When will 10000 RPM replace 7200 RPM? [Hard drives]

[Stan_1936]

It seems to me that an 80 GB Western Digital 1000 RPM Velociraptor hard drive would just kinda sit and spin with nothing on it. It's too small for storage, and too big for a boot drive.

Here's the question:
How long until 10000 RPM hard drives replace 7200 RPM hard drives?

or(perhaps phrased another way?)

How long until the price of 10000 RPM hard drives begin to fall?

[igknighted]

I think the technical challenges of high-rpm disks spinning themselves apart (and the power cost of spinning them that fast) will lead to moving storage to another medium (like flash drives) before 10k rpm drives ever become the norm.

[jespdj]

Note that a higher capacity harddisk rotating at the same speed as a lower capacity harddisk will still transfer data faster, because the data density is higher - in the same amount of time, the harddisk head of the higher capacity harddisk will pass over more bits on the disk, so it's reading more data.

I don't think that 10,000 RPM harddisks are ever going to be the norm for standard desktop PCs.

If you want a fast disk system, get two or more harddisks and put them in a RAID setup.

[Stan_1936]

...I don't think that 10,000 RPM harddisks are ever going to be the norm for standard desktop PCs....

Sigh!:(

[jespdj]

Sigh!:(
Why? What advantage do you think a 10,000 RPM drive would have? As I said, if it's about speed, build a RAID array.

[igknighted]

Sigh!:(

No need to sigh... what you get instead will be better

[boast]

price drop?

$700 for a 300GB 15k ultra320 is pretty cheap! :P

[insane_alien]

two 7200's in RAID 0 would be faster than a single 10000, bigger capacity too.

also, when SSD's mature a bit more they'll even put 15000 RAIDS to shame.

[chucky chuckaluck]

should be required to run windows8.

[sej7278]

Why? What advantage do you think a 10,000 RPM drive would have? As I said, if it's about speed, build a RAID array.

so you use raid0 but then you either end up with losing the whole array if one disk dies.

or raid5 which involves buying three drives and losing the capacity of one to parity, and it being slower than raid0.

what i was thinking of doing is buying 2x500gb and raid0'ing them, and then backing up to a single 1tb esata drive overnight.

although i still end up buying three drives like raid5, but only two have to be online all the time and i can lose either both 500gb's or the 1tb drive and still have no data loss.

although the 1tb would probably still be faster than 2x500gb due to higher platter density.....

i dunno, i just don't think any raid is really worth it, a single large, fast drive is still the way to go i reckon.

[Bart_D]

...when SSD's mature a bit more they'll even put 15000 RAIDS to shame.

Agreed! Well said, good sir.

[steeleyuk]

also, when SSD's mature a bit more they'll even put 15000 RAIDS to shame.

Which is why Western Digital is trying to make a 20K Raptor to keep up with SSD.

It won't work in the long term obviously...

[boast]

or raid5 which involves buying three drives and losing the capacity of one to parity, and it being slower than raid0.

the parity is split among the drives, not 1 specific drive....

raid4 has the dedicated drive.

[DonaldJ]

"When will 10000 RPM replace 7200 RPM?"

Umm.. When nitrogen cooling-systems are cheap...

[insane_alien]

obviously as the RPM increase to do the forces on the platters requiring the use of exotic materials which are incredibly costly, also, the motors will need to be more powerful and smoother running and so on.

all this adds up to £££. if anyone needs to shell out outrageous amounts of money per gigabyte i think they'll go for SSD which won't use as much power(assuming all other things are equal which they likely won't be)

EDIT: DonaldJ, 10000 rpm drives do not require nitrogen cooling, yes they run hotter but not THAT much hotter.

[oldsoundguy]

just an add .. have you ever seen ANYTHING capable of holding together for any period of time that spins at 10K rpm?

A dragster lasts for 1/4 mile and has to be stripped down!
Aircraft engines have to be checked OFTEN and pulled if anything looks suspect.

If you have ever taken real engineering classes and advanced to a course in "strength of materials" you will know!
A hard disk is made of a silicon wafer .. and the tensile strength limits (the forces that hold it together) get weaker and weaker the faster you spin it up.

