What do you think is more important in HDDs

what are you saying like speed vs size? depends but if you are talking performance then speed obviously.
 
Obviously it varies depending on what you do with it. Gamers should prefer quick hard drives, while anyone with lots of media files would go for size. Although if I had to say one thing was most important, I'd say lifespan. I always look at the reviews of the hard drive I'm going to buy in order to avoid getting one that is notorious for failing after a couple of months.
 
depends how you use your pc i.e. lots of files of less files and want performance or both i need large size disk as i use tons of files but also a decent speed i use a samsung 1tb which is pretty good, but if you want a significantly quicker boot up you would need a solid state drive, which can be expensive, although you could buy a 40gb ssd for £75 and i use it solely for os and use a hard disk drive for storing files.
 
well the higher the rpm the quicker the drive read speeds etc all laptops and ssds are 5400rpm, most desktops are 7200rpm although you can buy 10,000rpm raptor drives, but these are obviously noisier.
 
I think the hard drive world is shifting to SSD.... I typically look at the buffer size, speed, size, and price when buying a hard drive... seek times rarely, they generally don't vary that much.

id like to get an SSD if they weren't so expensive.
 
jamesd1981 said:
well the higher the rpm the quicker the drive read speeds etc all laptops and ssds are 5400rpm, most desktops are 7200rpm although you can buy 10,000rpm raptor drives, but these are obviously noisier.
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So, would say for an example: 1HDD with 7200rpm with 2MB cache gonna have
same speed acessing/writting files than a 7200rpm with 16MB of cache?
 
no larger buffer would give you better read times the hard drive will basically cache its common files in its buffer and then you can access it faster than seeking it from the disk... its like the hard drives on RAM.... this file being so small would benefit more on an OS drive buffering the smaller os files that it uses a lot.
 
Quiltface said:
no larger buffer would give you better read times the hard drive will basically cache its common files in its buffer and then you can access it faster than seeking it from the disk... its like the hard drives on RAM.... this file being so small would benefit more on an OS drive buffering the smaller os files that it uses a lot.
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The same as L1, L2 and L3 caches in CPUs..
And being there makes a big diference in the CPUs isnt it?
 
jamesd1981 said:
well the higher the rpm the quicker the drive read speeds etc all laptops and ssds are 5400rpm, most desktops are 7200rpm although you can buy 10,000rpm raptor drives, but these are obviously noisier.
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"ssds are 5400rpm?"

tell me what spins 5400rpm in a ssd when there is no moving parts?
 
you mean the buffer being there makes a big difference in the cpu? I am not sure... difference perhaps..big probably not. you figure the cpu still has to process the information either way. I dont foresee a drive with a 16MB buffer performing circles around a drive with 8MB... But the price difference is minimal so you might as well go for it.

or did I misunderstand you?
 
Quiltface said:
you mean the buffer being there makes a big difference in the cpu? I am not sure... difference perhaps..big probably not. you figure the cpu still has to process the information either way. I dont foresee a drive with a 16MB buffer performing circles around a drive with 8MB... But the price difference is minimal so you might as well go for it.

or did I misunderstand you?
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Well, sort of,
What i would like to know is an HDD with 16MB/cache gonna output/imput more data than an 2MB/cache per second?
 
From my understanding on this ( i dont study HDD facts all day or anything ) write no, read yes but nothing to brag about. i mean its a 16MB buffer.... I have mp3's bigger than that.
 
Quiltface said:
From my understanding on this ( i dont study HDD facts all day or anything ) write no, read yes but nothing to brag about. i mean its a 16MB buffer.... I have mp3's bigger than that.
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So all the hdds with 7200rpm gonna give basically the same level of speed?
Writting small or big files and gonna read with the same speed as well?
 
give or take a millisecond or a fraction of a millisecond. I would be more worried with the drives reputation than anything. Ive had some bad experiences with WD drives lately.
 
I think WD has worked most of there bugs out... my first two 500gb black drives failed after one year and my new ones have been revised PCB IC's... the one's that failed had samsung chips on them... :eek:
 
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