5400rpm vs. 7200rpm

[sash1]

Okay, I know someone did an article on this. And I was almost positive it was firingsquad, until I couldn't find the article on their site! Then I looked on Toms, no go. Then here; again, couldn't find it. Anyone know where this test was done?

And if you can't find it, anyone want to do a quick one for me or just give me some hard evidence that 7200rpm is in fact, a lot better than 5400rpm. I know it is, but I need this test to show to other and I need a little help.

Thanks a lot,

~Aunix

 

[jonmcc33]

There are a ton of sites that have talked about it, I recall seeing a review a long time ago but I can't find it now.

I found this, but all the do is recommend it saying that it's "much faster".

http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-2138-122C358A-3941B98E-prod1

There is a performance difference from what I've seen. Whether it's large or small I can't recall, but 7200RPM is better.

 

[sash1]

and benchmarks to look at?

Thanks,

~Aunix

 

[Paulson]

Just tell whoever it is you're trying to convince this:

The hard drive is like the slowest component in a computer, so why put in a slow hard drive? You want the fastest hard drive you can get to make up for the deficit the hard drive already is creating...

 

[Rand]

With a difference that significant one hardly needs benchmarks, you can easily 'feel' the difference between a modern 5400RPM HDD and an equivalent generation 7200RPM HDD. HDD's can make a tremendous difference in the 'feel' of the system.
Unlike small processor/graphics card upgrades where you may not visually see the difference, with HDD's you definitely can when it's a jump from 5400RPM to 7200RPM.

For benchmarks on varying 5400 and 7200RPM drives check out StorageReview

 

[Anubis]

i have both a 5400 and a 7200 RPS drive on my comp and the 7200 is definitly faster. i have win installed on it because of that. you can really tell when axcessing the slower one sometimes it has to spool up. and in my expirence burning at high speeds 12x+ dosent work off a 5400 drive i put teh stuff on teh other drive and it will burn fine at 20x. so i say spend the extra $$ and get the faster one

 

[Leokor]

I happen to have a 5400 rpm drive, a 7200 rpm drive, a 10000 rpm drive, and a 15000 rpm drive. Guess what, they do feel their rpms.

Leo

 

[Ragz]

I have these drives in my system:

seagate 7200 baracuda ATA IV (ST340016a) drive
seagate 5400 U series (ST340810a) drive

Currently I am using the barracuda as the boot drive with win 98. I have win xp with NTFS on the other one that I use currently to lurk around win xp to see how stable it is etc. Eventually I will use only one OS...mostly XP and I was wondering whether it would make sense to use the slower drive for the OS and the faster drive for data and games etc?

Thanks.

 

[kitkit201]

faster and slower seek time vs hot or hotter heheh,

simple as that , but 7200rpm cost more too!

 

[Budarow]

Does a 7200 RPM HD with ave. seek time of 8.5 mS make that much of a difference VS a 5400 RPM HD with ave. seek time of 9.5 Ms in GAMING with a 64 ddr video card (GF3 TI 200) and 512 MBs of PC2100 DDR RAM?

Thanks

 

[Kingofcomputer]

check the spec, compare the internal transfer rate, forget about the rpm and the interface speed, also the seek time, latency.

5400 rpm hd's internal sustained transfer rate is just little bit more than ATA33 rate,
7200 rpm hd's internal sustained transfer rate is still not over ATA66 rate.

The main factors affecting the real speed is rpm, seek time, latency, not interface speed.

 

[Jhhnn]

There's a lot to know about IDE HDD's, I'm certainly no expert.

In general, faster spindle speed means a faster drive, but that doesn't mean that all 7200rpm makes/models are noticeably faster than other 5400 units. It's like anything else, it depends on optimizations of firmware, electronics, etc. Well optimized 7200rpm drives boot and load programs noticeably faster than 5400rpm models, and give better performance when doing heavy multitasking or any chore that demands use of the swapfile. They generally run hotter and noisier as well.

While the interface has some effect, it's small, even the best drives don't make very good use of the ATA66 spec. From what I've read, the only real advantage to the ATA100 spec is better error correction and other technical considerations. A moped can go a little faster down a superhighway than a two lane road, but it's still a moped.

As already mentioned, StorageReview is a terrific resource, generally regarded as the best concerning HDD's.