[downlowder]

I'm looking at the following 2 hard drives:

https://www.nowdirect.com/exec/partI...UI&categoryid=

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-NA-_-NA-_-NA


the Samsung green 5400 rpm drive has an 8.9 ms average seek time, while the hitachi 7200 rpm has an 8.5 ms average seek time. Other than that, they appear to be identical in every way. I am interested in the Samsung because it is supposed to be especially quiet, but reviews say that the Hitachi is pretty quiet too, at least for a 7200 rpm drive.


Is there a sufficient difference in performance? I thought rpm's only affected the drive's seek time. .4 ms seems to be a negligible difference to me.


Any help or advice would be appreciated.


Thanks,


d'ler

 

[theringnebula]

I am using WD "Green" drives that have a variable RPM from 5400 - 7200 and I love them. I don't think it's a big issue for HTPC use.

 

[cybrsage]



Quote:
Originally Posted by theringnebula /forum/post/15402867


I am using WD "Green" drives that have a variable RPM from 5400 - 7200 and I love them. I don't think it's a big issue for HTPC use.

They do not vary their RPM. WD listed it that way because the RPM is somewhere between 5400 and 7200. Most tests show they are running at 5400.



Personally, I use a WD non green drive (runs at 7200 RPM) for my OS HDD and the WD green drives for my storage drives.

 

[Dodgexander]

A 7200 drive will be quiet enough, however hitachis have been known to be the noisy'est'. Suggest you take a look at silentpcreview.com at their reviews of hard drives. I believe the WD 1TB and Samsung 1TB are the quietest TB 7200 models.


5400 is also fine for HTPC use, only difference you will see is with file transfer and booting times etc.

 

[mjfink]

Well, I can answer some of the theoretical parts of your question, the final "does it matter" is really a matter of your needs, and your desired user experience.


7200 RPM (7.2K) drives are faster then 5400 RPM drives. The seek time is better, which makes a difference for random IO (most of the things that you do on a regular basis are random IO) and a difference for sequential IO (things like ripping DVDs, and copying/moving huge files are sequential IO).


Basically, the 7.2K drive is going to be about 20% faster in everyday use. The question is, will you feel the difference at all? That really depends on what you're doing on the computer, and if you are at all HDD bound (is that the thing that's slowing you down). For example, a DVD rips in about 8 minutes on my computer, a faster HDD won't help one bit because the constraint is the DVD drive. However, when copying data from my computer to a SAN, I am now constrained by the HDD; a 7.2K drive would do it about 20% faster then my 5400 RPM drive.


If you're talking about the OS install drive, the 7.2K drive will provide slightly improved performance. There are times (almost always) when your computer is bound by the HDD during OS boots, program loads, etc. These times will be improved by the 7.2K drives.


I work in the storage business, and, as such, have access to all kinds of HDD's to test and work with from a performance standpoint. I've had my desktop PC booting off 48 15K 144GB fibre channel hard drives with a direct 4Gb FC connection (that's MUCH faster then anything you're going to put internally in a PC). Does it make a difference? Yes. Is it "massively" faster then my internal drives? Yes! But the important question, do you notice it when running most operations? Nope, not one iota. Word still loads "instantly". DVDs still rip at normal speed. Movie transcoding takes exactly the same amount of time.


If I was building a desktop PC today, I would always use 7.2K drives, not because they are much "better", but because there are times on a standard PC where you will be HDD constrained, and this can help for those times. However, for most of the things that you are going to do, the difference will be very small.