are big hard drives slower than small ones?

[srennick]

hi all,

recently bought a 250gb WD HDD (model: wdc wd2500jb-00rea0
s/n: wd-wcank6246791).

i was first concerned about it when i started making a clunking sound while playing games, but was able to eliminate following one of the suggested steps on WD's website (moving the drive away from other components, in my case, the floppy).

but i do have another concern. my new drive seems to do a lot of grinding (reading/writing); a lot more than my old drive did. this slows the system down, overall.

which brings me to my question: are bigger drives slower (this one's 7200 rpm, as was my old 80gb drive)? i find myself defragging every few days (yes, I do do a lot of deleting of files, etc.), way more than I did with the old drive.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thx.

 

[Mondoman]

No, it shouldn't be any slower. Go to the WD web site and download whatever diagnostic software they provide. Use it to do a thorough test on your drive; if there's a noticeable problem with the drive, the software should find it.

 

[jaguarskx]

No, they do not run slower. But they consume more power and generally run hotter than smaller drives.

 

[casemods]

They will be slower to access data since there is a lot more.

 

[chuckshissle]

There's not much of a difference between the capacity. But I've heard that, although I haven't seen any test, with the same cache and rpm bigger hd are usually faster since it uses bigger platter.

 

[MagicPants]

Generally speaking large hard drives are faster than small hardrives.

The reason for this is simple. Given that two HDs are the same physical size and rotate at the same speed, the larger HD will have a higher data density. This means that more data will pass under its head in a given amount of time.

If your hardrive is chugging it sounds like it is accessing virutal memory, meaning it is out of physical memory(ram).

 

[casemods]

Generally speaking large hard drives are faster than small hardrives.

The reason for this is simple. Given that two HDs are the same physical size and rotate at the same speed, the larger HD will have a higher data density. This means that more data will pass under its head in a given amount of time.

If your hardrive is chugging it sounds like it is accessing virutal memory, meaning it is out of physical memory(ram).

I don't think that data passes any faster on a larger drive, given all specs are the same except the capacity. Sure more data will, but not faster IMO

 

[1Tanker]

Generally speaking large hard drives are faster than small hardrives.

The reason for this is simple. Given that two HDs are the same physical size and rotate at the same speed, the larger HD will have a higher data density. This means that more data will pass under its head in a given amount of time.

If your hardrive is chugging it sounds like it is accessing virutal memory, meaning it is out of physical memory(ram).

I don't think that data passes any faster on a larger drive, given all specs are the same except the capacity. Sure more data will, but not faster IMOYes, to get higher capacity HD's..there are 3 ways to do it.

1.Add more platters
2.Increase platter density(ie. increase from 100GB platters to 133GB platters)
3.Do both

Generally, the best method is to increase platter aural density, as increasing platter count creates more heat and noise.. has more bearings(that can fail) thereby potentially increasing warranty/reliability problems. Higher density does increase the amount of data passing the head, which increases the transfer rates...but not access time.

If you read some reviews of more recent (7,200 r.p.m.) drives, you will see that, for the most part, the bigger drives are also the faster ones.

To OP: Check to make sure that DMA is enabled in Windows. DMA is the default setting, but sometimes it can reset to PIO mode for unexplained reasons. GL