 years old and wasn't a screamer to begin with.

bhess, drive size tends to be more a factor of the number of data surfaces than areal density, especially within a disk family.

eg.
IBM 75gxp

75gb...5 platters, 10 surfaces*7.5gb = 75gb
20gb...2 platters, 3 surfaces*7.5gb = 22.5gb

edit...opps, I said 4 platters instead of 2

The must not have tracts covering the whole surface in one instance.

So while a 30gb 5400 may indeed have a greater areal density than a 20gb 7200, it may simply be useing more data surfaces. You would have to check the specific areal densities for each drive. Even so, there are 20gb/platter 7200's out now that are still out performed by the 15gb/platter 75gxp.

I tend to babble when tired. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

blah blah blah
blah blaah blaaaaaaah
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[This message has been edited by seti (edited 09-27-2000).]

[This message has been edited by seti (edited 09-27-2000).]

[Win_98]

The problem with 7200 rpm is that they give off more heat, so without proper cooling it more likely to get bad sector within a couple of day of usuage. For example if you have too many harddrive in your computer and all is 5400 rpm that already enought to toast just about everything in their. I wonder at first if the harddrive was bad or something, turn out that it was heat related problem. What Im saying is that you going to need alot of fan and that is freaking noisy just to keep everything in their cool enought. So it maybe better to have just one 30gig instead of 2 1.6gig like I have now so as soon I get that, it bye bye puny ancient drive giving off ridiculous amount of heat.

[seti]

Modern 7200rpm drives do not require active cooling.

[Ygor]

I'd just stay away from WD myself. I have a WD Expert 9 gig that's one year old, 7200 rpm, ata66, and dma won't stay checked.
Consequently my 3 y/o Maxtor beats it. This is the case on 2 different motherboards, with it set to 33 or 66 using the Promise 66 card.

[NDC]

Wow. Sorry to hear that. WD IDE hard disks have been one of the most reliable hard disks that I've used.

[MadMatt]

I've also done well with WD drives. I like the Quantum LM plus series too - I think they're the top rated IDE drives right now.

[Fingers]

Here's a thread with opinions of Western Digital hard drives. My opinion; Western Digital rates very high on the quality scale. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/009508.html