It has been mentioned .. flash drives .. most likely that will be the way things go .. or somebody will come up with something new.
The less mechanical things become within the confines of a computer box, the better things are for longer life .. and another thing that is gaining "being green".

I remember a 26MB hard drive that took up a third of my desk and cost a bundle and now I have 10gb FLASH CARDS for my camera that cost chump change!

[insane_alien]

just an add .. have you ever seen ANYTHING capable of holding together for any period of time that spins at 10K rpm?

rather ironically, 10kRPM harddrives. and 15kRPM harddrives.

and the lab i work in has a 30kRPM centrifuge that has been there for 10 years and has only broken once and that was a fuse. don't think its ever had preventative maintenance carried out on it.

the major barrier is not technological, its economical. we can do better for cheaper using other methods and that gap is only likely to get bigger as time goes on.

in theory, we could be pumping out multi terabyte 25kRPM harddrives that'll last 10 years RIGHT NOW. why aren't we?

cost. while one of those is technologically possible, it is very very expensive to implement and would likely cost over £100000 for a single unit. much more than a similar capacity RAID array with similar performance.

your dragster analogy isn't a good one, those engines aren't designed to last, they are designed to deliver maximum performance for the time it takes to do that quarter of a mile. engineering them to last several races would add to the weight and cost and thus reducing the performance.

harddrives must have both performance AND endurance.

[lswb]

just an add .. have you ever seen ANYTHING capable of holding together for any period of time that spins at 10K rpm?
...


A diesel engine turbocharger can spin at 50,000 to 100,000 or even more rpm and they last for years. Of course they have a pressurized oil lubrication system.

[steveneddy]

I believe that SSD'd will put the standard HD out to pasture within the year if the manufacturers can get the pricing down.

[DonaldJ]

There were a lot of those wealthyiess, who paid $1500 each for the first L.E.D. watches... The money is out there, just wanting to be spent.. it's just that the poorer folks don't usually hear about the ultra high tech stuff.. like years ago, the "Sat dish Internet", which downloads at X-megs per second.. It's just not available to the general public, because they said so on the box... And mostly because it's not in the publics world, yet.. but I'm sure the stuff is running out there, as elite consumer products, in probably every city on the planet... We'll get it when something big obsoletes the new secret stuff... Then they'll "dump it on us" to rake-in steady flows of big bucks, for what they consider to be their trash... It's just how the big money-world works... Like how $1500 LED watches and $3000 liquid qtz-crystal watches are now just .10-cents each at liquidator warehouses... The big guy's garbage is coming, not to worry.. We gets it when we gets it.. after they deems it to be their "garbage"...

[Slug71]

I think SSDs will become the standard in the near future.

You have the Western Digital Raptor 10k drives though.

[mcduck]

I hope not before the day they figure a way to make a 10000RPM hard drive that uses the same amount of power and only creates the same amount of noise a 7200RPM drive does..

I can only imagine how my laptop's battery meter would descend, accompanied by the high-pitched whining of a 15k RPM hard disk.. :D


oldsoundguy: sure, aircraft jet turbines are checked often. But still they actually last very long, and they don't even run at 10000 rpm but can actually reach speeds above 100000RPM (for the turbine itself on turbojets, not the fan blades on turbofan engines) and also operate at very high temperatures (1500C is quite possible even for commercial jets on takeoffs).. Compared to that spinning a couple of small metal disks at 10000RPM is nothing. ;)

[jerrrys]

10k u320 i got, is it really that great, i say not till it can sustain that 320 rate and not in just burst. dont have the specs in front of me, but i think actual sustained transfer rate is like half of that

[sej7278]

I believe that SSD'd will put the standard HD out to pasture within the year if the manufacturers can get the pricing down.

no chance. maybe 3 years.

not big enough, i still don't believe they're that fast (look at how slow usb thumbdrives and sdcards are, they're ssd) not reliable enough, too expensive, not proven technology.....

[igknighted]

no chance. maybe 3 years.

not big enough, i still don't believe they're that fast (look at how slow usb thumbdrives and sdcards are, they're ssd) not reliable enough, too expensive, not proven technology.....

