2 TB drive for HD video: 5400 or 7200 rpm?

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tb4601

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I'm looking to upgrade my main PC and get a bigger drive for storing and playing HD movies. The 750 GB WD just won't hold enough anymore. I'm looking mainly at drives ~$150, such as:

Hitachi HD32000 IDK/7K (7200rpm)
Hitachi 7K2000 (7200rpm)
WD Green WD20EARS (5400rpm)
Seagate ST32000542AS (5900rpm)
Samsung Spinpoint F3EG HD203WI (5400rpm)

Basically, I'm wondering if I would notice any difference between the 5400, 5900, and 7200 for HD video playback, and how big the difference is in data transfer. My system isn't particularly well ventilated either, and I'm worried that the Hitachis might run too hot and be less reliable than the Seagate or WD. Any suggestions/comments are appreciated.
 
WD Green WD20EARS (5400rpm)

works great for HD on my HTPC. Its actually faster than my 7200.11 750GB seagates in STR and seek.
 
If you're looking at just a single drive, the WD should be fine. Unfortunately for me, I tried using them in RAID and had nothing but trouble. Got Hitachis instead and have no problems whatsoever now.
 
Samsung or Hitachi. If it's just for storage and not RAID, get the Samsung. My 2TB Sammy runs at least 5 degrees C cooler than my WD20EADS.
 
Go for the WD Green drive, it has a large cache (64MB) which is great when pausing and starting movies back up, and it actually switches between 5400RPM to 7200RPM depending on the work load (actually it spins around 5400-6000RPMs).

I've done heavy video playback and video editing on my 500GB WD Green with only a 16MB cache, so the 2TB version will be more than ready for the job.
 
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I vote for the Samsung.

Red Falcon said:
Go for the WD Green drive, it has a large cache (64MB) which is great when pausing and starting movies back up, and it actually switches between 5400RPM to 7200RPM depending on the work load.

I've done heavy video playback and video editing on my 500GB WD Green with only a 16MB cache, so the 2TB version will be more than ready for the job.
Click to expand...

Do you have a source where you gathered the information concerning variable RPM on the WD? Last I read, that was false.
 
dj_2004 said:
Do you have a source where you gathered the information concerning variable RPM on the WD? Last I read, that was false.
Click to expand...



http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/2178-771117.pdf

IntelliPower™
A fine-tuned balance of spin speed,
transfer rate, and caching algorithms
designed to deliver both significant
power savings and solid performance.
Click to expand...

and

http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr
Under "Rotational Speed," the manufacturer cites "IntelliPower (5400 to 7200 RPM). Under "Rotational Speed," the manufacturer cites "IntelliPower (5400 to 7200 RPM)." This does not mean the drive dynamically changes its spindle speed during operation... indeed, such a feature would entail considerable mechanical engineering and would in many ways defeat the point -- rapidly accelerating and decelerating the spindle's speed would increase rather than decrease net power draw. Rather, the IntelliPower term indicates that the GP family as a whole does not have a set spindle speed (nor a set buffer size, for that matter). Different capacity points may feature differing spin speeds and buffer sizes. For those that must know, WD admits "sub-6000 RPM operation" for the 1-TB Caviar GP
Click to expand...

So it truly isn't 5400-7200, more like 5400-6000RPM, but for everything I threw at it it never was a bottleneck at all, even for HD video editing and playback. Also, the 500GB model got a 5.9 rating in Vista and 7 for me.
 
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Blu-ray playback will require approximately 5% of the average read speed of one of those drives...
 
Blue Fox said:
Blu-ray playback will require approximately 5% of the average read speed of one of those drives...
Click to expand...

True, but other file types may require more, and if the HDD is handling anything else, this could cause stuttering and file lag, which for smooth playback is a big headache. The WD Green has a large 64MB cache which should help prevent this from happening though.
 
I have WD green drives in my server. I can stream 2 HD movies to different HTPC's at once without issue. It's more than fast enough.
 
In my experience, the size of a hard drive's cache means absolutely dick. I stream stuff off several different brands of drives in my WHS and none of them have stuttering issues, no matter what else I'm doing on the drives.
 
