I have a few questions! Myths.

Q1. 7200 RPM harddrives are more prone to break than 5400 RPM harddrives.

Someone told me that since the harddrives are smaller in notebooks than in desktops, a 7200 RPM harddrive is not needed and may in fact break more easily due to its higher speed.

Q2. Having two memory sticks RAM that are exactly the same or dual channel no longer gives an increased performance.

I was told that it doesn't matter what brand the additional add-on RAM sticks are or its specs. At this point in time, everything (other than the DDR) is just the same and gives only the memory boost.

Q3. Lots of programs are incompatible with the 64-bit OS.

Thank you for your time. =)

 

1) False

2) true

3) I dunno, but probably false

 

I'd actually think (1) might be true... if you think about it from a mechanical standpoint; you're putting more wear on the bearing and motor in the 7200RPM drive simply because it's making about 2000 more rotations every minute than the 5400RPM drive. Given the same bearing and motor and some rotation-count MTBF for either; the 7200RPM drive should last about two thirds as long as the 5400RPM drive on average...

Of course, they could make better bearings or motors for 7200RPM drives, but I don't know if they actually do.

(2) is pretty true for sure.

(3) I'd still say true, but it's getting better by the day. A ton of people (and not just people who know what they are doing) are already using Vista 64 without any problems.

 

Except that the motor is likely not the first component to fail in a HDD

 

I could be wrong, but your reasoning for why a 7200rpm drive will fail quicker seems to be a little off. Just because a 7200rpm drive can make ~2000 more rotations a minute, doesn't mean it is rotating 2000 rotations a minute more than a 5400rpm drive. Your HDD isn't constantly spinning, and it should take just as many rotations to find/read/write a piece of information to a 7200rpm drive as it does to a 5400rpm drive. The 7200rpm drive just does it faster.

Also, even though there might be slightly more stress on the motor and bearings, I don't think there would be a real big difference between 5400rpm and 7200 rpm drives in terms of reliability. Again I could be wrong, but I don't think theres a radical difference between them

 

1. false because on average a lot of other things in the HDD will break before the parts that differ btw the two RPM classes

2. true in theory but in real life, you won't notice any difference

3. true for a few older programs (mostly 16-bit stuff), but Vista 64 has never had issues for me (I've even played Starcraft from 1998)

 

Yeah, 64bit OSes have few compat issues at this point. The ability to address more than ~3.25 GB of RAM far offsets the few if any old programs you can no longer use. Esepcially for Windows, you have to remember that MS's biggest market is business, and to keep them on the reservation buying Windows, MS has to maintain backwards compat so all the huge, poorly written back end systems that have been running on Windows machines since 1994 still work. Yes, there are things that don't work any more, but they are by far the exception and not the rule.

 

BTW, I'm running mostly 32-bit programs on my copy of X64 Vista and they work just fine.

Most should work, the only slightly more difficult part is finding appropriate drivers for some devices.

 

2) FALSE, if you have integrated graphics that share your ram bandwidth.
when you run two identical sticks you double the bandwidth, some systems don't need the extra bandwidth but as I'v mentioned if you have integrated graphics this will improve performence.

 

7200rpm drive DO fail much sooner than 5400rpm units. I work in IT and we have hundreds of laptops deployed. EVERY time I get a laptop with a bad drive its one with a 7200rpm unit on top of that most of the laptops we have use 5400rpm drives.

Name your brand I dont care I have seen them all. seagate, WD, Hitachi, ect they all fail sooner that 5400rpm.

 

1. Quite possibly false as faster hard drivers were designed by default to withstand the speeds they are operating on. Same goes for the slower hard drives.
In contrast, numerous slower hard drives failed for one reason or another compared to their faster counterparts ... same goes vice verse. It's an individual case and as others already stated, you have various components in the HDD that are likely to cause failures of HDD's compared to the rotors.

2. To my understanding there will be a performance increase, however, it will be contained primarily in the range of 2% to 5% maximum (if that).
In translation, you primarily gain on the increased RAM capacity and performance gains are negligible.

