New Hard Drives

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Proctor

Could someone please explain why 5400 RPM drives are still being sold? I see
that maxtor has new 300Gig 5400rpm. Is there any reason not to stick with
7200 once they have been introduced? From a hardware manufacturing
standpoint is this hype sales or is there a logocal reeson?

Thanks for any insight.

Proctor
 
Proctor said:
Could someone please explain why 5400 RPM drives are still being sold? I see
that maxtor has new 300Gig 5400rpm. Is there any reason not to stick with
7200 once they have been introduced? From a hardware manufacturing
standpoint is this hype sales or is there a logocal reeson?
Click to expand...
Longevity and power dissipation. Some 7200 rpm drive makers do not recommend
running them 24/7 (I do, but Seagate's only. Have had problems with others).
That 300GB if run at 7200 rpm would exceed the power dissipation
capabilities of its enclosure (from the info available to me so far).
 
It is hard to make very high density platters work at higher speeds. This is why 10,000 RPM IDE drives and 15,000 RPM SCSI drives have relatively low capacity. 5400 RPM is adequate for most data files except for server applications.
 
Proctor said:
Could someone please explain why 5400 RPM drives are still being sold? I see
that maxtor has new 300Gig 5400rpm. Is there any reason not to stick with
7200 once they have been introduced? From a hardware manufacturing
standpoint is this hype sales or is there a logocal reason?

Thanks for any insight.

Proctor
Click to expand...

They are more reliable and cheaper to produce which saves the manufactures
money. They are also a bit quieter and run cooler so some of the older or
smaller cases without adequate cooling should use the 5400 drives. Frankly
for a second or third drive the need for speed isn't that great, keep your
OS on a 7200 drive since that will be accessed more than the others.

Lane
 
Proctor said:
Could someone please explain why 5400 RPM drives are still being
sold? I see that maxtor has new 300Gig 5400rpm. Is there any
reason not to stick with 7200 once they have been introduced?
From a hardware manufacturing standpoint is this hype sales or
is there a logocal reeson?
Click to expand...

They run cooler, quieter, and longer, and cost less.
 
CBFalconer said:
They run cooler, quieter, and longer, and cost less.
Click to expand...
Thanks guys for some great replies. I guess I was only seeing it one way.
I saw alot of newer drives start out as 5400 and have bougth several that
work fine. I have also returned later to get the 7200 version as in my first
Firewire HDD. It seemed external Maxtor Firewire was big in the topics
sometime ago with posters waiting for the newer ones to arrive and they did.
Hence my perception that this may all be an advertising scheme.

Proctor
 
Mike said:
It is hard to make very high density platters work at higher speeds. This is why 10,000 RPM IDE drives and 15,000 RPM SCSI drives have relatively low capacity. 5400 RPM is adequate for most data files except for server applications.
Click to expand...

My Seagate ST380013 80GB drive runs at 7200RPM and has only a single
platter. It uses EPRML 16/17 ZBR recording. It puts over 78,000
512 byte sectors on each side of the platter. This plus having only
two heads to move, reduces the average latency to ~4msec.

Western Digital has a 250GB 7200RPM drive, WD2500JBRT. Don't have
any more details, but I haven't checked the WD site.

Adding a 7200RPM drive is one of the easiest and least expensive ways
to dramatically inprove program load time. The larger buffers, (8MB),
that are common with new the drives also help many applications.

SATA boasts of 150Mhz transfers, but no existing drive can even
saturate the ATA100 interface. Some drive advertizing is pure "hype",
but higher RPMs are for real!

Virg Wall
 
Proctor said:
Thanks guys for some great replies. I guess I was only seeing it one way.
I saw alot of newer drives start out as 5400 and have bougth several that
work fine. I have also returned later to get the 7200 version as in my first
Firewire HDD. It seemed external Maxtor Firewire was big in the topics
sometime ago with posters waiting for the newer ones to arrive and they did.
Hence my perception that this may all be an advertising scheme.
Click to expand...

On of the easiest and least expensive things you can do is to add a 7200RPM
drive. It speeds up program loading and file access by 7300/5400 (33%). The
larger, (8MB), buffer also helps in many applications. ATA133 is pure
hype, as is SATA for speed, but RPMs can't be faked.

Heat may be more of a problem, and it's too early to have extensive life
data.

Virg Wall
 
On of the easiest and least expensive things you can do is to add a 7200RPM
drive. It speeds up program loading and file access by 7300/5400 (33%). The
larger, (8MB), buffer also helps in many applications. ATA133 is pure
hype, as is SATA for speed, but RPMs can't be faked.

Heat may be more of a problem, and it's too early to have extensive life
data.

Virg Wall
Click to expand...

Correct but if you have tooled up for production you ain't gonna dump
tried and tested hardware just for an RPM e.g costs etc :)



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V W Wall said:
On of the easiest and least expensive things you can do is to add a 7200RPM
drive. It speeds up program loading and file access by 7300/5400 (33%). The
larger, (8MB), buffer also helps in many applications. ATA133 is pure
hype, as is SATA for speed, but RPMs can't be faked.

