Harddrive Speed?

[The Real Dave]

Its that time of year again, and I'm looking at upgrading a few harddrives in my server. The choice is between these two drives

Samsung Spinpoint EcoGreen F2 500Gb @ 5400rpm

and

Samsung Spinpoint F1 500Gb @ 7200rpm

Will the RpM make a big difference? These drives are going to be in a server, not accessed too often, and nothings booting from them. Also, they're gonna be connected through a SATA RAID card, I'm probably not going to upgrade that. Does the extra speed of the 7k2 drive out weight the environmental, heat and energy benefits of the EcoGreen? The EcoGreen is also marginally cheaper...

Opinions would be great

[insane_alien]

if its in a server(especially one that isn't accessed to often) then the 5400rpm one will do. its not going to be slow and the biggest cause of slow down is likely to be the network anyways. increasing the hardrive speed would have minimal improvements.

a use case for a faster drive is if the server is performing very disk intensive applications and not requiring too much network.

basically just ask yourself, is the task it needs to perform disk intensive?

if yes then 7200RPM(or a nice 10k or 15k if your willing to spend and need it)

if no then 5400RPM cause its a bit cheaper.

[cascade9]

For a server, get the Eco Green. In modern drives, the 7200 models tend push less than %15 faster than the 5400 'green power/eco green' etc drives. I'd expect over 75MB/sec from the eco green (probably more like 100MB/sec) Tons of speed.

I'm running a WD 1TB Green Power drive for desktop use, mainly for the energy/heat issues...but I must admit that the price difference was the final push (I paid $115 AU for the GP drive, the 7200 1TB was over $170).

[Exodist]

Its that time of year again, and I'm looking at upgrading a few harddrives in my server. The choice is between these two drives

Samsung Spinpoint EcoGreen F2 500Gb @ 5400rpm

and

Samsung Spinpoint F1 500Gb @ 7200rpm

Will the RpM make a big difference? These drives are going to be in a server, not accessed too often, and nothings booting from them. Also, they're gonna be connected through a SATA RAID card, I'm probably not going to upgrade that. Does the extra speed of the 7k2 drive out weight the environmental, heat and energy benefits of the EcoGreen? The EcoGreen is also marginally cheaper...

Opinions would be great

This is only a question you can answer.
- What are the task this server will perform?
- Whats the average user workload?
- How fast do you need this system to be?

IMHO:
- 5400RPM for long life file servers that dont get accessed by many users or put in a heavy workload for long periods.
- 7200RPM for SOHO multi-task servers, I.e. Home/SmallBusiness Website & File Hosting with medium to heavy workloads.
- 10,000RPM for large business with constant heavy web traffice and constant heavy file transfer demands.

Its not always the over all data transfer rate as drive Seek times are VERY important.

In addition if you going with a performance raid setup, dont gimp yourself by getting a slower drive. But if RAID mirroring for data integrity is you purpose, then a 5400 could be a good option depending on the above facts.

[The Real Dave]

This is only a question you can answer.
- What are the task this server will perform?
- Whats the average user workload?
- How fast do you need this system to be?

IMHO:
- 5400RPM for long life file servers that dont get accessed by many users or put in a heavy workload for long periods.
- 7200RPM for SOHO multi-task servers, I.e. Home/SmallBusiness Website & File Hosting with medium to heavy workloads.
- 10,000RPM for large business with constant heavy web traffice and constant heavy file transfer demands.

Its not always the over all data transfer rate as drive Seek times are VERY important.

In addition if you going with a performance raid setup, dont gimp yourself by getting a slower drive. But if RAID mirroring for data integrity is you purpose, then a 5400 could be a good option depending on the above facts.

It won't be doing much work at all, a home server for 4 computers. The heaviest load it's gonna have is probably gonna be streaming media. It isn't accessed a whole load. It's gonna be in RAID0, so not looking for data integrity.

I think I'll go with the EcoGreen. The lower power consumption will be nice, seeing as the server is 24/7 and having less heat output is good two. I just wanted to know how big of a difference there is between 7k2 and 5k4 rpm drives

Thanks to all who posted

[Exodist]

It won't be doing much work at all, a home server for 4 computers. The heaviest load it's gonna have is probably gonna be streaming media. It isn't accessed a whole load. It's gonna be in RAID0, so not looking for data integrity.

I think I'll go with the EcoGreen. The lower power consumption will be nice, seeing as the server is 24/7 and having less heat output is good two. I just wanted to know how big of a difference there is between 7k2 and 5k4 rpm drives

Thanks to all who posted

Really tho, 5400RPM is a good choice for what you want. But unless your just stripping your drives for the sake of having one large drive. The benefit of going RAID0 will mostly be lost. Just save your self the trouble and dont setup the RAID. IMHO..
RAID0 isnt true RAID anyway, its just stripping both(or more) drives to gain more speed by throw equal amounts of data across the drives. The slower access and read/write speeds on the drive(s) will offset the raid advantage. IMHO

[gn2]

Expensive for just 500gb, both models are supreceded by the newer and faster F3.

Also the 1.5tb EcoGreen F2 works out cheaper per gb.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2...hmarks,50.html

[The Real Dave]

Expensive for just 500gb, both models are supreceded by the newer and faster F3.

Also the 1.5tb EcoGreen F2 works out cheaper per gb.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2...hmarks,50.html

A Tb for €30 more....its tempting....but that would really be overkill I think...there's no way I could fill a Tb. But damn its tempting....

[Exodist]

A Tb for €30 more....its tempting....but that would really be overkill I think...there's no way I could fill a Tb. But damn its tempting....

Its better to go with a oversized drive. The reason is the drive will put data toward the center of the drive first, the data that ends up on the out sections of the plater(s) will accessed slower. So a 1TB drive using only 500MB will keep more your data toward the center of the platters keeping the speed up.

[The Real Dave]

Its better to go with a oversized drive. The reason is the drive will put data toward the center of the drive first, the data that ends up on the out sections of the plater(s) will accessed slower. So a 1TB drive using only 500MB will keep more your data toward the center of the platters keeping the speed up.

Hmmm, I suppose its future proofing at least