RPM

[Wassup393]

How much faster is a 7200RPM than a 5400RPM? Is it worth the extra expenditure?

Sam

 

[bgross22]

That is rotations per minute. I would say it is worth the extra money as long as there is not another hard drive slaved to it that is slower.

 

[bgross22]

Here is a little something I just read...


Improved hard drive platter density means you can store more data in smaller space. So while the rotation of the disk remains a steady 7200 rpm, the amount of data the drive is reading continues to grow.

 

[bgross22]

Found another one.. This will be the last one I promise.

Q: What is the difference in performance between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm drive speeds?
A: One important performance advantage in a hard drive operating at 7200 rpm is the speed with which you can retrieve files. At 7200 rpm the seek time is reduced substantially.

 

[ashpp]

> How much faster is a 7200RPM than a 5400RPM? Is it worth > the extra expenditure?

I find one of the components that is a bottleneck in most systems is the HD.
Yes go for a 7200 - if you can afford go for a Western Digital Special Edition 8MEG cache.

Ash.

 

[smah]

Just remember that the faster drives also tend to run hotter. Make sure you have enough cooling in your case.

 

[cdogg]

It is like comparing a 48x CDROM drive to a 32x. In many situations, you will notice an advantage of having the 7200RPM drive, especially during seek times on the outer edge of the platters. However, a "good" 5400RPM drive will perform quite similarly to a 7200RPM drive on the inner portion of the platters, showing very little difference in seek times and read/write transfers. Benchmarks prove that.

Overall, it seems that the industry standard now has moved from 5400RPM to 7200RPM. At first, it didn't make much difference, but now that the density of drives have grown significantly, I'd have to recommend going with 7200RPM. I'd definitely follow Ashley's advice and look for an 8MB cache. Western Digital was the first to have it, but drives from IBM (IBM 180GXP) and Maxtor are starting to come with large caches too!

Just don't expect that it will be 33% faster overall just because the rotational speed is 33% quicker...


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[den21]

You can actually see a difference if you compare a 7200rpm drive with a 5400rpm drive.For exp while installing windows XP Pro on my PC with a 7200rpm drive it only takes me around 15 minutes tops while using a 5400rpm drive usually takes me roughly half an hour or more.

 

[paparazi]

The differance in price between the budget 5,400's and the 72's is between 10-15%, which for a medium capacity drive may be as little as $10 but the performance gain all round can be quite substantial.
Often the choice will come down to what kind of machine you are building, if you are building a Celeron, Duron based system you must have already made some budgetary/performance decisions, so it would follow that in this type of system a cheaper 5,400rpm device will surfice, this may even apply with a low end Athlon XP or P4 if speed is not an issue but if performance remotely comes into the equation then there is absolutely no dought the extra few dollars will make more differance spent in this area than any other.
IBM 7,200's are amongst the quickest, Western Digital (special addition 8mb cache) take the performance crown but are a little more expensive, seagate barracuda's V's are the quietist and I think the most reliable? and the rest very close behind.
WD's, Maxtor and fujitsu make the best 5,4's
I believe though the small differance in cost is money well spent.
Martin Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[Wassup393]

I think I'll take the 40GB WD 7200 with 8MB cache as here in oz it's only $60AUD than a basic 20GB 5400.

Sam