7200 RPM vs. 5400 RPM HDD

[Richard_Cranium72]

As BBA said, the numbers don't always add up.

Here's a link for some interesting reading..

I'm sorta like a old member, Arni-Lee, waiting for FMD, Translucent Optical Discs with storage capacity of nearly unbelievable porportions..

http://www.storagereview.com/

[clickplay]

Something that I didn't see mentioned was the
old drives ata?Was it 33,66?And the new drive ata 100?That's where I see the difference in accessing the hard drive for files,when I went from an 8.4 gig (5200) ata 33 to a 30 gig (7200) ATA 100.This is one reason some people choose raid,so that they can double their xfer rate (if the appropriate raid schem is enabled).I.E. I could get an ATA rate of 200 with my current drive-if of course I could justify the cost of another drive and a raid card for my home entertainment.

[Ruahrc]

Just a new side to the question- are 7200 rpm drives hotter/louder than their 5400rpm counterparts? I'm thinking of going 7200 if there is a sale, but don't want another jet engine in my computer.

Ruahrc

[jray]

Yes, they seem to run hotter, the noise I don't consider an issue (but then I my hearing ain't so great anyway..)I have noticed that they seem to run hotter.

I've noticed a big difference in how fast defrag runs on these ATA100/7200's...It downright haul's u-no-what!

On a related note of interest, here at work we have put many Maxtor 7200/20g's in new systems in the past few months. Also had almost an entire case of them fail 1 by 1 anywhere from a couple of days, to 4 weeks after installation in new systems; Maxtor says it must be due to rough handling during shipping. (We've sinced switched to W.D.'s). Prior to that we've used 5-6 cases without the high failure rate.

[bdj]

One thing to consider is if you need to do alot of continuous, streaming, reads and writes. An example, non-linear digital video or audio editing. Some Firewire boards recommend drives at 10KRPM.

[OuTpaTienT]

Interesting article there Fingers. It's not really about the 5400 vs. 7200 issue but it is comparing ATA33 vs. ATA66. And they find that ATA66 has absolutely no advantage over ATA33, even using the faster spinning 7200 drives. So one has to wonder why is there even an ATA100 spec, it's obviously not needed until we have MUCH faster drive hardware.

[crunchyriff]

For me, YES! There is a BIG difference.
I went from a 8.4Gb Maxtor 5400 DMA33 to a 60Gb Maxtor 7200 RPM ATA100 (w/Promise controller card)...WOW!
Not only does it load the OS faster, it loads apps much faster, too. My brother-in- law, (who's an ex Navy telecomm tech), was shocked at the performance of my sys. Said it's "the fastest **** PII400 he's ever seen"- and he's now in networking. No, my PC isn't overclocked. (I'm about to upgrade to PIII 1Ghz, why bother?)
I'm not gonna get in a pee-pee match about what brand is better. There are some fine offerings out there. But I am happy with my Maxtor.
7200RPM ATA100? Gotta love it!

[poweroid]

We are UK experts in hard disk performance. See: http://www.bestpricecomputers.ltd.uk/products/tests.htm

We do thousands of tests every month on hard disks. While we don't post extensive results (like Anandtech and Dr Tom) we do keep records of the results for our own internal use (and to keep us ahead in the UK market :-) ).

7200 rpm IDE disks are certainly faster, but some are a lot faster than others. The IBMs are superior by a wide margin. WD and SG Barracudda seem to be the slowest 7200s. Note here that other issues (like enabling DMA, using the right cable etc) do impact. See: http://www.bestpricecomputers.ltd.uk...e/perform2.htm

Surprisingly SCSI disks are not showing up faster than the IBM IDE 7200 deskstars. Even the 10K rpm scsi ultra 160 don't record a significantly higher disk winmark (Disk Winmark is not infallible so we do use other speed tests as well) than a 7200 IDE! Contrary to some comments here I don't believe that IDE disks come in 10,000 rpm (or is that Firewire?).

When it comes to striping (RAID): Striping to 2x7200 will give you a big boost over just using one 7200. Striping to 4 hard disks instead of 2 doesn't present any speed advantages and the differences between 2x5400 and 2x7200 is not as much as the difference between standard 5400 vs 7200 rpm disks.

THE ATA100 is of course a big joke. No hard disk comes near the 100 MB/sec transfer rate. More important is the IDE controller. The Promise controller on motherboards like the old Asus A7V is actually substantially faster than the VIA 686B southbridge on AMD 761 chipset motherboards, or ANYTHING in the Intel range of motherboards.

The Highpoint RAID controllers give a slightly better striping performance than similar Promise IDE RAID controllers. Suggestion: Don't buy the RAID controller on its own. Motherboards like Abit's KT7A RAID include the HPT controller on board.

Let me stop babbling now :-)

Comments, challenges, suggestions? I look forward to them.

Webmaster www.bestpricecomputers.ltd.uk

[MTAtech]

I agree with all of you who said 7200's are faster than 5400's. All the research shows the same thing. It was also my experience when I changed to 7200 and cloned my old drive onto the new one.

In addition, most 7200 drives are also ATA66 or ATA100 while older 5400's are usually ATA33. This gives potentially* more performance. (When using ATA66/100 one must use a 80 wire cable and the motherboard must support the higher transfer rate.)