Heat may be more of a problem, and it's too early to have extensive life
data.
Click to expand...

Hi Virg.

My girlfriend is running a BX based system with a celeron 900. The mobo only
supports ATA33. She is currently running an ATA33, 5400rpm Seagate 20GB HDD.
I have a spare Maxtor ATA100, 7,200rpm 20GB HDD. Do you think it's worth me
swapping the drives around? The ATA33 interface is the bottle-neck on her
system, she has 320MB RAM. Would going to a 7,200rpm drive make a difference
in this case, in your opinion? I'm not sure of the difference in cache size
on these drives, if any.

Thanks.
 
Hi Virg.

My girlfriend is running a BX based system with a celeron 900. The mobo only
supports ATA33. She is currently running an ATA33, 5400rpm Seagate 20GB HDD.
I have a spare Maxtor ATA100, 7,200rpm 20GB HDD. Do you think it's worth me
swapping the drives around? The ATA33 interface is the bottle-neck on her
system, she has 320MB RAM. Would going to a 7,200rpm drive make a difference
in this case, in your opinion? I'm not sure of the difference in cache size
on these drives, if any.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Bottlenecks aren't always hardware,

http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/startup.html
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_pages/startup_full.htm
http://www.3feetunder.com/krick/startup/list.html



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
It's a G not a J in gmx for email
Free songs download,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
~misfit~ said:
Hi Virg.

My girlfriend is running a BX based system with a celeron 900. The mobo only
supports ATA33. She is currently running an ATA33, 5400rpm Seagate 20GB HDD.
I have a spare Maxtor ATA100, 7,200rpm 20GB HDD. Do you think it's worth me
swapping the drives around? The ATA33 interface is the bottle-neck on her
system, she has 320MB RAM. Would going to a 7,200rpm drive make a difference
in this case, in your opinion? I'm not sure of the difference in cache size
on these drives, if any.
Click to expand...

One thing sure, programs and files that load from disk will load faster.
I would bet the new drive has a 2GB buffer, but this might not make much
difference. Is the present drive running DMA? The lack of ATA100 will
probably not make much difference. I found defrag went much faster on
the 7200RPM drive. Don't know if any of that was due to the 8MB buffer.

As Shep says, check first for anything else that might lower performance.

As always, the only real way to find out is try it and see.

Virg Wall
 
V W Wall said:
One thing sure, programs and files that load from disk will load faster.
I would bet the new drive has a 2GB buffer, but this might not make much
difference. Is the present drive running DMA? The lack of ATA100 will
probably not make much difference. I found defrag went much faster on
the 7200RPM drive. Don't know if any of that was due to the 8MB buffer.

As Shep says, check first for anything else that might lower performance.

As always, the only real way to find out is try it and see.
Click to expand...

Thanks Virg. The drive she's currently using is running DMA. I'll probably
try the 7,200 drive, just wanted to be sure it'd be worth the hassle of
setting it all up, moving all her stuff etc.
 
~misfit~ wrote:

Thanks Virg. The drive she's currently using is running DMA. I'll probably
try the 7,200 drive, just wanted to be sure it'd be worth the hassle of
setting it all up, moving all her stuff etc.
Click to expand...

You can get a good idea of improvement before you move files, etc.
Just put in the new drive, and see how fast it loads. Or try a defrag.

Incidently, xxcopy is a great way to move files, if the drive didn't
come with a clone type program.

Virg Wall
 
V W Wall said:
~misfit~ wrote:



You can get a good idea of improvement before you move files, etc.
Just put in the new drive, and see how fast it loads. Or try a defrag.

Incidently, xxcopy is a great way to move files, if the drive didn't
come with a clone type program.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Does xxcopy work with NTFS partitions?
 
V said:
.... snip ...

Incidently, xxcopy is a great way to move files, if the drive
didn't come with a clone type program.
Click to expand...

Apart from XP xxcopy is also an efficient way to make a backup
onto a second drive, which is immediately ready to replace the
first if the first fails. It is also the fastest backup method.
If the second drive is removable, it also handles off system
backup.

I believe there is even a clone method for XP now available. I am
purely a user.

<http://www.xxcopy.com>
 
~misfit~ wrote:



You can get a good idea of improvement before you move files, etc.
Just put in the new drive, and see how fast it loads. Or try a defrag.

Incidently, xxcopy is a great way to move files, if the drive didn't
come with a clone type program.

Virg Wall
Click to expand...

Agreed, but if the user wants the "clone-type" program, it's usually
available for download from the HDD manufacturer's website (the
manufacturer of EITHER HDD, generally it is only necessary to have
that manufacturer's drive in the system, it need not specifically be
the source or the destination drive for the clone-type program to
work).


Dave
 
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