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#1 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
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5200 vs. 7200 RPM HDD
I was wondering if the extra 2000 RPM is really a big boost in performance.
Here's the story... I just bought a 120 GB drive from Tiger Direct for $49.00 after the rebate. I thought... hell yea! Great price. But when I was reading the order confirmation, I saw that it is only a 5200 RPM drive ![]() I tried to canel the order, but it had already shipped. My plan is to use it as my primary drive, but I am concerned that the slower drive will slow my machine down significantly. My basic specs are as follows: AMD XP 2000 (1.86 GHz) 512 MB DDR 400 Ram Gforce 4 128 DDR video card Obviously the slower drive will effect performance, but I'm just wondering how much?
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Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan |
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#2 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Michigan
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I noticed a huge difference going from my 5200 40gb to a 7200 60gb drive. For gaming, programming, etc its critical to have a faster drive otherwise you are gonna sit there alot waiting for things to load.
5200 will work, but after going 7200, I think that Id use any 5200 drive for filesharing for the box in the corner. Share out some mp3s or something ![]() |
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#3 (permalink) |
Professional Loafer
Location: texas
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Let me ask you this, do you notice a 1800rpm difference in your engine? Essentially the same concept. Sure, 7200rpm is going to be faster.
Also, it's 5400 rpm, not 5200.
__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane." |
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#4 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
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I know it's faster, I was just wondering how much faster... and if that amount would be significant.
Thanks for the opinion, asshopo. bendley... no reason to be flippant.
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Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan |
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#5 (permalink) |
Professional Loafer
Location: texas
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I was making an analogy. Yes, you should notice the difference between the two speeds. I was not trying to show disrespectful levity, I apologize if it sounded that way.
__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane." |
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#6 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
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No sweat, dude. I was just being self concious... kindof a dumb question... heh... of course it gonna run faster. DUH! Besides, I'm probably overy sesitive. I was just hoping for a bit more than "yeah... it's gonna be faster".
I'm trying to justify keeping it, but I don't think it's gonna happen. Guess I'll return it and get a 7200 RPM HDD. To bad, too. Twus a hellova price.
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Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan Last edited by Dane Bramage; 10-14-2004 at 12:48 PM.. |
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#10 (permalink) |
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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I upgraded from a 5400 to a 7200 RPM HDD this past summer and my PC got way faster. There's a huge difference in performance. I didn't think there would be, but damn! I'd send it back.
-Lasereth
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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
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#11 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
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Dunno... may stick it in a file server or something.
I have already bought another one: 40GB, 7200 with 8MB Buffer. Got it at NewEgg for like $56.00 including shipping (thanks bendsly for the NewEgg tip). How much do y'all think the extra 6 MB of Buffer will increase performance?
__________________
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan |
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#12 (permalink) | |
Professional Loafer
Location: texas
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Quote:
The cache is there basically for queuing purposes. The hdd holds info in the cache for very quick access (like, on demand). The more cache you have, the more efficient the process becomes. Most drives today I believe are coming with 8mb of cache on them. If it's coming with 8mb of cache, this is a good thing!
__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane." |
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#13 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
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Hell, until recetly, I never even knew they had a cache. I figured it would be worth the extra 20 bucks or whatever it was.
__________________
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan |
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#14 (permalink) | |
undead
Location: nihilistic freedom
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Quote:
![]() Now, is 8MB really better than 2MB? Yes, you see, with an 8MB cache, theoretically there is a 4x better chance that the drive will have cached the data your computer will ask for next, and thus, speed things up 4x. Heh, it doesn't actually work that way though... and you will realistically get only a fraction of that many more cache hits. So, is it faster... yes. Will you actually notice the difference ... probably not. At least, you won't notice the cache size nearly as much as you would a difference in RPMs. |
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#16 (permalink) | |
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
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Quote:
I mainly use my machine for gaming and surfing. And I don't keep games around. Once I am finished playing it, I uninstall it. I'm not big on the replay of games. I currently have a 20 GB primary drive and a 40 GB Raid (mirrored) that hosts the "My Documents" folder. I keep basically nothing on the primary drive except for the OS and installed programs. Once I DL something, I move it over to the RAID. I have lost too much data in the past to not archive on the RAID. The only reason I bought the 120 in the first place was because it was so freaking cheap. The only reason I'm upgrading is because I'm down to about 3 GB free space on my C drive. It has taken me almost 2 years to get this full, so I think the 40 Gig drive should be enough to keep me content until I build my next machine.
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Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan |
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#17 (permalink) |
Upright
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You will see your greatest performance boost using the 7200 RPM drives, 10k RPM SCSI, or the newer SATA drives withing a RAID0 configuration. Keep in mind that RAID0 does have some drawbacks.
I have (4) EIDE 80-GB WD SE drives in a RAID0 configuration. I like the performance kick. Sure, if a drive craters, I have data loss. That is what your backup plan is for if you are storing large amounts of critical data. I use Veritas BUE at my house with and SDLT drive. I also have another WD SE drive in the 250-GB size just to store an extra archive copy of important data. |
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#21 (permalink) |
Professional Loafer
Location: texas
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The ATA drives do not have any difference on reliability. SCSI however does, because each drive is actually hand-touched and checked/benchmarked (hence one of the reasons they're more expensive). But, they also usually have a better warranty as well.
__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane." |
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Tags |
5200, 7200, hdd, rpm |
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