Trouble picking between 5400 rpm hardrive vs 7200 rpm

Hey guys I'm shopping for my first gaming rig, and want to get everything right. After researching the heck out of it I'm having some trouble differentiating between a 5400RPM 640 GB HDD 8MB Cache and a 7200RPM 500 GB HDD 16MB Cache (both SATA II for a Sager NP8130).

Now size isn't the issue I'm having, but rather differentiating between the RPM's. Could someone tell me the difference between the two? Also I know that the lower RPM would have less strain on heating and battery life, which are both important to me. But would the difference in performance just be to much and too noticeable? IF its too much than I would rather get the better performing hdd. Thanks

 

If I were going to buy one, I would get the 7200. For speed and performance. Battery usage life between the two will not be too much.

That said, if you are just using it for storage and not installing programs to it-and want the extra 140GB-go with the 5400. Prolly won't notice too many performance issues if it is just used for storage.

But if you are installing games and programs to it, for me, no brained. o with the 7200. Or, an SSD. Or if you can't afford an SSD, check out WD's Hybrid HDD/SSD Momentus XT.

 

Noticeable?

Yeah. Get the 7200 RPM HDD. (Hitachi 7K750 750GB HDD highly recommended).

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...ba-mk3252gsx-vs-hitachi-7k500-real-world.html


Although the above link is a little older, the performance differences between 5400 RPM vs. 7200 RPM HDD's is still the same or even greater (more demands placed on the storage sub-system by SP1 of Win7 and other up-to-date programs, for example).

For the best performance (but with a little lower capacity) a Seagate XT Hybrid is well worth considering (gives you 'SSD-like' responsiveness).

To quote myself from this thread:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/8071837-post11.html

As for battery life, I've found that with any mechanical/hybrid HDD, that as long as it is the most current 7200 RPM model available, the battery life is equal to or better for the same workload as the older 5400 RPM 'stock' drive it is replacing. And, cooler running too.


Good luck.

 

Funny stuff. But true.

 

7200RPM difinitely for windows and programs...............

 

Okay it seems like there is a consensus that the 7200ROM is much better in the performance department. I definitely don't need the extra space if gaming and day to day activities are effected by the lower RPM.

Does anyone know if the extra spins will increase the heating too much? I'm going to be using the laptop in a primarily hot environment ( I will have an AC but not all the time). And all though i got the diamond paste and cooler would that be enough. Thanks guys for the help!

 

Again, quoting myself from post #3.

Bold added.

 

Whoosh! Didn't see that, thanks man clears things up.

 

Can anyone explain the role of the cache in HDDs? Isnt RAM supposed to have that function?
Will HDD+16MB HDD cache + 4GB ram be noticeably better that HDD+ 0 cache + 4GB ram?

 

DexterMorgan: I wondered about this also, this link explains it somewhat
Importance of Cache Size on a Hard Drive | eHow.com
I am not sure on the answer to your last question

 

Compared to a 0MB cache HDD (no such animal that I know about) a 32KB, 64KB, 128KB, 256KB, 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, 8MB or 16MB cache or larger on a mechanical HDD will make the difference from a 1980 storage device to a storage device that actually belongs to the 20th and/or 21st century ('belong to the 21st century' for a mechanical device, that is, along with 8MB cache or greater).

Noticeable? Yeah, like saying it's windy outside when a hurricane is heading your way.

Check out the ~800KB interface rate with 32KB (?) cache on a 40MB (yeah, MB, not GB) HDD from 1991 (I had a few of these):

See:
Hard Drives: 40 MB To 750 GB - 3,500 To 10,000 RPM : 15 Years Of Hard Drive History: Capacities Outran Performance

 

Cache isn't usually much to fuss over since it can't directly affect any of your data rates, all it can do is pre-load data which it anticipates you'll read very soon or temporarily store something to be written while it does something else.

If you have write caching enabled then it can make a significant difference for small file transfers (below the size of the cache), but you run the risk of data loss/corruption if the power drops out. This isn't usually much of a problem for laptops, but it's still something to bear in mind.

