5400 rpm hard drive versus 7200 rpm performance

[idaboi]

Hello,
why does hp put a 5400 1TB hard drive in rather thatn 7200 rpm? will I notice much difference if I buy the p6340 with a 5400 rpm drive?

 

[r_manic]

Well in the first place it's cheaper; they can offer the PC to you at a lower price. And now, if you buy another system with another 5400 rpm drive you won't notice the difference. Just be prepared to wait a while when you're backing up gigs of data!

 

[sub mesa]

5400rpm is the smart choice when you are storing large files, for example when using the HDD to store backups, movies, pictures, archives; etc.

If, however, you will be using the HDD to act as system drive, running applications from it that care about latency instead of throughput, then you should pick 7200rpm HDDs or even better; SSDs.

 

[idaboi]

Best answer selected by idaboi.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

When driving to work, you get there faster driving 72 kph (44 mph) or 54 kph (33 mph) ?

5400 rpm drives have two advantages ... use less power and cheaper.....downside, slower.

 

[sub mesa]

They are hardly any slower for sequential I/O. Maybe 10%; something you will never notice.

They are slower when it comes to latency/IOps though, but sequential I/O is very good for 5400rpm drives. Their data density is so high, they even beat 10.000rpm disks with Sequential I/O, even though they only spin half as fast the data density makes up for it.

So the prefered medium to store large bulky files on, is 5400rpm drives. 7200rpm+ drives are quickly becoming less useful and eventually will disappear.

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

well the WD green drives spin at 5400, but have 4 platters instead of the usual 3 (for 1tb drives)

25% slower because of lower speed, but 33% faster due to more platters.. ===> theoretically then 8% faster..
(just a theory)

my WD green does get faster speeds than some other 7200 RPM drives

 

[sub mesa]

The new WD Green's have 500GB platters, so 2-platters for 1.0TB, 3 for 1.5TB and 4 for 2.0TB.

The speed doesn't increase with the number of platters, it increases as the data density increases. Thus higher-capacity platters will result in higher sequential I/O.

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

well then I have a higher data density, anyways, I knew these WD green drives had some trick to compensate for the lower RPM speed

 

[xf59]

Well for those of you thinking more rpms is better, what it really comes down to is the IOPS, and I have a web article to prove it. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/how-higher-rpm-hard-drives-rip-you-off/322
i know there it's talking about 10K vs 15K but still, the concept is the same. By using that concept, quarter stroking your 5400 you should get better performance than say, your typical run of the mill 7200rpm.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey