• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.
  • The forums have been upgraded with support for dark mode. By default it will follow the setting on your system/browser. You may override it by scrolling to the end of the page and clicking the gears icon.

Which drive setup is faster? two 5400rpm at Raid 0 or one 7200 drive?

V

vbx

New Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
720 (0.12/day)
System Specs
Processor E8500 Core 2 Duo
Motherboard ASUS P5Q-EM
Cooling Cooler Master Hyper Z600
Memory Gskill 4gb DDR2 1066
Video Card(s) HIS 4670
Storage WD 320gb black
Display(s) Asus MS226H 21.5 monitor
Case Antec P180 Mini
Power Supply Antec NEO ECO 620C
Software Windows 7 x64
Which setup is faster?
 
Last edited:
One 7200.

Latency of the 5400's will kill you.
 
I asked this same question a few weeks back. I think we came to the conclusion that the single 7200RPM drive would have better latencies, but the two 5400RPM drives would have faster transfer rates. In the end, I think a single 7200RPM drive would be better, the speed difference would be hardly noticeable either way you go, but the two 5400RPM drives double your change of failure, which isn't worth next to no performance difference.
 
Alright, thanks!
 
assuming that this is for a laptop, also think in the battery life, reason to go with the single 7200rpm
 
If this is for a laptop, get one 5400... My 7200 Heats up way more than my 5400 (50 degrees vs 40 on load)
 
I've found not all 7200s get hot, the new Seagates run pretty cool.
 
I have some Samsung drives, don't run hot either. They hit about 40-45C with a 30C room temp.
 
n-ster said:
If this is for a laptop, get one 5400... My 7200 Heats up way more than my 5400 (50 degrees vs 40 on load)
Click to expand...

i replaced the 200gb 5400 in my mbp with a 7200.3 seagae 320, and the battery is the same, performance is a lot better. heat is the same
 
Sorry for the misinformation then :rolleyes: just that that was true from my recent experience... guess you have to know which one to buy ;)
 
Most laptops bought today come with drives that are at least one generation old, sometimes even more.

In my experience, pulling a 5400RPM that is a generation or 2 or 3 old and putting in a modern 7200RPM drive, will give similar heat generation and power consumption and way better performance. While replacing it with a modern 5400RPM will actually give less heat generation and power consumption and still give a performance boost.

The interesting thing is that the technology in the drives have progressed so far, that modern 5400RPM drives now outperform 7200RPM drives from a few years ago...So while it might not seem like a good idea, if you have an older laptop with a 7200RPM drive, it might actually be an upgrade in every way to move to a 5400RPM drive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top