3. Only 16bit applications will not work under 64bit OS. However, there are alternatives such as DosBox for example that can help out in a scenario of that nature and works most of the time.
32bit applications not working properly in 64bit OS happens sometimes (however, most apps seem to be working without issues), but that is usually corrected when the programs themselves are being rewritten by their creators to support the new environment.

I am using x64 OS without issues for months now because I have hardware which was designed to work in that environment and will be used to it's fullest potential.
Backwards compatibility is an issue at times, but I usually find a way around that problem.

 

on actual chipsets, dualchannel even works with different ram layouts. if you have f.e. a 512mb and a 2gb stick, the first 512mb of both will be dualchannel. the resting 1.5gb of the second stick won't.

 

A hard disk platter spins constantly at a constant rate unless the drive has gone into power saving / idle mode. In which case to access the disk platter, the drive has to spin up again to 7200rpm or 5400rpm before it can be accessed.

A variable rpm rate would make accessing the disk platter more complicated although perfectly possible.

At a constant speed the same location on the disk platter approaches the disk head at the same interval.

If we vary the rpm, we have to take this into account and program the disk head to move at different intervals according to the rpm.

Also to make something spin faster / accelerate, we have to use more power.

Variable rpm is a waste of energy.

 

Not according to reviews of WD's Green drives.

 

Regarding #3: somewhat true.

Most of the programs that I use, there's been no problem, but some probably smaller and more obscure companies still are on 32bit. I really liked Zonealarm firewall compared to Comodo, but alas Zonealarm still only supports 32 bit so I had to make the switch.

 

This is just amazing how people believe that any Mfr makes HDs that varies its RPM speed. This is simply NOT true. There is not one hard drive out there that varies its rpm speed during operation.

WD Green drives do NOT vary their rpm either. They are fixed 5400rpm drives and it has been proven many times. WD even clearly states that their Green drives have INvariable rpm speeds.

 

I was just about to post a similar post.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/21/wd_intellipower/

Hence why i stated it is possible.

 

Interesting, I thought it was running on average something weird like 5900RPM. I'll have to find where I read that.

 

I would say durability comes down to the manufacture not the speed of the drive.

 

WD's marketing is dubious. I've read several people who believed it used variable rpm.

 

Yes, I'm sure that I also read about that, but I can't remember if that was about the WD Green or another HDD.

 

Agreed with all of the above, it's not variable rpm - it's just not a set rpm speed:

http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr?page=0,1

"Some folks have misinterpreted some admittedly vague specs on WD's website. Under "Rotational Speed," the manufacturer cites "IntelliPower (5400 to 7200 RPM)." This does not mean the drive dynamically changes its spindle speed during operation... indeed, such a feature would entail considerable mechanical engineering and would in many ways defeat the point -- rapidly accelerating and decelerating the spindle's speed would increase rather than decrease net power draw. Rather, the IntelliPower term indicates that the GP family as a whole does not have a set spindle speed (nor a set buffer size, for that matter). Different capacity points may feature differing spin speeds and buffer sizes. For those that must know, WD admits "sub-6000 RPM operation" for the 1-TB Caviar GP (more on this on the following page)."

 

1. no... i do not think that is true in almost anyway...
thats like saying a car with a v6 engine will more likely blow up in a car crash compared to a v4... lol
2. having dual channel memory will give you like a 1-2% increase in performance... (no worth it) (i know that from a test from cnet.com)
3. no.. none that i know.. you can start the program in xp sp2 combatity mode... the only problem with x64 os's is that you need 64 bit drivers

 

Dual channel is more beneficial in situations where your system ram is being shared with an integrated gfx controller.

This is my vista ratings for an Intel 4500MHD, im only posting the gfx ratings as nothing else changed but this is not to say that cpu and memory performance didnt change with dual channel, it just didnt change on a scale that vista could measure.

Windows Vista 32-bit HP gfx rating (single channel)

3.1 Gaming / 3.5 Desktop Aero

Dual channel

3.8 Gaming / 4.1 Desktop Aero

 

That is indeed a good rating!!!

 

Then again, the Vista rating index is not exactly the best benchmark ever created.

 

The Windows Experience Index is as good as a benchmark as Paint is as a Photo Editor

As an alternative have a look at Passmark Performance Test (free for 30 days).