Red Falcon said:
True, but other file types may require more, and if the HDD is handling anything else, this could cause stuttering and file lag, which for smooth playback is a big headache. The WD Green has a large 64MB cache which should help prevent this from happening though.
Click to expand...

Um.. no.

I have 2160p h.264 video in an MKV container with a bitrate of roughly ~240Mb/s. Thats 30MB/s. Tell me which 5400RPM drive is going to have a problem with reading at 30MB/s....

In fact, I just put the file on my laptop that has a 5400RPM 2.5" drive w/ and 8MB cache, and streamed this file perfectly fine over Gigabit Ethernet to my workstation.

Code: 
General
Complete name                    : V:\Misc\Decoding Test Footage\Ducks.Take.Off.720p.1080p.2160p.QHD.TEST.DEMO.x264-CtrlHD\Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv
Format                           : Matroska
File size                        : 494 MiB
Duration                         : 16s 683ms
Overall bit rate                 : 248 Mbps
Writing application              : x264
Writing library                  : Haali Matroska Writer b0

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Muxing mode                      : Container [email protected]
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                         : 16s 683ms
Bit rate                         : 243 Mbps
Width                            : 3 840 pixels
Height                           : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Resolution                       : 8 bits
Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.978
Stream size                      : 484 MiB (98%)
Writing library                  : x264 core 59 r830M 5ca01b3
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=7 / me-prepass=0 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=2 / deadzone=8,2 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / fgo=10 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=crf / crf=25.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.15 / aq=2:0.60
 
criccio said:
Um.. no.

I have 2160p h.264 video in an MKV container with a bitrate of roughly ~240Mb/s. Thats 30MB/s. Tell me which 5400RPM drive is going to have a problem with reading at 30MB/s....

In fact, I just put the file on my laptop that has a 5400RPM 2.5" drive w/ and 8MB cache, and streamed this file perfectly fine over Gigabit Ethernet to my workstation.
Click to expand...

Do that while rendering a video to that same HDD and access/upload other files to it at the same time and you will see it buckle.

For the OP, just watching video like you said, will be fine. But having a large cache for more than one task is very necessary.

Any modern HDD in the last 5 years can handle a single task just fine without stuttering or streaming problems.
However, the difference between a 2MB through 64MB cache can make or break a standard HDD when the drive has multiple medium to heavy duty tasks.
 
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Red Falcon said:
Do that while rendering a video to that same HDD and access/upload other files to it at the same time and you will see it buckle.

For the OP, just watching video like you said, will be fine. But having a large cache for more than one task is very necessary.

Any modern HDD in the last 5 years can handle a single task just fine without stuttering or streaming problems.
However, the difference between a 2MB through 64MB cache can make or break a standard HDD when the drive has multiple medium to heavy duty tasks.
Click to expand...

Really? So if I were to stream 40GB of content, and upload 40GB at the same time, that 64MB v. 32MB buffer would make a difference?
 
pjkenned said:
Really? So if I were to stream 40GB of content, and upload 40GB at the same time, that 64MB v. 32MB buffer would make a difference?
Click to expand...

It would, not in throughput performance, but it would prevent or help prevent stuttering with the video file being streamed. If there is any network lag or the CPU is tied up, that extra cache basically acts as a buffer.

For a single file transfer, it doesn't matter if you have 2MB or 64MB of cache, a single transfer just isn't doing enough with the drive to eat the cache up.

However, when doing multiple transfers/uses on the HDD, the larger cache becomes far more important.

For streaming and uploading a file, you would be safe with even 8MB of cache on a HDD with a decent seek time, but any less and the HDD will become a bottleneck.


Try torrenting multiple files, streaming HD video (720p+), uploading 2+ large files at once, and rendering video (writing/encoding), all to the same HDD at once. Believe me, the difference between even a 16MB and a 32MB cache will make or break the drive's performance, even with a good seek time. Mind you, this is with just a single HDD.

RAID arrays are totally different and can handle just about anything thrown at them as long as their caches are 8MB+ each, even with RAID 1.
 
Red Falcon said:
So it truly isn't 5400-7200, more like 5400-6000RPM, but for everything I threw at it it never was a bottleneck at all, even for HD video editing and playback. Also, the 500GB model got a 5.9 rating in Vista and 7 for me.
Click to expand...

