From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1RJMw4-0007g8-BS for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:11:44 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0597A21C089; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:11:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83F5E21C037 for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:09:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3223A1B4053 for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:09:41 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new using ClamAV at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: -4.067 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.067 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=0.626, BAYES_00=-1.9, FREEMAIL_FROM=0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED=-2.3, RP_MATCHES_RCVD=-0.504, T_TO_NO_BRKTS_FREEMAIL=0.01] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 1ZmG3Qs9cvNp for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:09:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A029D1B4022 for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:09:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RJMts-0005aM-Mn for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:09:28 +0200 Received: from athedsl-393364.home.otenet.gr ([79.131.88.146]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:09:28 +0200 Received: from realnc by athedsl-393364.home.otenet.gr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:09:28 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org From: Nikos Chantziaras Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Hard drive RPMs and data speed. Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:09:17 +0300 Organization: Lucas Barks Message-ID: References: <4EA9130A.6070807@gmail.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: athedsl-393364.home.otenet.gr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20111003 Thunderbird/7.0.1 In-Reply-To: <4EA9130A.6070807@gmail.com> X-Archives-Salt: X-Archives-Hash: c5210202e408847ddb00f43d2eb6a2cf On 10/27/2011 11:15 AM, Dale wrote: > Howdy, > > I'm wanting to get a hard drive that is pretty good size. I'm looking > for about 1 to 2TBs or so. Thing is, a lot of them seem to be 5900 or > even 5400 rpm drives. I realize that the data on there is packed pretty > tight so I want to ask a few people that may have one or more of these > things a few questions. Are they as fast as a slower RPM drive? I assume you meant to say "as fast as a faster RPM drive". No, of course not. If we're speaking about the same capacity and amount of platters, of course. If we're not, then yes, they can be as fast because of the higher data density. > Would > they be fast enough to play HD videos and such? I have quite a few 1080 > HD videos. I don't want the drive to cause issues. The transfer speed required for playing HD videos is virtually zero. 1080p video compressed using an 8mbps rate require 2MB/s. This can be done even with the slowest drive from 10 years ago. Today's slowest drive are able to play about 40 or 50 of those HD video simultaneously. So the answer is yes. They can play HD video :-) Most of those 5900/5400 disks are meant for pure data storage. The lower RPM is used to market them as "green and silent", meaning they don't consume much power and aren't noisy. Installing your OS on them though isn't going to give you good speed. They have good transfer rates, but their access times usually suck. > Can someone that has one or more of these post their hdparm -Tt results? > Different speeds would be great too. I'd like to compare what a 5400rpm > drive would do compared to a 7200rpm drive. Simply Google around for benchmarks of the drivers you're interested in. Note that is in area where it doesn't make any real difference that the benches or reviews you find are performed under MS Windows. The results are applicable to every OS. As a rule of thumb when buying drives: if you want to install software on it, buy an 7200RPM drive with good access times. Of course they're more expensive If you just want to store all your downloaded HD porn and music collection on it, a silent 5400RPM drive is a good choice. Oh, and one other thing; hdparm is only meant to get you the continuous I/O transfer rate. It's an awful benchmark for anything else, like what happens if a file is fragmented or how fast it can copy/write data spread around the disk, how good it is at combined random I/O operation, etc.