Hard drives: 7200 vs 5400 rpm...how much of a difference?

[iLoveDivX]

I was wonderig what's the difference between 7.2k and 5.4k rpm. As far as time it takes to transfer, and what not. a friend of mine told me that the only major difference is when you do massive datas such as 10 gigs or something. he said besides that, doing a measly 200 meg transfer would only have a few seconds difference. first off, i want to know if he's right; and second, how much is a "few" seconds to be exact? are there any benchmark results that's been done on this?

 

[glugglug]

The RPMs makes more of a difference in access time than in transfer rate, meaning it matters more when dealing with lots of small files than on a large transfer.

A 5400RPM drive takes 11.1 ms per rotation, meaning access time = seek time + 5.6ms
A 7200RPM drive takes 8.3 ms per rotation, giving access time = seek time + 4.2ms

So assuming everything else about the drives is the same (not really the case but for simplification), the slower rotation will add 1.4ms to your average access time.

Transfer rates for large files are more dependent on the amount of data per track, which will generally be more on a higher capacity drive.

 

[ProviaFan]

The seek time makes a big difference in the apparent responsiveness of the system during periods of heavy disk access while multitasking.

 

[shr]

It certanly will make a fair diference for divx, or any other audio/video proccessing or recording

 

[formulav8]

To much honest. I haven't seen much if any difference by going from a 5400 to a 7200. Of course it is faster. I just couldn't really notice it in the real world.



Jason

 

[pillage2001]

Originally posted by: formulav8
To much honest. I haven't seen much if any difference by going from a 5400 to a 7200. Of course it is faster. I just couldn't really notice it in the real world.



Jason

You're not trying hard enough. I've noticed inprovements going from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm.

 

[iLoveDivX]

Originally posted by: glugglug
The RPMs makes more of a difference in access time than in transfer rate, meaning it matters more when dealing with lots of small files than on a large transfer.

A 5400RPM drive takes 11.1 ms per rotation, meaning access time = seek time + 5.6ms
A 7200RPM drive takes 8.3 ms per rotation, giving access time = seek time + 4.2ms

So assuming everything else about the drives is the same (not really the case but for simplification), the slower rotation will add 1.4ms to your average access time.

Transfer rates for large files are more dependent on the amount of data per track, which will generally be more on a higher capacity drive.

so what's the verdict to you?

 

[Whitecloak]

it makes a noticeable difference to the responsiveness of the system. I had a p3-933 with a 5400rpm hd and I was thinking of upgrading the processor due to the "slowness" of the system. I decided not to do so when I got a 7200 rpm hdd as the system seemed to far faster to me.

 

[erikiksaz]

People asked this same questions years ago, and i would tell them there was a large difference, in my experiences.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

even the spec on paper says 20-25% internal transfer rate difference.
it's impossible not to see a difference in action.
try to count the time windows loading up, starting 3d fps games, etc.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: pillage2001

Originally posted by: formulav8
To much honest. I haven't seen much if any difference by going from a 5400 to a 7200. Of course it is faster. I just couldn't really notice it in the real world.



Jason

You're not trying hard enough. I've noticed inprovements going from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm.

Same here; I moved to a 7200rpm drive, and I never want to go back. Scarier, is that my secondary system is being used for video editing - why's that scary? It's getting 2 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 soon.
I'd want the 3-drive RAID for my main system though for the redundancy. (2 striped and 1 parity, can never remember if that's RAID 0+1 or RAID 5, or if they're the same.)

 

[StanTheMan]

back when i used in9x with lots of startup, it cut my loading time from 1:15 tp 0:55 (mm:ss)

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: pillage2001

Originally posted by: formulav8
To much honest. I haven't seen much if any difference by going from a 5400 to a 7200. Of course it is faster. I just couldn't really notice it in the real world.

Jason

You're not trying hard enough. I've noticed inprovements going from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm.

Same here; I moved to a 7200rpm drive, and I never want to go back. Scarier, is that my secondary system is being used for video editing - why's that scary? It's getting 2 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 soon.
I'd want the 3-drive RAID for my main system though for the redundancy. (2 striped and 1 parity, can never remember if that's RAID 0+1 or RAID 5, or if they're the same.)