*As poweroid said, drives haven't achieved ATA100 transfer rates yet but I believe they are greater than ATA33 rates. Therefore, there should be some improvement.

[This message has been edited by MTAtech (edited 05-31-2001).]

[PaulG]

Hi,guys,

It is interesting what you wrote in this "nobody knows what's about" matter.
ATA interface speeds.
The given rates (33,66,100) are the max.transfer rates usually quoted for the electronics the HDD's are equipped with, mechanical transfer potential is much less, hence the speed increase from 5,400 to 7K2 or 10K.
Look www.tomshardware.com for comparisons of recent HDD's in all above speed branches.
Finally it seems the current available mechanical limit is around the 50 Mb/s mostly seen from the newest 30-60 GB models where the number of platters is higher.
However, I would like to emphasize an other issue which is almost as interesting as the original question (sorry, but it is about how to choose the right HDD for myself). Particularly, the noise. It's common that a higher speed HDD is noisier, taking the bearing's noise but it is less disturbing than the seeking krrrraaakk-krrrraaaak.
Recently I bought 5-6 HDD's (WD 7200, 20GB, 15,3GB, Quantum 7200 30GB, IBM SCSI 7200 10,2 GB, and now a Fujitsu 5400 rpm 20,3 GB)
Best of all the 5400 rpm Fujitsu, quick like hell - yes, this is the quickest, see later -and very-very quiet.
Working on my "build the quietest PC possible" project I choosen the latter with a Transcend TS-ASL-3 mobo (Intel 815 chipset).I have decreased the speed of my PIII to 600 (orig. it was o/c to 900@133) and soldered the cpu-fan's ground cable to +5V for less fan noise.
I use Win98 again (not SE !!! ) and see wonder! the system is the quickest I have ever built. Boot time is somewhat like with ME and all the operation is immediate.
I tried all the combinations with different HDD's, chipsets (Intel,Via) mobos, cpu's and RAM's.
Conclusion is it's like a synergy, some HDD's work better with particular chipsets, the newest HDD's are quicker than older ones and offer higher capacity for almost the same price and you can choose even a really quiet one.
Taking the rest, in the real world applications the difference is marginal and not worth the cost difference.
All the new drives are quick enough to forget this factor (be sure of 2MB buffer), look at capacity, noise and warranty(reliability).

[bwlegan]

I think you'll find that the newer 7200s have shorter access times.

When booting up the system you have a lot of head movement with relatively small amounts of data being trandferred. Possibly similar in some games. No! probably not, you dump as much as possible into RAM. Anyway, under these conditions, access time is the critical factor, with respect to throughput.

General purpose HDDs still have access times at about 10ms. My 7200, has been timed at between 5, and 6ms. It makes a big difference to your defrag time.

[elroy]

IN REGARDS TO NOISE: I just read that the ATA100 spec includes noise specs. Maxtor has a utility called "amset" [accoustic management settings] With this utility you can set your HD to LOUD-fastest, QUIETER-pretty fast, or SILENT-kinda slow. The article I read said the middle setting barely hurt performance while the silent setting cut performance by 35%. They also said that this is part of the ATA100 spec and applies to all the brands of ATA100 drives. One other thing to take note of is that Maxtor is shipping all their drives in the SILENT mode so they come with poor speed performance right out of the box. Other brands are shipped in the faster modes. The author said he had successfully used Maxtor's amset utility on other brand drives too, but this is at your own risk of course. Wish I knew where I read this...... online somewhere.

[edtrip]

Crunchyriff writes......
"For me, YES! There is a BIG difference.
I went from a 8.4Gb Maxtor 5400 DMA33 to a 60Gb Maxtor 7200 RPM ATA100 (w/Promise controller card)...WOW!"

I'd like to know which of those two factors is a BIGGER influence, going 5400 to 7200, OR going from udma33 to ultra100?
I would definitely guess the latter.

Early this year I put a 15gb quantum 7200 in my PC and I definitely see improved boot time, faster loads and quicker defrags. But hell, I'd hope so, I was replacing a 3yr old WD 2.5 gb that maxed out at, I think, PIO mode4. So even in this case, where's the real improvement lie, in the faster spindle speed OR in DOUBLE the throughput?
Now I've added a WD 8.4 5400 as a slave and it loads pretty fast too.

[My drives, though both udma66 are on a super7 mobo and maxed out at udma33]

My question is this..... Would I see a substantial improvement if I went with the 100/66 IDE cable and a Promise 66 card?
(and it's almost a stupid question, because on the basis of what I've just said, it seems like a no brainer)

[booya]

about the guy sayin that there is a big difference of price between 7200 and 5400

my awnser is i just bought 2 40 gig 7200 rpm ata100 maxtor diamondmax 60 series for 170 can each heheh no tax and since they sell 235 in stor and with the tax about 275 hehe i got a free 110 $ rebate lol do not buy in store

[ColinTofCairns]

An issue not addressed in this discussion is the difference between operating temperatures of the two drives. The 7.2K rpm HD generates significantly more heat than that of the 5.4K rpm HD. This is an important installation and/or purchasing consideration if one lives/works in a hot & humid environment without airconditioning.
During the monsoon season (the "Wet season") my working environment regularly attains ambient temperatures of 40+°C (104+°F). Consequently, in a hot environment a system that generates the least heat during operation must prevail.