What Is the Difference Between 5400 RPM & 7200 RPM Hard Drives?
Computers require a permanent storage area to hold application and user data. This requirement is most commonly met with an internal hard drive. Mechanical hard drives currently enjoy an industry ubiquity that includes virtually all computers. A commonly reviewed specification for a hard drive is the rotations per minute rating, which has several effects on system efficiency.
Other People Are Reading
-
RPM Definition
-
Hard drive rotations per minute refers to the speed at which the internal data platters spin. Data within a hard drive is stored on circular metallic platters. This data is read using a small needle that moves across the rotating platters. Therefore, speaking purely in physical speed, a 7,200 rpm hard drive brings data to the needle sequentially faster than a 5,400 rpm hard drive. Physical speed, however, isn't the only specification that affects hard drive efficiency.
Data Throughput
-
In some cases, the additional speed of the 7,200 rpm hard drive allows for faster data transfers from the drive to other parts of the computer. This is important during large data reading processes such as booting the computer. A 5,400 rpm drive may, depending on hardware and other factors, be slower in data transfer. However, these limitations can be overcome by a variety of methods. The higher throughput also raises the cost of a 7,200 rpm drive over the 5,400 rpm drives.
-
Uses
-
Higher speed 7,200 rpm hard drives are well suited for system partitions -- those containing the operating system and installed programs. Games are also candidates for these higher rpm drives because they often load several files at any one time. The 5,400 rpm drives are well suited for archive data and large storage partitions. Video and music libraries are often kept on these slower drives because these media files are, even in HD, encoded at data rates far slower than the maximum rate for a 5,400 rpm drive.
Considerations
-
Though physically 5,400 rpm drives are slower than 7,200 rpm drives, there are several factors that level the playing field. Rotational speed for hard drives helps very little when the data being read is non-sequential. Data that's scattered across a disk, which happens during normal usage, requires random access that dramatically lowers the significance of rotational speed. Further, intelligent hardware algorithms are used to ensure optimal placement of the read needle, lowering the time required to reach any one spot on the disk. Disk defragmenting software is also capable of placing the most commonly used data on a hard drive in strategic spots, physically, to reduce the need for long seeking times. Finally, hard drive capacities have increased without an increase in platter size. This means that the data density is larger in any given area of the platter, lessening the need for high rotational speeds as the data density increase means data is easier to reach with less rotation.
-
