7200rpm and 5400rpm HDD which should i choose ?

[222feb23]

Hi, I'm in need of a new HDD for storage, mainly use it for downloading files using torrent software or IDM (file size are variable, a few Mb to nearly 100Gb sometime); storing data like movie, picture, some anime,...; backup Steam games, transfer files to and from external drive;... do one at a time or all of that at the same time (watching something while waiting for other things being download, or transfer something to external drive while watching or download something), is a 5400rpm drive have any drawback doing all that or i must get a 7200rpm drive?

I want to buy WD red plus 8tb but if 7200 drive are needed i'll go with 10tb version

[BiotechBen]

Be careful with the Red drives, double check if they are cmr or smr drives. The smr drives are going to be much lower performance, designed for long term storage.

 

Make sure it's WD Red Plus

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.storagereview.com/news/wd-red-smr-updates%3famp

[Allahgator]

i believe the only real difference is that the 7200rpm drive will be around 33% faster.

[ProjectPatatoe]

faster and lower latency with the 7200 but for your use case, I would prioritize cost. Do also check for CMR/SMR like @BiotechBen said.

[222feb23]

11 hours ago, ProjectPatatoe said:

faster and lower latency with the 7200 but for your use case, I would prioritize cost. Do also check for CMR/SMR like @BiotechBen said.

Base on what i found 8tb plus end with EFZZ and 10tb or more end with EFBX, those letters indicate CMR so it should be good

And 5400 is good for those multi tasking i'm mentioned above right ?

[cmndr]

All else equal -

5400RPM drives suck less power and usually last longer.
7200RPM drives are faster.

 

As hinted at before BEWARE of SMR drives, these are more likely to be 5400RPM on WD's line. Explicitly check that any drive you get is CMR.

FWIW my NAS has used 5400RPM drives in it. 90+% reads to the drive array come from a cache. This means that the read performance of the HDDs doesn't really matter. 16GB optane sticks for $7ish off ebay work wonders for accelerating HDDs.

[222feb23]

11 minutes ago, cmndr said:

All else equal -

5400RPM drives suck less power and usually last longer.
7200RPM drives are faster.

 

As hinted at before BEWARE of SMR drives, these are more likely to be 5400RPM on WD's line. Explicitly check that any drive you get is CMR.

FWIW my NAS has used 5400RPM drives in it. 90+% reads to the drive array come from a cache. This means that the read performance of the HDDs doesn't really matter. 16GB optane sticks for $7ish off ebay work wonders for accelerating HDDs.

Optane is a no for me since my motherboard only have 1 m.2 socket and i alreaedy use it for my SSD game drive (running windows on sata ssd), without something like optane is there any difference between 7200 and 5400 when doing all the tasks i'm mention above ?

[cmndr]

44 minutes ago, 222feb23 said:

Optane is a no for me since my motherboard only have 1 m.2 socket and i alreaedy use it for my SSD game drive (running windows on sata ssd), without something like optane is there any difference between 7200 and 5400 when doing all the tasks i'm mention above ?

You can get adapters for like $10ish, though YMMV. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=pcie+to+nvme+adapter&_sacat=0

It'll be around 1/3rd faster (7200/5400). If you're storing photos or videos it's probably not going to matter a ton.

One thing to keep in mind, more performance is better but above some threshold it doesn't matter a ton. Fighting for 33% more by getting a faster secondary drive is kind of "ehh" when you can get 100x the jump by going to NAND SSD or a cache drive in front of the drive. If it's just backup or low priority stuff... it's fine. 

 

[222feb23]

27 minutes ago, cmndr said:

You can get adapters for like $10ish, though YMMV. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=pcie+to+nvme+adapter&_sacat=0

It'll be around 1/3rd faster (7200/5400). If you're storing photos or videos it's probably not going to matter a ton.

One thing to keep in mind, more performance is better but above some threshold it doesn't matter a ton. Fighting for 33% more by getting a faster secondary drive is kind of "ehh" when you can get 100x the jump by going to NAND SSD or a cache drive in front of the drive. If it's just backup or low priority stuff... it's fine. 

 

So overall is there any significant difference between 7200 vs 5400 (optane aside) in doing those tasks i'm mention above, 5400 is enough or i must or should paid more for 7200 ?

[cmndr]

On 9/18/2022 at 10:58 PM, 222feb23 said:

So overall is there any significant difference between 7200 vs 5400 (optane aside) in doing those tasks i'm mention above, 5400 is enough or i must or should paid more for 7200 ?

If you care about performance, have a caching system, it will literally matter 10-100x a much as going from 5400 to 7200RPM.

If you're not using caching, the 7200RPM drives will be around 33% faster but they are generally less reliable and use more energy. The yearly increase in power costs for a drive that's on ALL the time (or 4) is often enough to justify going with the slower drive.

 

As an FYI, if your caching system is dumb (e.g. LIFO, LRU, etc.) then bigger NAND, SSDs tend to work slightly better. If it's smart (mix of LIFO + LRU along with pre-fetching) then a smaller amount of optane will work better. $7-10ish sticks of optane are "good" mostly because they're super cheap now.