Question about HDD RPM.

What difference does it make in terms of multi-tasking?

 

Generally speaking it will make multitasking smoother and the jobs will finish quicker. But many other variables besides rpm are important too.

One cannot make the generalization that 7200rpm drives are faster than 5400rpm because different data densities and different brands perform different.

 

Yep, a 160GB 5400 RPM drive will usually perform better then a 60-100 GB 7200 RPM drive.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

What about these two drives? What is the difference going to be?

 

Generally, higher RPM = faster seek time.

Sorry, I've to disagree with that statement. I actually find it a bit misleading to most people. That's just because you're comparing a larger capacity 5400 HDD to a smaller 7200 one. When you compare the same capacity, same physical size, same number of plates, same bus standard, 2.5" 5400 160 GB vs. 2.5" 7200 160 GB for example, the higher RPM one will always be faster.

 

^ I see where you're coming from, but people rarely compare apples to apples; they are commonly trying to decide between performance and storage capacity, which requires that you compare different capacities and RPMs.

 

The WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM will definitely be faster, it has double the cache size too. But mind you one thing though, higher RPM will cause more heat/noise and consume more power in general.

 

as fort he links, the 7200rpm wins!

 

When I called Dell Tech to inquire about specing my S17 and to use it for Video Editing with Pinnacle, he said the 7200 would be faster than the 5400 for this purpose. He also said any program on the HDD will be accessed faster. He did mention that the larger the HDD, irregardless of RPM, the slower it will be when accessing programs and data on the HDD.

Buzz

 

I have to say that if you are going to the HDD other than opening the application you are taking serious performance hit @5400 or @7200 when multi tasking. If you are running Word, Excel and power point music match all should be in RAM for smooth performance.

Now if you go to open a word document (application already open) that is what? 100KB's so does not push any HDD throughput. RA is what matters, but with that what are we talking 14ms vs 17ms? Can you tell 3ms? I can't.

So I say HDD not the component that matters having enough RAM is what is important for multi tasking.

 

That's my point, I mean it's like trying to say heavyweight boxers will not always have a stronger punch than middleweight boxers, well of course not if you take the best middleweight guy versus an average heavyweight guy, yeah the chances are the best middleweight guy will throw stronger punches than the average heavyweight guy. But that's just wrong information and it's not a right comparison, if it is, they would of put middleweight and heavyweight in the same match. Anyway, maybe I can come up with a better example, but I think you know what I mean.

 

"But mind you one thing though, higher RPM will cause more heat/noise and consume more power in general."

How much power consumption are we talking about here. I hear that modern notebook HDD's don't have much of a power consumption difference between the two.

 

I just double checked the spec from the manufacturer, both have pretty much the same power consumption, except in sleep mode. Also, the 7200 WD3200BEKT is even quieter.

WD3200BEVT
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=377

WD3200BEKT
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=482

 

Any noticeable power consumption in sleep mode?

 

stewie,

Thank you for taking the time to check this stuff.

 

I will have to disagree with this. For example: Western Digital 320GB/5400rpm will outperform a 320GB/7200rpm Seagate in most real life situations.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/4

In general yes, but again it depends on what models and brand we're talking about.

 

5,400 WD3200BEVT sleep mode: 20 mA | 0.10 Watts
7,200 WD3200BEKT sleep mode: 30 mA | 0.15 Watts

In math, that's 50% more, but really, it's nothing to worry about, since the total power consumption is relatively small as a component.

 

Storagereview measured real life power consumption and noise levels of these drives:
http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&numDrives=1&devID_0=365&devID_1=359&devCnt=2

Techreport also measured these drives:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/14

Based on these numbers I think it's safe to say BEKT makes more noise while using a bit less power.

Don't mean to disagree with you on everything stewie

 

If you look at each test separately, you can see the Seagate 7200 still outperformed the WD 5400 in many areas, including multimedia apps and system boot time. Yes overall average, the Seagate lost by 1 point, but I think the Seagate lost more points in many areas that don't really affect a regular user, like File Server and Web Server respond time.

And if you look at both WD 7200 vs. WD 5400 and Seagate 7200 vs. Seagate 5400, you can see when everything else is the same, the 7200 will always win over 5400 in terms of performance.

Plus, Seagate 7200 HDDs are considered to be bad heavyweight boxers imo.

EDIT: Nice find on the noise and power consumption test.

 

Ok I think it's fair to say they perform similar. Which also proves that one cannot make the assumption that 7200rpm drives outperform 5400rpm drives of the same size and density.

Can't disagree on that one. Even though I would like to .

 

For power consumption, I've noticed that my battery life actually improved when upgrading from my stock Hitachi 160/5400 to the WD Scorpio Black 320/7200. Not by much, but certainly no worse.

 

Thanks for sharing. How do you perceive the noise/sounds?

 

Well, except for the occasionally annoying clicking (search the forum, you'll see what I mean), it's not overall a loud drive. Maybe a little louder than my old drive, but definitely not distracting.

Edit: Check this out