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Advice Please: The Importance of Hard Drive RPMs



 
 
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  #11  
Old August 18th 04, 11:05 PM
CJT
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John R Weiss wrote:

It is true in the general case. There may be exceptions, but I can't think
of any off hand...


Many of the office type tasks here (e.g. word processing, Web browsing,
even listening to music) get done on devices that don't even HAVE local
hard drives. And the compute server to which they attach just has small
drives for booting its OS and for swap. So the disk drives the user
devices actually access are a couple of ethernet links away. Even the
file server has what you'd probably consider slow drives (but it has
lots of RAM for buffering). And it all works plenty fast -- probably a
lot faster than you're accustomed to.

Of course, if you just have one (truly "personal") computer, it'll have
a disk attached.

But I think for many people, disk drive speed is pretty low on the list
of things on which they should be spending money.

And yes, I know (for those of you reading headers) that the machine at
which I'm sitting is the exception to the setup I've described; that's
an accident of history.

"Lil' Dave" wrote...

Is this true always?


Alright, I'll concede there, but a 7200 will still provide a very
noticable performance increase over a 5400. Not just in drive benchmarks,
but in day to day computer usage.






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The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
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  #12  
Old August 18th 04, 11:30 PM
William W. Plummer
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Stephen Austin wrote:
On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:21:58 GMT, CJT wrote:

Darren Harris wrote:

Can anyone tell me if hard drive spindle speed is an important factor
to consider when purchasing a hard drive?
Or should I just concentrate on average latency, average access, and
max. full seek time?
I ask because two hard drives with a data rate of 80mps can differ in
these other respects.
Thanks a lot.
Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.



For most people, desktop hard drives are hardly ever accessed anyway,
so speed is pretty irrelevant. Unless you're setting up a server that
will be accessed by many, go for the cheapest drive per byte stored.




Unless you've got bucket loads of memory, your OS is gonna be using a
swap file of some kind with reasonable regularity. Disk speed will make
a fairly large difference here. In any standard desktop system I'd go
for a 7200 rpm drive, you got a large budget and want a fast system,
get a 10k raptor.


Actually, I think a 15,000 RPM IBM disk would be good, even if it is not
as large as you would like. Take a look at the "DISK" light on your
machine. If it is on, your processor is idle and the disk is the
bottleneck.
  #13  
Old August 19th 04, 12:08 AM
DaveW
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Harddrive spindle speed is the MOST important factor regarding the access
and transfer speeds of the drive. All of the other specs are at least
partially dependent on it.

--
DaveW



"Darren Harris" wrote in message
om...
Can anyone tell me if hard drive spindle speed is an important factor
to consider when purchasing a hard drive?

Or should I just concentrate on average latency, average access, and
max. full seek time?

I ask because two hard drives with a data rate of 80mps can differ in
these other respects.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.



  #14  
Old August 19th 04, 03:40 AM
kony
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On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:21:58 GMT, CJT
wrote:

Darren Harris wrote:

Can anyone tell me if hard drive spindle speed is an important factor
to consider when purchasing a hard drive?

Or should I just concentrate on average latency, average access, and
max. full seek time?

I ask because two hard drives with a data rate of 80mps can differ in
these other respects.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.


For most people, desktop hard drives are hardly ever accessed anyway,
so speed is pretty irrelevant. Unless you're setting up a server that
will be accessed by many, go for the cheapest drive per byte stored.


Nonsense, everything the system is running is loaded from HDD,
and the speed is directly effected by speed of that hard drive.
A Celeron 800 with a WD Raptor HDD will feel faster for everday
use than a P4 3.2GHz with a budget-grade 40GB HDD.

Nothing wrong with choosing cheapest GB/$ for mass storage, but
it cripples a system to use such drives as primary app or OS
drive.
  #15  
Old August 19th 04, 03:45 AM
kony
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On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 22:05:17 GMT, CJT
wrote:

John R Weiss wrote:

It is true in the general case. There may be exceptions, but I can't think
of any off hand...


Many of the office type tasks here (e.g. word processing, Web browsing,
even listening to music) get done on devices that don't even HAVE local
hard drives. And the compute server to which they attach just has small
drives for booting its OS and for swap. So the disk drives the user
devices actually access are a couple of ethernet links away. Even the
file server has what you'd probably consider slow drives (but it has
lots of RAM for buffering). And it all works plenty fast -- probably a
lot faster than you're accustomed to.


You must be on crack. It is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH MUCH slower that
anyone with semi-modern gear is accustomed to. Even GbE on a PC
is slower than budget local storage HDD. Server-side apps are a
logistic solution, performance be damned.



Of course, if you just have one (truly "personal") computer, it'll have
a disk attached.

But I think for many people, disk drive speed is pretty low on the list
of things on which they should be spending money.



That's why some people buy newer computer then soon feel it isn't
much faster, because they didn't significantly improve the
bottleneck to their use, which is often the HDD.

HDD speed is one of the most profound impacts on everyday tasks.
Sure the system must have ample memory, but that's a given for
any but the most budget-constrained of new PCs or most demanding
users.
  #16  
Old August 19th 04, 03:48 AM
kony
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On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 21:29:03 GMT, CJT
wrote:


Alright, I'll concede there, but a 7200 will still provide a very
noticable performance increase over a 5400. Not just in drive
benchmarks, but in day to day computer usage.