Don't forget that thumb drives and SD cards use a very slow interface (USB or other) that bottlenecks their speed.

[gletob]

so you use raid0 but then you either end up with losing the whole array if one disk dies.

or raid5 which involves buying three drives and losing the capacity of one to parity, and it being slower than raid0.

what i was thinking of doing is buying 2x500gb and raid0'ing them, and then backing up to a single 1tb esata drive overnight.

although i still end up buying three drives like raid5, but only two have to be online all the time and i can lose either both 500gb's or the 1tb drive and still have no data loss.

although the 1tb would probably still be faster than 2x500gb due to higher platter density.....

i dunno, i just don't think any raid is really worth it, a single large, fast drive is still the way to go i reckon.

Since it sounds like you have some experience in raid could you explain how the whole RAID 5 parody thing works? Because from the animations I've seen I don't see how it offers redundacny. Also I'm betting on SSDs coming down in price and up in speed and life expectancy.

[Compucore]

The only time you would need to use an ultra320 are in raid arrays for servers or workstations that need them. I know my precision 530 can work with IDE, SCSI lvd160's or in sata. SCSI raids are usually faster because they have been around long enough to have high throughput on them compared to sata to sustain the throughput. Because it can be read in sequence from different disk compared to a single disk and wait fro the transfer from the disk to the cpu for processing.

Compucore



price drop?

$700 for a 300GB 15k ultra320 is pretty cheap! :P

[Faolan84]

"Just use a RAID 0 setup" will get you in a lot of crap if something breaks.
Remember it's called RAID 0 because that's how much data you get back if one of your drives fail.

[jerrrys]

true raid0 offers no redundancy, but two hdd's under raid0 running at 7200rpm = 14400rpm plus double the transfer rate plus double the storage (or in a perfect world it would be, there is some loss involved) and can always be backed up on a nightly bases with software. which i would prefer over raid5 that can take hours to days to rebuild itself. and again, im thinking for home and not commercial use

[sej7278]

true raid0 offers no redundancy, but two hdd's under raid0 running at 7200rpm = 14400rpm plus double the transfer rate plus double the storage (or in a perfect world it would be, there is some loss involved) and can always be backed up on a nightly bases with software. which i would prefer over raid5 that can take hours to days to rebuild itself. and again, im thinking for home and not commercial use

yup, that's exactly what i'm thinking, raid0+backup is much better than raid5.

as raid shouldn't be used for backup, and things like raid5 are for redundancy, certainly not zero downtime as its takes hours to rebuild the array and you'd better pray another drive doesn't fail in the process!

raid explanations from the ever-reliable (ahem) wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

[Liviu-Theodor]

Hmm... Maybe tomorrow, maybe never... Even now, you have the option of having SAS, SCSI or SATA drives at 10000 rpm or even 15000 rpm, but this not (yet) the standard. And while their price is slow falling, another technologies may arise (flash drives or something I do not know of)...

[adamlau]

10K drives have been the norm for me for years. My desktops usually spin 15K Cheetahs, the one I am in front of now has a 10K VelociRaptor doing the dirty work. I have always believed that a box is only as fast as its slowest component. On modern systems, that component is almost always the HDD.

[jespdj]

true raid0 offers no redundancy, but two hdd's under raid0 running at 7200rpm = 14400rpm ...
Ofcourse it doesn't work like that. That's like saying that two cars going at 50mph is the same as one car going at 100mph?!

[colifato13]

Never, maybe some day, but i don't think that it would ever be a standard for desktop storage.

the price doesn't make sense for the cost per GB, they are using old technology, just like the ipods (i don't hate ipods i just think they're overprice). To bad for the biz, HDDs aren't cool to carry around, hahah.

I don't think that you even get good real life results with the RPM upgrade, compare to 7.200.

[mcduck]

Ofcourse it doesn't work like that. That's like saying that two cars going at 50mph is the same as one car going at 100mph?!

It depends. If you need to carry 8 people 50 miles, 2 cars capable of carrying 4 people/car and driving at 50MPH do the job as fast as one car carrying 4 persons at time and traveling at 100MPH, because the one car traveling at double the speed also needs to do same trip twice to do the same job.

