500GB vs 320GB Hard Drive Speed

Hi,

A friend recently told me that 320GB HDDs were faster than 500GB HDDs because a 320GB drive was made of 2 X 160GB drives. So, according to him, the faster drives are 160GB, 320GB and 720GB... Is there any sense in what he told me ?? 500GB drive could be made of 2 X 250 GB drives... Are they ?

I'm thinking about a 7200rpm HDDs from Western Digital (WD Scorpio Black). Probably a 500GB (WD5000BEKT) or a 320GB (WD3200BEKT)...

What do you think ?

Thank you

 

I think he's mistaken. There is a lot more than platter density at work, and he is wrong about the platter density.

 

Go read Storagereview's take on the WD Scorpio Black 500gb. It includes the 320gb as a point of comparison. It even includes the new Seagate Momentus XT 500gb.

Short answer: The XT tears it up when booting or loading files you use commonly. When the flash does not come into play, the battle is between the two Scorpio Black's. Each is faster at different things, but overall I think you'll be hardpressed to argue that the 500gb would be a loss.

 

Even if it is faster, I doubt it makes much a difference in real world usage.

 

Your friend is talking out of his arse. There is no relation to total hard drive size and speed.

The only thing that comes even close to a relationship between size and speed is areal density. Areal density is the amount of data that you can store in a physical area (e.g. how many GB can you store in one square inch of platter space?). When you increase areal density, then more data is available in a smaller physical space - meaning that your hard drive does not need to spin around as much in seek operations trying to find data.

Areal density is the only thing that even possible relates size and speed. The more data you can store on a single platter, the faster the access. And the highest capacity platters are much larger than 160GB. So, your friend is wrong.

***BUT*** areal density has very little real-world impact on performance. Trying to buy a drive with the highest areal density is going to be a waste of your time and money. The idea of areal density is great in theory, but really has no impact to you.

If you need to buy a drive, simply buy the largest and fastest drive you can afford. Out of the two drives you suggested, the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200rpm drive would be the better choice. If you are willing to spend a bit more money ($130), you can get a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB and get a nice bump in speed.

 

Kent has a good explanation.

The only thing I'd add is that I've been reading about a number of reliability issues with the Seagate Momentus XT. While an updated firmware release has been made to correct some of these (the drive powers up and down due to issues in its power management routines), some people have reported it has not fixed their problems, and others, that it has disabled the drive's power management, leading to higher battery usage.

I wanted a Momentus XT myself until I started reading Seagate's forums. At this point, I went with a Scorpio Black 500GB instead. I'm still wishing the Seagate wasn't experiencing issues, I'd have gladly paid the extra, but reliability comes first.

 

If you want faster go for a SSD

 

Myself, I'd need a minimum 256GB, and I'm not willing to pay that price.

I'll give it 1-2 years. SSD technology will be cheaper, and write-cycles will be higher.

 

get a seagate Momentus XT.. period.. no hard drives beating it.