According to one source, the WD Green actually spins at 5405 RPM.
 
Red Falcon said:
Try torrenting multiple files, streaming HD video (720p+), uploading 2+ large files at once, and rendering video (writing/encoding), all to the same HDD at once. Believe me, the difference between even a 16MB and a 32MB cache will make or break the drive's performance, even with a good seek time. Mind you, this is with just a single HDD.
Click to expand...

If you are doing that, getting a 64MB cache green drive vs. a 32MB 7200rpm drive would be quite pointless :) Plus a Perc 5/i w/ BBU and 512MB of RAM would be a really good idea at that point.
 
I'm slightly confused. If a drive is not fast enough to keep up with a set load, how would increasing the buffer help any? Streaming HD video, uploading files, and rendering video are all somewhat steady requirements, so if your drive isn't fast enough to do them all at once, no matter how large the buffer, eventually it's going to run out. Yes, a larger buffer will increase the time till it runs out, but the listed jobs are not very small nor quick.


Or am I just wrong?
 
I have had "freezing" problems eventually isolated to using a WD15EADS for OS. This occurred after a fresh install also. needless to say I will not get another one of these and cannot recommend it.
 
Neb said:
I'm slightly confused. If a drive is not fast enough to keep up with a set load, how would increasing the buffer help any? Streaming HD video, uploading files, and rendering video are all somewhat steady requirements, so if your drive isn't fast enough to do them all at once, no matter how large the buffer, eventually it's going to run out. Yes, a larger buffer will increase the time till it runs out, but the listed jobs are not very small nor quick.


Or am I just wrong?
Click to expand...

So in theory the buffer is used for write caching (for spindle disks). If you have a larger buffer, more data can be written to that buffer instead of directly to the disks. This serves to lower the number of times a drive head needs to move from track to track. If you thrash a drive with a lot of commands, it helps a bit.
 
pjkenned said:
If you are doing that, getting a 64MB cache green drive vs. a 32MB 7200rpm drive would be quite pointless :) Plus a Perc 5/i w/ BBU and 512MB of RAM would be a really good idea at that point.
Click to expand...

So instead, you would just use a 512MB buffer instead of a 64/32MB buffer? ;)

haha, yeah, you are right, at that point, a really large buffer would very much be necessary, but there would still be a big performance increase in going from a 32 to a 64MB buffer, though it may still be slower than having a 512MB cache with a BBU.

However, I've done all of what I stated in my example on a 500GB WD Green drive with only a 16MB cache, it's just that the streaming was kind of crap unless SD video was used.

The OP should honestly be ok, even if he streams a 50MB/s HD video file, a Green drive will be more than enough, so as long as he has an 8MB+ cache, he should be good. :)
 
jiminator said:
I have had "freezing" problems eventually isolated to using a WD15EADS for OS. This occurred after a fresh install also. needless to say I will not get another one of these and cannot recommend it.
Click to expand...

That sounds like a bad drive. I've used Vista and 7 on 3 different WD Green drives with total success. Hope the next drive you get works out for you though!
 
Red Falcon said:
The OP should honestly be ok, even if he streams a 50MB/s HD video file, a Green drive will be more than enough, so as long as he has an 8MB+ cache, he should be good. :)
Click to expand...

What is the 50MB/s video format that one would stream?
 
If you're running into stuttering issues while using a drive for several things at once, I'd suggest simply adding one or more drives to your system and assigning some of the tasks to seperate spindles. Dedicate one to your HD streaming, and another to your torrents, etc. If you're unraring a huge file (like a 1080p movie), it's much faster and smoother to have a seperate drive to use as the destination than it is to write to the same drive that contains the source archives. This does mainly apply to mechanical hard drives, because of the need to physically seek back and forth between reading the source files and writing the destination. In my experience, with proper consideration given to which spindle is doing what, avoiding situations that result in one drive being read from and written to simultaneously, 2 or more fast drives can be alot more useful and get things done faster than if you took the same drives and put them in a RAID0.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
If you're running into stuttering issues while using a drive for several things at once, I'd suggest simply adding one or more drives to your system and assigning some of the tasks to seperate spindles. Dedicate one to your HD streaming, and another to your torrents, etc. If you're unraring a huge file (like a 1080p movie), it's much faster and smoother to have a seperate drive to use as the destination than it is to write to the same drive that contains the source archives. This does mainly apply to mechanical hard drives, because of the need to physically seek back and forth between reading the source files and writing the destination. In my experience, with proper consideration given to which spindle is doing what, avoiding situations that result in one drive being read from and written to simultaneously, 2 or more fast drives can be alot more useful and get things done faster than if you took the same drives and put them in a RAID0.
Click to expand...

