7200 rpm hard drives

[techs]

i seem to be the only tech in town who is advocating 7200 rpm hard drives as real performance boosters.forget ATA-66. ANY 7200 rpm hard drive(i have seen,at least)makes a noticeable difference. i have compared two hard drives(difficult to do, i admit)at ata-33 and 66 and the difference is minimal. but put in a 7200 rpm baby and watch it fly.
P.S. Sandra2000 record on the drive benchmark is now held by a $118.00 Maxtor 15gb 7200 ata-66 enabled drive. Beat out the previous champ my IBM 12.8gb(at about $180.00..)

[Sowulo]

Is this a faster benchmark report or actual noticable performance boost in Win and Apps. Just curious, I've tried 7200 a couple of times (as well as U2W SCSI, etc.) and didn't really see any noticable difference.

[techs]

i have actually tried timimg boot ups, and certain programs launching, or carrying out commands that seem to be disk intensive, and there is a real difference. noticeable from my clients who have called to thank me profusely. (they tried adding ram and there was some slight improvement, but the 7200 h.d. was a bigger improvement.)
i wrote this post because i an't find any info on real world h.d. rotation speed, versus udma mode improvements). i guess what I am trying to say is that ata-66 is hyped(who cares what burst speed is?) because latency and seek are the real bottlenecks and the 7200 which has a stated same seek and latency(?) is better at both. which begs the question, are we going to need 10000rpm ata100 drives to show any improvement? or is the real improvement in the rpm rate/

[Larommi]

Is it the RPM's or the fact that a 7200 RPM drive had a 2MB buffer?

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I might rock, but I am not made of stone!

[techs]

a 2mb buffer may be the reason, but it just reinforces my idea about the 7200 rpm drives. i recently saw an ata-100 drive with a 4mb buffer, so if ata-100 catches on i can compare 7200 rpm dirves at ata-66 vs.ata100.]
hey, everyone has to have a hobby!

[bdunn]

Just don't install them in an IMAC. it will overheat.

[techs]

what's an IMAC?

[Sowulo]

That's what that baseball player with St. Louis calls himself.

[techs]

and i thought it was what you ordered at McDonalds.

[Larommi]

That would be a McMAC!

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I might rock, but I am not made of stone!

[drgonzoid]

7200's rock big time - faster rotational speed = faster access to data as it takes much less time for the platters to spin so the head can read more data per second - i use them for streaming video at home and there is a major improvement in performance with the 7200's - ata33 and ata66 are burst speed indications - they will not be sustained so improvements are only marginal but faster drive rotation means more data can be pulled off the drive per unit of time - for a fun time go with 10000 rpm drives - have only played with one so far but boy oh boy they fly

[techs]

the only 10000 rpm drives i have seen are scsi, fibrechannel etc. no ide. although with ata 100 they might start to make them.

[Shades]

I guess the only thing that is the downside of the 7200rpm drives is the problem of the noise that is generated... Found that the noise increases big time especially with a big hollow case... mmmmmm whirrrr!!! hehehe... )

Speed increase is definitely there, especially on large transfers because the head doesn't have to wait so long for the data to come round on the platter.

[techs]

noise? noise? did you say noise? i can't hear you the computer is on. seriously i have an ibm ata66 7200 12.8 gb in a full tower Aopen case and the case fans (2) make more noise than the drive. wonder if it is only on certain drives?

[Nighthand]

I have a 7200rpm Maxtor 20gb in my main machine, but have never used the 5400 rpm ata66 drives. What I did notice is that most of the 7200rpms have 2mb of cache whereas the 5400rpms have like 256K. Anybody seen a 5400rpm drive with 2mb of cache? That would be a fairer comparison