Harddrive RPM?

[Crunken]

So i've been wanting an upgrade from my 1tb hdd, it's quite old now (2013) and 1tb isn't nearly enough for me  Right now i have a WD Desktop Blue 1TB, SATA 6GB/s 64MB, 7200RPM, but i've been looking at some different ones but i'm a bit confused when it comes to the RPM and cache of hdd's. I understand the premise of it but i don't have any experience with it, for example, will it feel slower if i switch to 5400rpm from my old one that has 7200? and how much cache do i need?

 

Feel free to leave some drives that are worth checking out, looking at 3tb and up  

[Constantin]

1 minute ago, Crunken said:

So i've been wanting an upgrade from my 1tb hdd, it's quite old now (2013) and 1tb isn't nearly enough for me  Right now i have a WD Desktop Blue 1TB, SATA 6GB/s 64MB, 7200RPM, but i've been looking at some different ones but i'm a bit confused when it comes to the RPM and cache of hdd's. I understand the premise of it but i don't have any experience with it, for example, will it feel slower if i switch to 5400rpm from my old one that has 7200? and how much cache do i need?

 

Feel free to leave some drives that are worth checking out, looking at 3tb and up  

From i know There is no HDD faster than 7200 RPM, The black and gold are the best ones

[ARikozuM]

Cache doesn't matter as it is for overflow in both directions (which hardly happens in consumer environments). Rotor RPM only matters if everything else is the same such as: platter density, platter count, r/w head count, and magnetic tech used. 

 

Personally, I would recommend Seagate's latest BarraCuda lineup from 2017 onward. You can find the 4 and 6TB for very good GB/$ rates. Then there's the Hitachi/HGST Deskstar which offers good storage at low cost. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

One thing to note is bigger hdds are faster, so a 4tb 5400rpm drive will normally be faster than a 1tb 7200rpm drive.

 

What are you using the drive for. For things like photo storage and storage of files that aren't used much the speed really won't matter at all.

[Lurick]

15 minutes ago, Constantin said:

From i know There is no HDD faster than 7200 RPM, The black and gold are the best ones

10K and 15K drives do exist but they are usually SAS drives.

There was a WD Black Raptor SATA drive a long time ago, not sure if those are still made or not though.

[mariushm]

The RPM changes the latency, how fast you seek data on the drive and start reading data from the drive.

To a much less degree, it affects the actual transfer speed.

 

The actual throughput (the MB/s) is affected more by the data density (how close together the bits are on the platters).

 

For example, a modern 4 TB 5400 rpm drive may have 2 platters with 2 surfaces each, so you have 1 TB on each surface.

In contrast, an older 2 TB 7200 rpm may have 3 platters and 5 surfaces (so 2000 /5 = 400 GB per surface)

 

The 4 TB should seek slower because data will reach under the head a bit slower, but at the same time as you have only 2 platters, the heads may move faster in the right position compared to the 7200rpm drive with 3 heads (more weight, inertia etc)

 

The 4 TB 5400 rpm will probably take a few ms more to find the data on the drive, but more data will fly under the head even though it's 5400 rpm. If you want to read 10 GB, those 10GB may be retrieved in just 20-30 rotations.

The 7200 rpm drive will spin faster, but data is less densly packed so in the end, the drive may have to spin 60-100 times to get the same amount of data (so more time)

 

 

 

[Crunken]

39 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

One thing to note is bigger hdds are faster, so a 4tb 5400rpm drive will normally be faster than a 1tb 7200rpm drive.

 

What are you using the drive for. For things like photo storage and storage of files that aren't used much the speed really won't matter at all.

gonna use it for everything that i don't have on my ssd's, so in my case: video editing stuff, large games, photos, etc
 

43 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Personally, I would recommend Seagate's latest BarraCuda lineup from 2017 onward

Yeah i saw some of them that had a good price for the gb's, but i got kinda confused with all the versions of them, but just the normal BarraCuda is good? i saw that there's also firecuda, ironwolf, etc

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, Crunken said:

Yeah i saw some of them that had a good price for the gb's, but i got kinda confused with all the versions of them, but just the normal BarraCuda is good? i saw that there's also firecuda, ironwolf, etc

BarraCuda is the only one I would recommend for general use. The FireCuda, IronWolf, etc. all have a purpose that the extra costs and features may help. There's no use spending more for a few features you will rarely use (like the intelligent cache on FC). 

[Crunken]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

BarraCuda is the only one I would recommend for general use. The FireCuda, IronWolf, etc. all have a purpose that the extra costs and features may help. There's no use spending more for a few features you will rarely use (like the intelligent cache on FC). 

What about Barracuda vs BarraCuda pro?

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Crunken said:

What about Barracuda vs BarraCuda pro?

Don't bother. I don't see anything worth the extra money. The Pro's best feature is drive failure and recovery support. This is not a good replacement for good backups. Use your current Blue to run backups monthly. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Don't bother. I don't see anything worth the extra money. The Pro's best feature is drive failure and recovery support. This is not a good replacement for good backups. Use your current Blue to run backups monthly. 

One this is most modern barracuda are smr, so that can hurt performance in many use cases. 

 

But for this workload it should work fine.