which is better for HD speed?

[JerryH]

5400 or 7200? Of course, in the computer world, faster is always better. But, I am looking at some Western drives which offer ATA/100 throughput, same capacity, same 2Meg cache, but with either 5400 or 7200 rpm speeds.....is there any scenario where the 7200 is better? The difference is $10 pricewise; from the spec sheet, the 7200 rpm model has a 4 ms faster average seek time than the 5200 model. That's the only major difference I see.

If I access the drive at least 100,000 times before it craps out, that comes to 400 extra seconds (6.67 minutes) I could be doing something else - like getting another beer. Is it worth it?

[This message has been edited by JerryH (edited 23 January 2001).]

[CHHAS]

Just remember that those 4 ms comes into play every time your drive has to seek after a file or file-fragment, that's a lot of searches.
IMHO seek times is even more important than transfer rate, within reason of course, but I would take a drive with 10 ms seek and 20 MB/s tranfer over a drive with 15 ms seek and 30 MB/s transfer any day.

[HedsSpaz]

The 7200 RPM will definately make a fairly noticeable difference. When my 5400 8.4gb WD died on me I upgraded to a 7200 13.6 IBM and I've never been happier.

I will issue a warning to you though. Maxtor and Western Digital drives are notoriously unreliable. My WD died on me less than a year after I got it. In the time that I've worked in Tech support I've seen more dead WD and Maxtor drives than you can shake a stick at.

So, to sum it up, the 10$ for 7200 vs 5400 is most definately worth it, but not on a WD or Maxtor drive. Get an IBM or a Quantam. If you are into the ordering stuff over the net deal, go to www.mwave.com . They have excellent prices on 7200RPM IBM drives. For example, a 15.0GB 7200 RPM 2.0mb buffer bare drive can be had for 105$. You can't beat that.

Ian

[JerryH]

Dang, I must be a lucky one: I've heard endless horror stories about Maxtor drives crapping out, but my last 5 or 6 drives have been Maxtor, and I've never had one fail(knock on wood). My only complaint is that they're quite noisy compared to WD. Thanks for the link though, I shall check it out.

[Sir Hitech]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by HedsSpaz:
If you are into the ordering stuff over the net deal, go to www.mwave.com . They have excellent prices on 7200RPM IBM drives. For example, a 15.0GB 7200 RPM 2.0mb buffer bare drive can be had for 105$. You can't beat that.

Ian</font>

I agree with HedsSpaz! Mwave has the best prices on 7200rpm IDE drives. Its the only place I order my harddrives, floppy drives, CD drives and cases from for the last two years. Their cpu/mb combos prices are very reasonable, too. Their s/h charge is not outrageous and I usually get them ship 3rd or 2nd day air. The best deal on IBM drives in my opinion:

IBM 45GB ULTRA-ATA/100 DTLA307045/PN#07N3931 7200RPM 8.5MS 2MB BUFFER $147.90

I got a whole bunch for my dual PIII IDE RAID systems and they are nice performers.

[HedsSpaz]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">My only complaint is that they're quite noisy compared to WD.</font>

Well, you have another reason to consider an IBM drive then. IBM drives are almost completely silent. I have an IBM and a Maxtor in my computer right now. When I only had the IBM my computer was very quiet, hardly noticed it at all. When I added the Maxtor my computer suddenly got several decibals louder.

Personally, I will never again by anything other than an IBM drive (unless I someday switch to SCSI in which case I will go with either IBM or Seagate). But, thats just my personaly preference. I will say straight out that you should not get a WD. Maxtor is more reliable than WD, but that doesn't neccesarily mean much. I will admit that my Maxtor hasn't given me any trouble so far, but I've read enough opinions elsewhere to be a little leary of it. I certainly don't keep anything resembling important data on it.

My .03$
Ian

[Sir Hitech]

While we are on the subject of IDE drives...

Yesterday a friend of mine bought a WD 30GB 7200rpm drive from CompUSA(because she must have it like today! dont get too hard on future Ms.Hitech...aahumm!) and asked me to install it for her. That shit is slow! It took 2hrs to format the drive and it takes 10 minutes to boot up her Win98se. My 4yrs old 8GB Maxtor DMA33 drive runs circles around it. Something is majorly wrong! I built her system and most of my Tbird/Duron systems using MSI K7Tpro2 mb's. Is there some kind of compatibility issue that I dont know of between KT133 mbs and WD hd's(not like I'll ever buy another WD for the rest of my life) ? I told her to return that WD clonker and gave her a IBM 45GB from Mwave, everything is back in Turbo mode.

[Paulr]

Oh yes, without a question of doubt the IBM units are the way to go.
No other IDE drive can touch them on silence, performance and reliability.
Got 2x 45GB IBM units in my home system.
WD used to be bad, very bad.
However, IBM now make most of the internal parts for WD.
If the prices are similar I would still say go for the IBM.
Just remember that 90% of the WD drive is IBM components.

[xortam]

Throughput is much more important than access time unless all your doing is accessing teeny little files. Rotational speed is the major factor in determining throughput. The drawbacks in getting faster drives are cost, noise, heat, and reliability. You have to weight these parameters yourself but many people would think the gains in throughput are enough to justify those costs.