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Is 7200rpm really that much better then 5400rpms?

I

ILikeSprite

Banned
I am looking to buy a new hard drive and the 7200 rpms are a lot more expensive then the 5400rpms. Is there really any difference between the two? Both can transfer at 100MB/s so what is the difference?
 
Both are CAPABLE of hitting 100MB/sec (assuming ATA/100), but that rarely happens. To answer your question, yes, 7200RPM drives are noticeably faster than 5400RPM drives particularly during seek and sustained transfers. If it's going to be a boot drive, then I would definitely go with the 7200RPM; if it's going to be used just for storage then save some money and go with a 5400RPM.
 
I agree... they definitely do make a difference when accessing the drive. But they are sometimes more noisy than the 5400rpm drives.
 
7200 RPM drives are really noticably faster. The most dramatic example is about a year or two ago (I loose track of time) when I replaced my 5400 RPM Western Digital boot drive with a 7200 RPM Western Digital. I kept the same Windows 98 install - so all software and the OS was the same. My boot time decreased by a good 23 seconds!

I now own four 7200 RPM drives and think the $20-$40 price difference is well worth it. After memory/CPU HD performance affect overall system speed the most.

Go 7200!

 
For the same price I can get a 60GB 7200rpm I can get an 80GB 5400 rpm. I can't afford much higher and I dunno if losing 20GB just for 7200rpm is worth it....
 
If your comparing a modern 7200RPM drive to a modern 5400RPM drive then yes the difference is quite noticeable indeed, even for basic uses.
If you intend to work off this drive I would definitely go with 7200RPM, it's undoubtedly worth losing the 20GB capacity for the performance boost... it will be easily noticeable even without benchmarks.

If it's just being used as a storage drive, then I'd say go with the 5400RPM to get the larger capacity.
 
Why do you think a lot of members on this board want IDE drives at 10,000 rpm already. 😛

Yea 7200 rpm beats the snot out of 5400.
 
I have 2 7200RPMs ina RAID0 config, a friend has the same with 5400RPMs and I can notice no difference. However, I used a 5400 RPM & a 7200 RPM drive (separately) while I RMAed one of my RAID drives and there was a very noticable difference.

Just my experience.
 
I've got 3 systems.....all with 1-1.7ghz AMD Athlons, all with 256MB+ RAM, ect...

One has a 5400rpm Maxtor, one a 7200rpm Seagate & one a 10,000rpm Quantum. The 10,000 rpm one is obviously fastest, and the 7200rpm one isn't in 2nd place by too much (it's a noticable, but not annoying speed difference), the 5400rpm drive however is painfully slow. It seems like you're spending half your time waiting for the hard drive light to go out....very discouraging.
 
Gee - think you got some good opinions here? LOL! I started using 7200rpm drives (Seagates) over 5 years ago when they first started appearing - paid a premium for it, others thought I was crazy. I'll tell ya, it was probably one of the best decisions I made, forgot how much quicker these things were until I started playing around on other friends systems with 5400rpm drives. Oh well, go get em!

-VTrider
 
All I know is that right now I'm using a 4500rpm ATA33 Caviar drive right now (don't ask) and I definately notice a super difference. Programs take forever to load and it seems that my cpu is way too fast for the hd to keep up. I can't wait for my X15 to get here
 


<< All I know is that right now I'm using a 4500rpm ATA33 Caviar drive right now (don't ask) and I definately notice a super difference. Programs take forever to load and it seems that my cpu is way too fast for the hd to keep up. I can't wait for my X15 to get here >>



I feel your pain....I went from my 10k scsi to a 4500rpm caviar for a couple of weeks to test out a linux config....dang that thing was slow...even in linux (ya gotta figure I wasn't multi-tasking much considering my no0b status in linux)!!
 
You have to remember that areal density has an impact on transfer rate as well. If two drives have the same areal density then the 7200rpm drive will be faster overall, generally speaking. But if the 5400 rpm drive has a higher areal density it could have just as high a transfer rate as the 7200rpm drive. Of course the seek time will be lower for the 5400rpm drive.

I use a fast 7200rpm drive for my boot drive since it is often grabbing many small files, seek time is very important here.

For my other drives I use 5400rpm models with high areal density, at least 20GB/platter. The most disk intensive thing I do with them is video capture, a mainly sequential operation. I don't have any problems with dropped frames.
 
There isn't much point in going with a 5400RPM drive. They aren't that much cheaper than 7200RPM drives, but they offer a big decrease in performance compared to modern 7200RPM drives.
 
I found a deal on the Hot Deals forum for a Maxtor 100GB 7200rpm for $179. It was more then I could really afford but I jumped on it anyway. 😀
 
On my main machine I use a 27Gb 7200 drive as my main OS and appliacations drive and I use a 40Gb 5400 drive for mass storage. On my secondary/backup machine I have a 4.3Gb 5400 drive. I notice a huge difference in speed when I go from one machine to the other.

If you are looking for a drive to store your OS get a 7200, if its just for storage I'd stick with a 5400.
 


<< Of course the seek time will be lower for the 5400rpm drive. >>


It's the other way around, the 7200 will have lower seek times.
 


<< There isn't much point in going with a 5400RPM drive. They aren't that much cheaper than 7200RPM drives, but they offer a big decrease in performance compared to modern 7200RPM drives. >>



Unless you are looking for quiet. If you compare equivalent drives, the faster spinning one will have a louder whine. The clatter of a read-write head is not nearly as annoying to me as the whine of a spinning drive.
 
<<Unless you are looking for quiet. If you compare equivalent drives, the faster spinning one will have a louder whine. The clatter of a read-write head is not nearly as annoying to me as the whine of a spinning drive. >>

Thats not nessecerily true. It depends what generation of 5400 or 7200 HDs you buy. Sure an early 7200 was loud. But many new ones are pretty quite.
 
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