 

Yes, 7200rpm drives will have higher temperatures than 5400rpm drives. But the difference is so small that it might as well be irrelevant.

Hard drive cache stores the most recently-accessed data in fast (cache) memory. The idea is that if that data is accessed immediately multiple times, it can retrieve that data from fast (cache) memory rather than having to go to slow (mechanical HDD platter) storage to get that data.

In theory, that sounds great. In reality, HDD cache is irrelevant, because it is too small to make a difference. So to answer your question... no, there will be absolutely no real-world performance difference between drives that are identical, except for their cache sizes.

 

It all depends on which drives were talking about. A WD 500GB/5400rpm performs very similar to a Seagate 7200.5 750GB.

If you want the fastest mechanical hard drive take a WD 750GB 7200rpm. Second to that is Hitachi 7K750.

Seagates Hybrid Momentus XT 500GB performs in between of SSDs and HDDs. If you value fast booting and application launching and don't want to pay for an SSD the XT is the way to go.

Unfortunately the price of the XT and many HDDs have gone up a lot.

 

Phil,

The XT Hybrid is still noticeably faster as an O/S drive than even the WD 750GB 7200RPM Scorpio Black.

That 4GB of SLC nand goes a long way to giving a responsive feeling O/S.

No other mechanical HDD compares.

 

Sure, that's why I said it performs in between of HDDs and SSDs.

The fastest mechanical (only) drive is a WD7500BPKT.

 

How much faster is the WD 7200 750GB than the Hitachi? I'm thinking about upgrading since I think my HD might be starting to deteriorate so I'm wondering which would better suit me.

If the difference is something like 0.1 millisecond lower latency then the WD wouldn't be worth it, but if it's more significant then I might consider it.

 

If you do a lot of heavy multi tasking the WD will be a bit faster. During normal usage the difference will be hard (or impossible) to notice.

It's more likely that you'll notice the difference in sound because WD Black drive are often relatively noisy.

 

You are missing the point.
The role of RAM *is* to serve as the cache. Since RAM size is >>>>>> HDD cache size, the question is whether the HDD cache will play any role at all.
Another way of putting the question:
What is the performance difference between the following two systems:
A: 4GB+8MB RAM, 0 HDD cache
B: 4GB RAM, 8MB HDD cache.

Since HDD cache will only come into play when there is a data miss from RAM, shouldnt A be better than B?

 

If I am installing a second HD on my laptop to serve as a storage for movies and backup, then neither cache or spin speed matters in this case right?

 

That is correct.

Any mechanical HDD you buy will be "good enough" for bulk storage purposes like that. Spindle speed is irrelevant at that point.

 

High throughput will still be nice though. It will make your backups faster for example.

A good secondary drive is the Samsung M8 1TB. Throughput is over 100MB/sec and it's quiet and power efficient too.

 

No, I think you are missing the point.

The role of RAM is not to serve as cache - RAM is the part of the platform where work is performed (by the cpu...).

The cache on a HDD not only caches data requests - it also caches the physical addresses of the folder/file's that are requested by the user and/or the O/S. Effectively, it is caching it's own inner workings to appear to us and the O/S that it is doing things in real time for us. Without a cache, a modern HDD would be as effective as a 3.5" floppy disk.

Even a DVD drive at two orders of magnitude (or more) slower performance than a HDD uses a cache effectively - as does a modern cpu which is at the other end of the scale (a few orders of magnitude faster than RAM).

So, the point is this: 0MB cache HDD + even 16GB RAM will be dog slow compared to a real and current HDD with even 8MB cache on board and only 2GB RAM (when the storage sub-system performance is our only criteria).

Why? Because even a HDD's cache is operating not only on instructions hidden from the O/S (and therefore the RAM too), but it is also operating at least an order of magnitude faster than RAM can.

Does that answer your question?

 

You do realise that the MFT/directory/whatever you feel like calling it takes up far more space than a simple cache would allow?

 

It may answer his question but I don't think it answer's Heel's question.