RAID 0+1 is four disks - two striped pairs that are mirrored. RAID 5 is three or more, with parity information for redundancy being alternated to various disks in the array...somehow (I don't understand it exactly, but you could always check the FAQ if you want more information).

PS: RAID 0+1 can be done with most low-end controllers, so it might be cheaper, even though a minimum or multiple (not sure, or just even number?) of four disks is required. RAID 5 is considered a high-end option although it can be found in places like 3ware's IDE RAID controllers, it seems to be usually confined to the SCSI RAID controllers.

 

[TBird151]

Same here - when I moved from 5400 to 7200 I noticed a MAJOR difference in speed. As for the new computer, it'll be running 7200rpm drives in a RAID fashion...so I should notice even more of a speed difference (especially with DivX.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: jliechty

RAID 0+1 is four disks - two striped pairs that are mirrored. RAID 5 is three or more, with parity information for redundancy being alternated to various disks in the array...somehow (I don't understand it exactly, but you could always check the FAQ if you want more information).

PS: RAID 0+1 can be done with most low-end controllers, so it might be cheaper, even though a minimum or multiple (not sure, or just even number?) of four disks is required. RAID 5 is considered a high-end option although it can be found in places like 3ware's IDE RAID controllers, it seems to be usually confined to the SCSI RAID controllers.

Ok; just read the FAQ on RAID; I'd want the RAID5 then if the opportunity ever arose. Performance and redundancy. Can't beat that.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: StanTheMan
back when i used in9x with lots of startup, it cut my loading time from 1:15 tp 0:55 (mm:ss)

 

[Booster]

Hard drives: 7200 vs 5400 rpm...how much of a difference?

5400RPM is slower, not much, but it's noticeable. Of course, if all that you do is running office apps and Internet, it'll be just fine, you'll not notice any major difference. 5400 RPM is considerably slower when loading the very latest games, IMO.

 

[Paulson]

I originally had a 5400RPM drive in a compaq 1ghz pc, and I was pissed. I took and put a 7200RPM drive in there within a week of buy the compaq (and now I'll only build my own PC's)

 

[DoctorBooze]

Somebody did a practical survey of an office full of heavy users a couple of years ago, noticed a 15% improvement in the people's productivity only because of the 7200rpm vs 5400rpm. I couldn't quite believe it'd make that much difference, but yes, your PC will be noticeably much faster booting, starting apps, and generally responsiveness will be better.

 

Originally posted by: Kingofcomputer
even the spec on paper says 20-25% internal transfer rate difference.
it's impossible not to see a difference in action.
try to count the time windows loading up, starting 3d fps games, etc.

Sums it up pretty well.

 

[CTho9305]

note that the in-game performance will be the same - only things like loading levels will be faster.

 

[iLoveDivX]

does anyone have a site with the benchmarks and numbers? i realize that 7200 is "considerably" faster, i just need to know exactly how much faster.

 

[BFG10K]

For everyday tasks (application launch, file copying, booting etc) 7200 rpm drives are definitely significantly faster than 5400 rpm drives. There really is little point to getting 5400 rpm drives.

 

[CraigRT]

This subject is beat to death... why don't they just ban 5400 RPM drives... the price difference is too little to skimp on the hdd... it's already the slowest part in the computer... 7200 RPM should be standard.. 5400 sucks.

 

[Hulk]

shr-

It certanly will make a fair diference for divx, or any other audio/video proccessing or recording



I have to disagree on this one. There will be NO difference in DivX encoding. I don't think there is ANY processor out there that will encode a VOB file to DivX format faster than a hard drive can write.

Also, audio/video processing. The cpu is always the bottleneck when processing. If you are moving around a lot of large files, then the 7200 rpm drive will make a difference.

Finally, any 5400 rpm drive on the market today can sustain the 3MB/sec or so needed for digital video recording via 1394. In fact, I use a 5400 rpm WDC drive to record video in a lossless compressed format (huffyuv codec) without dropping frames. That codec requires about 10MB/sec write speed and I don't drop frames!


I've tried 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives as both the master and slave (for audio/video editing) and found that the 7200rpm drive on the master (boot drive) make the system feel much "snappier." Of course 7200 rpm all around is the way to go.