(this is of course assuming that the one car doesn't have to return where it started to pick up the next 4 persons, in which case it would do the job slower than the two cars driving at half the speed ;))

The speed you are working isn't always the same thing as how fast you get the job done.

[jerrrys]

Ofcourse it doesn't work like that. That's like saying that two cars going at 50mph is the same as one car going at 100mph?!

no it does not, thats why i said in a perfect world. however there is definite accumulative effect that is not related to two cars

[init1]

no chance. maybe 3 years.

not big enough, i still don't believe they're that fast (look at how slow usb thumbdrives and sdcards are, they're ssd) not reliable enough, too expensive, not proven technology.....
The reason why USB drives are slow is because USB transfer is much slower than SATA. The benchmarks say that SSDs are a little faster than traditional HDDs, although the difference in speed isn't significant yet. SSDs are much more reliable since there's no moving parts.

[ArtF10]

USB 3.0 is coming out in late 2009. A factor of 10(increase) in speed is being quoted as the specification for this interface.

[mips]

USB 3.0 is coming out in late 2009. A factor of 10(increase) in speed is being quoted as the specification for this interface.

USB as a standard although widely available & cheap sucks. It's rated speed and sustained throughput rates are two completely differnt things. Firewire on the other hand does not really suffer from the problems USB experience and will always be faster than USB.

[sej7278]

USB as a standard although widely available & cheap sucks. It's rated speed and sustained throughput rates are two completely differnt things. Firewire on the other hand does not really suffer from the problems USB experience and will always be faster than USB.

anything that says "10x speed" always throws up the ******** alert with me.

bit like how wireless-n and super-g+ was supposed to be 120-300mbps i.e. faster than 100base-t ethernet, yeah we all know how realistic that is!

firewire is bi-directional 400mbps, as usb2 is uni-directional 480mbs, in firewire terms its 240mbps.

using the same logic, firewire800 would be about as fast as usb 1600, so usb3 *may* be faster, i greatly doubt it though.

even if it is, the disks won't be able to keep up anyway - the sata300 interface isn't saturated by 120mbps hard drives, even if you raid0 two of them.

[mips]

anything that says "10x speed" always throws up the ******** alert with me.

bit like how wireless-n and super-g+ was supposed to be 120-300mbps i.e. faster than 100base-t ethernet, yeah we all know how realistic that is!

firewire is bi-directional 400mbps, as usb2 is uni-directional 480mbs, in firewire terms its 240mbps.

using the same logic, firewire800 would be about as fast as usb 1600, so usb3 *may* be faster, i greatly doubt it though.

even if it is, the disks won't be able to keep up anyway - the sata300 interface isn't saturated by 120mbps hard drives, even if you raid0 two of them.

Yeah, it's all BS advertising ratings.

Edit: Wrt sata I think you are mixing up your bits & Bytes.
Yip, real throughput for 480Mbps USB is about 240Mbps.

USB 3.0 is 'supposed' to run at 5Gbps. At the same time you will have Firewire 1600 & 3200. So if you halve the USB 3 speed Firewire 3200 will still kill it.

[sej7278]

Yeah, it's all BS advertising ratings.

Edit: Wrt sata I think you are mixing up your bits & Bytes.
Yip, real throughput for 480Mbps USB is about 240Mbps.

USB 3.0 is 'supposed' to run at 5Gbps. At the same time you will have Firewire 1600 & 3200. So if you halve the USB 3 speed Firewire 3200 will still kill it.

dunno about sata, my benchmarks say sustained 117 megabytes/sec, sata2 is supposed to be able to do 300megabytes/sec, so two drive in raid0 still wouldn't max it out.

although some say sata2 is 3 gigabits/sec, which is odd as the two aren't the same (300mbytes is not 3gbits).

anyway, very interesting about faster firewire, i thought currently it was only fw800, so is 1600-3200 under development/announced?

[mips]

anyway, very interesting about faster firewire, i thought currently it was only fw800, so is 1600-3200 under development/announced?

According to this it should have been out already;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire#FireWire_S1600_and_S3200

I meant you were using mbps for both Mega bits per seconds and Mega Bytes per second. The rest I was agreeing with ;)