Bigger Hard Drives = Faster Speeds?

[NWCook]

I heard if two hard drives have the same speed specs and are from the same product line, the bigger one would have a slight speed advantage due to greater disk densities. (Due to having to travel less distance to find the correct information.) Is this true, and is the speed difference substantial or not really noticable? Thanks.

 

[LordPhoenix]

Not noticable.

 

[Mrvile]

I doubt the difference between any 7.2k drives are noticeable. But 10k is definately faster (not to mention louder) than 7.2s.

 

[JBT]

The 200 probably just has another platter.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: Mrvile
I doubt the difference between any 7.2k drives are noticeable. But 10k is definately faster (not to mention louder) than 7.2s.

Not much louder. The 2nd Gen Raptor (ie 74gig) is very quiet do to the use of fluid bearings.

-Kevin

 

[Dug]

No noticable difference.

Head to head comparison

The 160 has 2 80GB platters
The 200 has 2 100GB platters

 

[raildogg]

i have heard bigger hd's perform better, ie speed. so yes

 

[EULA]

Originally posted by: NWCook
I heard if two hard drives have the same speed specs and are from the same product line, the bigger one would have a slight speed advantage due to greater disk densities. (Due to having to travel less distance to find the correct information.) Is this true, and is the speed difference substantial or not really noticable? Thanks.

The 160GB drive is probably identical to the 200. It simply did not pass specification for a 200...

 

[NWCook]

Thanks for all the helpful information. So basically a 200GB would technically be faster than a 160GB model in the same product line, but the difference would be so small you couldn't really tell. Correct?

 

[Pariah]

The Seagate 200GB 7200.7 is a bit unique in that it is the only Seagate drive that uses 100GB platters while the other drives in the family use 80GB platters. Usually all the drives within a family use the same platters within a few GB's. Normally the more dense platters (indicating a newer generation) would yield higher performance, though this doesn't appear to be the case with the 200GB Seagate which may be part of the reason it was tacked on to the 7200.7 line rather than being given a new identifier.

A larger capacity drive will be faster than a smaller drive with the same platters for a set amount of data, though depending on usage it likely won't be perceptible. If you have a 100GB's of data on a 100GB drive and a 200GB drive, the drive has to move across the entire platter surface for some data on the 100GB while less than half for the 200GB drive (there is more data on outside tracks than inside). Also, data on the inside of the 100GB drive will likely be able to be read no faster than around 30-35MB/s, while the same data on the 200GB drives which isn't even at the halfway point of the platters is probably in a 45-50MB/s zone which will definitely be noticable for streaming applications though not so much for typical office application/gaming applications.

 

[gobucks]

there are some other things that make disks faster, as well. For example, cache memory. Stay away from 2MB, 8MB is normal, 16MB (i.e. the new maxtor diamondmax 10 or maxline III) is currently the best 7200RPM drive you can get.