How Important is Hard Drive Performance

How important is hard drive performance? (Access times and transfer rates)

  • I would pay a premium for the fastest drive available. It is essential.

    Votes: 19 31.7%

  • It is important but I could live without the fastest possible drive.

    Votes: 31 51.7%

  • I wouldn't pay a premium for a faster hard drive.

    Votes: 2 3.3%

  • I only think about storage capacity when I build or make purchases.

    Votes: 8 13.3%
  • Total voters
    60
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Blackstone

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How important is a fast hard drive to you? I am thinking in terms of 10,000RPM vs. 7200RPM, or capacity vs. speed.
 
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Depends on your usage.

For surfing/torrenting/video watching/light gaming I find 7200RPM perfect.
 
Does "I wouldn't pay a premium for a faster hard drive." mean you'd be content with a 5400rpm or that you'd be content with 7200 and wouldn't pay for 10k/SSD/etc?
 
I would say 7200 is the norm so to get something more than that would be paying the "premium."
 
It's only six votes but I'm surprised this intial snapshot of the vote has noone saying "I only think about storage capacity when I build or make purchases. " because I would think a significant minority that thinks like that. We'll see how the it progresses later on but I won't vote in this. Doesn't have the option I would've chosen.

l3ender said:
I would say 7200 is the norm so to get something more than that would be paying the "premium."
Click to expand...

That's not true. There are definite performance differences between 7200 drives.
 
I prioritize storage space over speed myself; hence the reason why I would generally prefer a couple terabyte hard drives instead of SSDs (though that's mostly because the latter is still very costly). Hard drive capacity is much easier to quantify than performance so it's my primary consideration; but I will consider performance when it's important to my application.

I would consider a couple RAID0ed WD blacks for my desktops but I wouldn't consider Raptors or SSDs at this point. However, I'm more than content with (and even prefer) 5400RPM 'green' hard drives in my file server.
 
Personal use 10k drives are a decent balance of performance vs price. SSD's are only starting to get up to my minimum capacity (150gb) and I'd prefer 300gb for something not over 1k in price before I'll give SSD's a try.

So in your case a good, even 150gb (if you need to save cost) 10k drive would be noticeably better than a 7200 drive. I am NOT a fan of Raid 0 - but if you are ready for the risks that is an option as well.

10k 150/300 would be my recommendation.
 
I used to run a RAID 0, but as new drives came out that were faster than my RAID 0, I switched to that. I started with a RAID 0 on a socket A build using 2x40GB WD SATA drives, and upgraded to 2x250GB WD SATA2 drives on my 939 build and carried it over to my Q6600 build. A few months ago I upgraded to a single 640 WD Black and it beats the RAID 0 I had. For storage I use either the 1TB Black drives or the 1TB Green drives, depending on which computer needs storage.

I like the idea of the SSD'd, but just don't have the money for them at this time. That'll be what I upgrade to next.
 
The poll can be misleading as it's too generic but overly specific in the wrong areas. If you have a specific question about 10000rpm drives verses 7200rpm, it is better to just ask it.

For example, the poll does not allow for people who prefer drive storage capacity over performance. If performance is utter crap, no one will "only" think about storage when making purchases.
And the poll does not allow for people who want very fast storage. For those with the fastest raided SSD's around, it is unlikely many will want "pay a premium for the fastest (HD) drive available" as it's certainly not essential.

Those are two significant groups who will end up giving you random poll results. Anyway, I'd pay a premium for an ultra quiet 5400rpm drive with high capacity.
 
mutantmagnet said:
It's only six votes but I'm surprised this intial snapshot of the vote has noone saying "I only think about storage capacity when I build or make purchases. " because I would think a significant minority that thinks like that.
Click to expand...

Well even if people think mainly about storage, they would have to be fairly foolish to "only" think about storage capacity. And I think few people like to admit they are naive. The poll question is poorly worded.
 
My rig with my RAID0 and hard drive controller just feels and operates so much smoother than a single drive system. I go to work and play with our i7 rigs and they just aren't as snappy because they are waiting on their drives. The HDD is the bottleneck and has been for ages now.

This is why SSDs are becoming so popular, a single SSD is almost as fast in transfer rates as my 8 drive RAID array, but consumes less power, takes up less space, doesn't require an expensive controller, and has nearly instantaneous access times.

To me a good HDD, whether it is a single drive or not makes or breaks a system. I can't even begin to understand how most of my customers go buy thousands of dollars on a computer but often cheap out on the HDD or because they "don't need much space" buy a measly little 80GB drive that is half as fast as a new 500GB single platter drive which costs maybe $25 more.

Also to those who say RAID0 is stupid and makes no difference in speed. NEWS FLASH. If we didn't need that speed why would they make SSDs as fast as they are? An Intel X25-M is almost as fast as my 8 drive RAID0, but at the time I made my array SSDs weren't available.
 
it depends on what you need it for...

for storage you just need capacity.
for web servers some nice 15k/10krpm drives are nice to have.
for your desktiop 7200rpm is all that is needed.
 
Right now, with current pricing, I wouldn't pay a premium for a 10K drive... But I would pay a premium for something significantly faster like an SSD, and I plant to do so within a few months too. I can definitely live without it though, hell we could all probably live with 5,400 RPM drives.
 
I only think about storage capacity when I build or make purchases.
atm im in process of moving to netboot boxes
as in eco harddrive on router, gentoo on "workstation" without any drive
any other storage needs i accommodate by using two or more large file servers
keeps things simple for me ... + provides extreamly neat powersaving options

ofcors i understand need for speedy drives on day to day workstations ... but in all years of me using those, i'm still convinced its just bling thing, not a real need for raw power
 
Ok I guess I'm wrong - there are some people who "only" care about storage capacity, and don't care about little things like reliability, minimum performances or price etc. etc..

p.s. I do have a number of unreliable drives, with good capacity, for sale if anyone's interested. Buyer to pay import tax and shipping ;)
 
Back in early 2006 I set my system up with a 15k RPM SCSI drive. It cost nearly $6/gig compared to The raptor 150 that had recently come out and was about $2/gig or regular 7200rpm drives which were already way under $1/gig.

Still, I spent less than $300 total for the drive, u320 cable, and controller card. I still use that same drive to this very day so I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of it.

So based on that experience I would say that I am willing to pay a premium, however, I'm not quite yet at the point where I will spent the money on an expensive SSD, so there is a limit.
 
256GB SSD is definately a "premium price" drive, and it's very well worth it... if it's in your budget. At least in a notebook.

And there is no reason why you can't have both performance and max storage. Nearly all standard sized desktops and most high-end notebooks offer at least 2 internal HD options. Get 1 slightly smaller fast drive for the OS then a larger "normal speed" drive for storage.

This of course assuming you aren't already running some kind of RAID 0, 10, etc.
 
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