Can someone explain the rpm of hard drives to me and what is sufficient.

I don't quite understand the rpm of the hard drives and haven't yet found somewhere here that explains it... maybe I have been at it for to many hours the last to days to try and figure this all out. I have until Monday to get my computer ordered to have it here as I start my school work in less then 10 days... so want about 3 or 4 days to get use to the thing.

All I know is that the faster rpm is what gamers are after. I am not a "gamer" in the sence of WoW or those sorts of things... I don't even do XBOX or Nintendo. None of the games I play even need more then 64 MB of Video at this point, except there are a couple of new games that look entriquing that I have seem that require 128 MB, but they are not really action packed, more puzzle action type stuff.

So I know that my HD won't require a really fast rpm... but what is suffient and what is overkill?

CJM

 

Well the standards in RPM for Hard Drives are basically 5400rpm and 7200rpm. There are a few older models out there with the 4200rpm but are soon becoming outdated. Now I don't know all the specifics but the jump between the 4200rpm and the 5400 rpm is greater than from the 5400 and the 7200. I would say for your average use the 5400 would be fine. I would recommend buying a HD with at least 40Gigs, especially if you plan on upgrading to Vista later on. If you do any video editing or picture editing you may want 80 or larger, but since you are not a gamer I would stick with the 5400rpm model.

Read through this thread to help with any other questions you might have.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053

 

It means exactly what it says. Revolutions per minute.
A 7200 RPM HD takes 1/7200 minute for the platter to spin 360 degrees.

The slower it spins, the longer it takes for the platter to get "in position", meaning it takes longer before a read can even start. That (combined with a few other factors) is usually referred to as seek time (the time it takes from you issue a request to read/write data, and until it actually starts reading/writing), and that's usually the main bottleneck. Might take around 10 milliseconds to perform a seek, which is a small eternity for computers. After that, actually reading the data usually goes a lot faster, although that too is limited by the rotation speed of the disk. The faster it rotates, the faster you'll get to the next part of whatever it is you're reading. (That's also why defragmenting your disks can be a really good idea. If files are fragmented, you need to seek for ever little fragment of the file, which wastes a lot more time than if you could just read it continuously)

But about the other part of your question.... It depends.
There are only two situations where it really makes a difference. That's when you're loading stuff.
So when Windows boots, and when you start a program, the time it takes depends heavily on the HD speed. (And a 7200 RPM disk might be able to boot 30-50% faster than a 5400 RPM one).

But after that, you basically don't need the HD at all... Except if you're low on RAM. If that's the case, data has to be swapped out to the HD, which is slooooooow, and read back in again when needed, which is also slooooow.
But the best way to avoid this is to buy more RAM, rather than a faster HD.
To see if the latter is a problem for you at all, just listen to your HD. Does it grind away a lot when you're not launching new programs, but just working or playing games? If so, you need more ram (or, if you prefer, a faster HD, although that won't make much difference in this case)

So it depends. Assuming you have enough ram that running programs isn't a problem, it comes down to this, basically: How fast do you need your computer to boot? That's where it makes the biggest difference.

 

General guidelines - 7200 RPM drives are generally at least $50 if not $100 more than the 5400 RPM counterparts and give better load times for apps.

That money could usually be spent in better graphics processors, or more memory, or faster processors first, but after those, if you still want more performance, they will be helpful.

 

Thank You for answering those questions for me. And also what the price difference was. It helps me in figuring out exactly where I want to go.

CJM

 

Get at least a 5400 and you will be fine, preferably 7200 for top performance but thats seems like overkill for what you need it for unless you find a deal on one.

 

Density of the disk also helps. A dense 5400 RPM drive can be nearly as fast as a not as dense 7200 RPM.

 

Disk Density??? What is that???

There are so many new types of things to figure for this computer purchase from my last purchase. I remember the early days when all there really was to know was if you wanted to run an PC or a Mac. And there was like no more then 2 MB or Ram around and HD were like 10 MB. Ohh... the good old DOS days! I don't know how I will ever figure this out by tommorow morning!

CJM

 

I don't think there's much reason to get a 7200 -- they're more expensive, and very easily upgradable when the 7200's get cheaper. In therms of things that slow down your computer, hard drive speed is generally not one that affects you all that much. There are exceptions like booting, very fast downloading, video editing (I guess), lack of free RAM, and other stuff ... but generally you're slowed down by RAM or slow programs, not hard drives. I'd recommend putting your money elsewhere -- something you can't upgrade, like a processor or video card. Hard drives are very very simple to replace and tend to be rather cheap.

 

Price difference - I checked at PowerNotebooks and they charge $60 more for the 7200 RPM drives. Note that some computers may not even have these as an option.

Disk Density - I have not heard the term, but I think this is related to the number of platters, etc. I.e., a 4 platter 80 GB drive may be faster than a 8 platter drive of the same capacity regardless of speed.

What you really need to compare are seek and read/write times but these are rarely published, so you end up taking it on faith that the 7200 RPM drive is faster than the 5400 RPM drive which is faster than the 4200 RPM. But this is a very safe bet, barring some exceptional circumstances (a particular model of 5400 RPM drive that is designed for outstanding speed).

Bottom line - 5400 sounds sufficient for what you will be doing (actually 4200 is probably sufficient, but 5400 is becoming the standard baseline now). 7200 is faster, but only get one if you have upgraded all the other components you want to and still have money left over.

Exception - RAM is easier to upgrade than HD's and extra RAM is not helpful unless you are doing stuff that uses a lot of RAM, so I might upgrade the HD before the RAM, provided you have budgeted for sufficient RAM already.