Actually, uncompressed HD video requires a far faster drive subsystem than any single drive can deliver. This is because uncompressed RGB HD video takes up roughly 800 GB per hour (or about 558 GB per hour if encoded in a 4:2:2 YUV color space), resulting in a sequential transfer rate of well over 200 MB/s. No single drive can write anywhere near that fast. Nor can a single HDD read at more than 150 MB/s sequentially even on the outer tracks. As a result, uncompressed HD video will always stutter on any separate drive.

On the other hand, if you're speaking of uncompressed standard-definition video, you'd still need a fast, large-capacity single drive at the very least.
 
Yeah uncompressed video is an good application for RAID0, but for what most people do with their computers, it's not really that helpful. I do not edit video, and I don't think that most people do. I do toss alot of data around though, copying video streams between container formats and such. I find that by using 2 separate 7200 rpm drives, I can do these operations at pretty much the top speed of the slower of the two drives, 90 to 100MB a second is a good average. The thing with having only a single RAID0 is that while I can read OR write to it quite fast, data tossing means having somewhere to put it or get it from. In the case of uncompressed video, you're piping the output to RAM for display or editing or dumping from RAM into the RAID0 as you edit.

I guess the ultimate solution for me would be to have a couple of RAID0s to go back and forth between, but I really don't think I need that. But need and want are different so we'll see :) My Cheetah 15k.5s are getting a touch long in tooth, they're still pretty quick drives by even todays standards (140MB a second peak transfer and access times in the 5ms range) but 73GB is a little small and Ultra320 SCSI is a huge pain in the ass compared to SAS/SATA so I'm gonna be changing it up pretty soon.

Dustin
 
Red Falcon said:
True, but other file types may require more, and if the HDD is handling anything else, this could cause stuttering and file lag, which for smooth playback is a big headache. The WD Green has a large 64MB cache which should help prevent this from happening though.
Click to expand...

How well would the cache work for this, doesn't the cache only hold recent items that have come off the drive, if so, it is not like the cache would fill up with the next 64mb of a movie your watching, why burst rate / read data from cache, is a useless benchmark because it is basically random...
 
MrGuvernment said:
How well would the cache work for this, doesn't the cache only hold recent items that have come off the drive, if so, it is not like the cache would fill up with the next 64mb of a movie your watching, why burst rate / read data from cache, is a useless benchmark because it is basically random...
Click to expand...

From a previous post of mine in this thread:

Do that while rendering a video to that same HDD and access/upload other files to it at the same time and you will see it buckle.

For the OP, just watching video like you said, will be fine. But having a large cache for more than one task is very necessary.

Any modern HDD in the last 5 years can handle a single task just fine without stuttering or streaming problems.
However, the difference between a 2MB through 64MB cache can make or break a standard HDD when the drive has multiple medium to heavy duty tasks.
Click to expand...


EDIT:

btw, this thread should end, the OP hasn't made any response to us so far, so who knows what he will/has decided. :p
 
I would of thought heavy tasks are a problem with the heads having to move so much on the drive to get the data especially if it all resides on the same platter on that drive, cache wont matter so much if 1 head has to be skipping all over the drive to get the data.
 
MrGuvernment said:
I would of thought heavy tasks are a problem with the heads having to move so much on the drive to get the data especially if it all resides on the same platter on that drive, cache wont matter so much if 1 head has to be skipping all over the drive to get the data.
Click to expand...

You are right, but this was including the HD streaming video, which a person would physically see stuttering on, and a large cache can help a drive, even with a slower seek time, to act as a buffer.

This is only in an extreme case though. If a user is only watching a single HD video, it doesn't matter if the cache is 2MB or 64MB, the video will play the same b/c it is a single task.
 
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