[SOLVED] Western Digital 4TB HDD vs WB Blue 1TB 7200 RPM?

[hamada.hosny93]

Hi guys, I already have 2 HDDs in my PC, both of them Western Digital Blue 1TB 7200 RPM.

Due to needs of more storage space, i decided to get myself Western Digital Blue 4TB HDD, will be used for gaming only.

But there's speed differences between both types of HDDs (7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM).
I checked that benchmark, and found the real difference is just 5-9% only:

https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/WD-Blue-1TB-2012-vs-WD-Blue-4TB-2015/1779vs3523

But i wanted to ask here again if there will be performance difference or just a little bit which will not affect anything.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Gerald6049]

There is will be a performance difference, but you will not really notice the difference.
The only thing you will notice is loading times.

 

[hamada.hosny93]

There is will be a performance difference, but you will not really notice the difference.
The only thing you will notice is loading times.

How much time for loading, also how much for the performance difference??
Is the 5% average gonna make a really big difference ?
Sorry for bad english.

 

[Gerald6049]

How much time for loading, also how much for the performance difference??
Is the 5% average gonna make a really big difference ?
Sorry for bad english.

I've try 5400, 7200 and 10.000RPM HDD, in-game they perform similar.
No performance (FPS) will be lost, so it will be fine.
There is no certainty in loading times, based on the game are you playing.
The difference around a few seconds maybe, since I never count loading times.

 

[hamada.hosny93]

Thank you so much for that info.

I've try 5400, 7200 and 10.000RPM HDD, in-game they perform similar.

Now here, i need to ask about something to be more clear, what i'm thinking to buy is the WD Blue 4TB 5400 RPM, not the 1 or 2TB 5400 RPM, according to specs, its different between all these types of HDDs, they are same speed 5400 RPM yes, but they are different in read and write speeds, 4TB has the higher speeds in read and write to be more clear, you can check that in the link i attached to my main thread.
While you're talking generally about RPMs only.

So you got what i mean here, right?

 

[Gerald6049]

Thank you so much for that info.



Now here, i need to ask about something to be more clear, what i'm thinking to buy is the WD Blue 4TB 5400 RPM, not the 1 or 2TB 5400 RPM, according to specs, its different between all these types of HDDs, they are same speed 5400 RPM yes, but they are different in read and write speeds, 4TB has the higher speeds in read and write to be more clear, you can check that in the link i attached to my main thread.
While you're talking generally about RPMs only.

So you got what i mean here, right?

So you asking why 4TB (5400RPM, 175MB/S) version which have more transfer rate get lost by 1TB (7200RPM, 150MB/s) version ?
Sorry I got misperception before.
Then, maybe this solved old thread will help.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...more-important-rpm-or-the-read-speed.1715301/

 

[Mario Italia]

Not a big deal .
I wouldn't hesitate to use a 5400 RPM hard drive, but I also wouldn't use a spinning platter magnetic drive as the OS drive, unless I had zero other choices.

Even just a cheap 128 GB SSD for Windows will go a long way to making the whole system run in a fashion that just feels better.

For games that I insist on faster loading times, I install those to an SSD. For games that it doesn't matter for, use the hard drive. What you're going to find is, there are few games that absolutely require the speed an SSD will give you, and for those that don't, the speed difference between the 5400 - 7200 RPM drives (there's actually other speeds between, such as 5900 RPM as well) isn't going to matter. If your game doesn't play smoothly because you're running a 5400 RPM drive, it's still not going to play smoothly on a 7200 RPM drive.

If your games don't play smoothly, it's likely not going to be the fault of the hard drive.

Most games aren't bottlenecked by hard drive IO. If you're planning to run 16 GB or RAM. This will pretty much eliminate paging in games. I really wouldn't worry about the spindle speed of your hard drive. The difference will likely need to be benchmarked, in each game, to be seen. Only an SSD is going to give you a noticeable improvement there.

Short answer : yes, go for it, just don't install any open world game in it .

 

[hamada.hosny93]

So you asking why 4TB (5400RPM, 175MB/S) version which have more transfer rate get lost by 1TB (7200RPM, 150MB/s) version ?
Sorry I got misperception before.
Then, maybe this solved old thread will help.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...more-important-rpm-or-the-read-speed.1715301/

Not exactly, actually didn't understand well from that old thread but i think it's not what i have meant, use the link i'm attaching in my main topic to understand what i mean, however, i will try to clarify more:

• Average read and write speed of the WD Blue 1TB 7200 RPM is: (153 and 139) in order.
• Average read and write speed of the WD Blue 4TB 5400 RPM is: (147 and 136) in order.

Now let's look at the Peak Score:

• For the WD Blue 1TB 7200 RPM: (202 and 177).
• For the WD Blue 4TB 5400 RPM: (184, and 173).

Forget the other specs, difference in only by fractions so its almost the same.

That's the point i'm talking about, there's difference in rotational speed 7200 vs 5400 RPM.
But read/write speed which express the actual performance (i don't know, just guessing) not big difference.
Sorry but my knowledge and experience in that is little, but from my experience while we're talking about gaming and general performance also in other stuff like transferring data for example, i assume read means loading time in games, while write means adding new data to the disk.

I hope this clarification is fine.
And sorry for bad english, and sorry again if i said something wrong as my own knowledge is little.

 

[hamada.hosny93]

Short answer : yes, go for it, just don't install any open world game in it .

Yeah i understand what you mean, cuz open-world games usually takes much loading time, so its preferable to be installed on SSDs.
Thanks for that info BTW, but lemme ask you 1 more thing:
I have 7200 RPMs HDDs already and i'm fully aware about the problem of the loading time, does it gonna be the same on 5400 RPM HDD like the 7200 RPM one?? or it will be much worse?

 

[Mario Italia]

Yeah i understand what you mean, cuz open-world games usually takes much loading time, so its preferable to be installed on SSDs.
Thanks for that info BTW, but lemme ask you 1 more thing:
I have 7200 RPMs HDDs already and i'm fully aware about the problem of the loading time, does it gonna be the same on 5400 RPM HDD like the 7200 RPM one?? or it will be much worse?

It's gonna be slightly worse but not a day and light difference; with games like fallout 4 and watch dogs 2, a 7200 will have slightly less stuttering and more smoother loadings of assets.