I think the devil will be in the details. If you mostly just browse the
Web, I doubt your disk will be exercised much. If you do a lot of video
editing, you probably want something pretty fast -- most likely RAID.
There's a whole range in between (and perhaps beyond).


Clueless.

Browser caches everything to disk, and reloads it all from this
cache until pages are refreshed unless brower is changed from
defaults.

The only time HDD speed doesn't matter much is when system has A)
Excess system memory to cache files B) Limited multitasking so
files are never flushed from this cache.
  #17  
Old August 19th 04, 03:52 AM
Shailesh Humbad
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For most people, desktop hard drives are hardly ever accessed anyway,
so speed is pretty irrelevant. Unless you're setting up a server that
will be accessed by many, go for the cheapest drive per byte stored.



Nonsense, everything the system is running is loaded from HDD,
and the speed is directly effected by speed of that hard drive.
A Celeron 800 with a WD Raptor HDD will feel faster for everday
use than a P4 3.2GHz with a budget-grade 40GB HDD.

Nothing wrong with choosing cheapest GB/$ for mass storage, but
it cripples a system to use such drives as primary app or OS
drive.


I second that. Think about how much disk access Windows XP does just
to log you off the computer and save settings. Some people's profiles
are many megabytes, and Windows is just slow, so having a fast HDD
makes things much smoother. I don't think I could live without my 2x
Raid-0 10K Raptors. I would get a laptop, but I can't stand their
measly 4200rpm drives (on some). Maybe next I'll get a pair of 15k
scsi drives...
  #18  
Old August 19th 04, 05:45 AM
CJT
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Default

kony wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:21:58 GMT, CJT
wrote:


Darren Harris wrote:


Can anyone tell me if hard drive spindle speed is an important factor
to consider when purchasing a hard drive?

Or should I just concentrate on average latency, average access, and
max. full seek time?

I ask because two hard drives with a data rate of 80mps can differ in
these other respects.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.


For most people, desktop hard drives are hardly ever accessed anyway,
so speed is pretty irrelevant. Unless you're setting up a server that
will be accessed by many, go for the cheapest drive per byte stored.



Nonsense, everything the system is running is loaded from HDD,
and the speed is directly effected by speed of that hard drive.
A Celeron 800 with a WD Raptor HDD will feel faster for everday
use than a P4 3.2GHz with a budget-grade 40GB HDD.

Nothing wrong with choosing cheapest GB/$ for mass storage, but
it cripples a system to use such drives as primary app or OS
drive.


I disagree. If you spend all day browsing and word processing, you
load your browser and word processor once in the morning, and once
they're open then opening them isn't any longer an issue (unless
your machine crashes a lot -- but that's not usually the disk's fault).

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .
  #19  
Old August 19th 04, 05:48 AM
CJT
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Posts: n/a
Default

kony wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 22:05:17 GMT, CJT
wrote:


John R Weiss wrote:


It is true in the general case. There may be exceptions, but I can't think
of any off hand...


Many of the office type tasks here (e.g. word processing, Web browsing,
even listening to music) get done on devices that don't even HAVE local
hard drives. And the compute server to which they attach just has small
drives for booting its OS and for swap. So the disk drives the user
devices actually access are a couple of ethernet links away. Even the
file server has what you'd probably consider slow drives (but it has
lots of RAM for buffering). And it all works plenty fast -- probably a
lot faster than you're accustomed to.



You must be on crack. It is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH MUCH slower that
anyone with semi-modern gear is accustomed to. Even GbE on a PC
is slower than budget local storage HDD. Server-side apps are a
logistic solution, performance be damned.


You're just pulling things out of your *ss. I'm telling you about
actual experience.


Of course, if you just have one (truly "personal") computer, it'll have
a disk attached.

But I think for many people, disk drive speed is pretty low on the list
of things on which they should be spending money.




That's why some people buy newer computer then soon feel it isn't
much faster, because they didn't significantly improve the
bottleneck to their use, which is often the HDD.


Not in my experience for typical office tasks in a properly
configured system.


HDD speed is one of the most profound impacts on everyday tasks.
Sure the system must have ample memory, but that's a given for
any but the most budget-constrained of new PCs or most demanding
users.



--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .
  #20  
Old August 19th 04, 05:50 AM
CJT
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Posts: n/a
Default

kony wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 21:29:03 GMT, CJT
wrote:



Alright, I'll concede there, but a 7200 will still provide a very
noticable performance increase over a 5400. Not just in drive
benchmarks, but in day to day computer usage.


I think the devil will be in the details. If you mostly just browse the
Web, I doubt your disk will be exercised much. If you do a lot of video
editing, you probably want something pretty fast -- most likely RAID.
There's a whole range in between (and perhaps beyond).



Clueless.

Browser caches everything to disk, and reloads it all from this
cache until pages are refreshed unless brower is changed from
defaults.

The only time HDD speed doesn't matter much is when system has A)
Excess system memory to cache files B) Limited multitasking so
files are never flushed from this cache.


I stand by what I said. Watch your disk light some time. If it's
on a lot, then the disk speed might make a difference. If it hardly
ever flashes, then your drive's speed doesn't matter one bit.

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .
 




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