5400rpm vs 7200

[Portizoa]

Should I be worried that my hard drive will lag at all since it has a lower RPM? I wasn't paying attention to the RPM when I ordered the laptop, so I guess that was a mistake. I have a decent processor and a lot of RAM and a 765m GPU, should I be worried though that my HDD will lag the OS and games? Should I get a new HDD instead with 7200RPM? Thanks.

 

[nukemaster]

If your games load into memory(most fps and many RTS games) it should be OK. The load times will be longer, but once in memory it does not matter.

Now MMO's or other games that load data on the fly may have more pop ins or slight pauses when getting more data.

Keeping the hard drive de-fragmented should help reduce any of these issues.

If you are going to replace a drive, an SSD would be the way to do due to extremely fast access times.

 

[Portizoa]

So would I have a lot of spurts and pauses when I play a game like Minecraft where the data is loaded as the game goes on? And I want to get an SSD, but it was too much money. Thanks.

 

[nukemaster]

I do not play mind craft, but I do not think it has lots to load as the blocks will be in memory already so the world it self(how the blocks are placed) tends to be sent from the server.

Minecraft can have lag just due to the number of blocks on screen.

 

[Portizoa]

Will there be any noticeable differences? I am not concerned about a couple seconds of boot time or a couple seconds more loading a map. But will it drive me insane because it takes like 5 minutes longer to load stuff?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

That's one of today's most common ploys to get a good sales price. All things being equal a 7200 rpm drive is 33% faster.

 

[nukemaster]

I personally use 5200/5400 rpm drives for file storage and for that they are great. I did have a 4200 rpm on my old laptop and a 5400 was noticeably faster.

I find the big thing with faster spindle speeds is access times.

5400 rpm is common for laptops as a middle ground for heat/noise/power consumption.

If you have the laptop already, see how you find it. If you do not like it, check out something like the WDC Black 2.5 inch drives.

Another option is seagates SSHDD's that have a normal hard drive(still 5400 rpm) and a small ssd(4-8 gigabytes depending on the model) to accelerate commonly used data.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Not all SSHDs are 5400 rpm....I use 7200 rpm models

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148837

 

[nukemaster]

I stand corrected.

Get that

 

[Portizoa]

Will I notice any VERY significant slowness? Like I said, a few seconds doesn't bother me, but 2-5 minutes would. I really don't want my awesome new rig to be dragged down by a slow hard drive. It's starting to worry me a lot.

 

[Portizoa]

Also, will video editing run smoothly? Keep in mind this will be with an i7-4700MQ and 16 GB of RAM.

 

[nukemaster]

I do not think you will loose full minutes of time.

If you are using the same drive for input and output the faster then spin rate the better because it will get from in(read) to out[write] faster.

Compressed video does not need fast data rates, but when the drive is also doing other things, access times are going to be the main concern.

I have a WDC Black 2TB(7200rpm) and Seagate LP(5900rpm). I also have a 1TB WDC Blue(7200) and Green[5400?] to compare. Pick a benchmark and I will see what I can do for you.