2x 200gb 7200 rpm or 2x320gb 5400rpm

Hey guys, I was wondering which of the 2 options would be best. The setup is for a dell xps m1730 config for my friend and I wanted to know which would be better in the long run. He is torn between 2x200gb 7200rpm drive or 2x320gb 5400rpm drives in a raid 0.

 

Get the 320GB... it's just as fast as the 200GB.

 

so 2x320gb drives in a raid 0??

 

Yes. The 320GB is 5400RPM, while the 200GB is 7200RPM. However, the 320GB drive's lower rotation is compensated by higher disc data density. And is thus equally fast, however offering MUCH more capacity, and is ACTUALLY CHEAPER! There's no point in getting the 200GB 7200RPM drive at all.
So yes, 320GB 5400RPM in RAID 0 should be great.

 

No questions asked go for 320GB 5400 rpm.

 

ok so 2x320gb drive then??

 

That would seem to be the consensus.

 

Why would u guys buy the slower hard drive? The 7200RPM HHD will boot up vista and other software much quicker and make your computer feel faster.

External storage is extremely cheap. There's a reason why people spend so much money on small 10,000 RPM Raptor drives.

 

All things being equal, a drive with a higher platter density will run faster because more bits spin under the head in a single revolution. So even though the 320GB drive has a slower rotational speed, the actual amount of data that passes under the head in a given time span is likely very close. I can do the math, but i'll have to look up the specs on each drive.

 

yeah, just wondering which will do better for overall performance. I have an external 1TB drive.

 

Ok, i couldn't find any good specs, but heres a simple version (this assumes the same number of platters which may not be the case):

5400/7200 = .75 //The 5400rpm drive spins at 75% of the rate of the 7200

200/320 = .625 //The 200GB drive passes 62% of the number of bits under the head in a time span as the 320

.625/.75 = .8333 //The 320GB 5400rpm drive is about 15-20% faster than the 200GB 7200rpm drive

 

I agree. New 320 GB hard disks are very fast (they easily have average read over 50 MB/s).

 

This is assuming sustained read/write time , which is extremely rare in everyday use. Overall performance/feel, in contrast, is much more dependent on access time.

I'm no expert on hard drives, but this is the reason why hardcore computer enthusiasts buy raptors to run their OS off of.

 

FROM EXPERIENCE.

I received my Dell 1920 recently and I had the 320G 5400RPM. I decided to try out my 160G Seagate 7200RPM to see if it was faster.

SURPRIIIIIIISE... The 7200RPM was actualy SLOWER than the 5400RPM high density.

320G 5400rpm Vista Score : 5.4
160G 7200rpm Vista Score : 5.2

The 320G 5200rpm was faster by about 8mb/s in benchmarks.

That's from my recent tests.

I'm going back to the Dell Stock 320G.

Btw, I was supposed to get a Samsung and I ended up with a WD Caviar. Soooooo silent, it's amazing!!!

 

I personally think RAID is pretty pointless in this system. It really doesnt offer any speed increase - not enough to notice anyway. Unless you have a good external backup solution I'd say leave it as 2 seperate drives. The only time you may notice a SLIGHT speed increase is if you are moving large files around. Other then that its pretty useless.
RAID is only good when you get to the RAID 3 stage - which you cant do with the M1730 since you need 3 HDDs.

 

Do a Vista or other application startup test on those 2 drives... Again sustained read/write speed is NOT important to everyday use.

 

use hdtune to test the drives. I have a pair on wd320 in mine, not raido though, and the 320 is as near as damit the same as the 200 7200rpm (average across the whole drive)

this is for a single drive, with raido its much more, but cant do it in vista on this laptop. I use the 2nd drive for another operating system and acronis backup of main drive

 

I still prefer faster rotation on the hard drive. This is my HD Tune with my Seagate 160 GB 7200 RPM. I was using my computer to download 100 MB file and run a lot of applications at the same time. If my computer were idle, I am sure that I would get a better result.

My take is going with 7200 RPM.

 

Naw theres lots of threads on this in notebook forums, the speeds basically the same between 200gb 7200rpm and 320gb 5400rpm, so just depends if you need the extra space. I wouldnt get cut up on the rpm, Ive got 100gb 7200rpm drives and they are ~35mb/sec average

Right now its a choice on storage capacity, there's not much price difference. But there are larger 7200rpm drives coming out, although some are larger than 9.5mm so that sucks

Raid o speeds are very impressive if you want to go that way. Dexgo has a quide for how to do it (in this forum, wither sager or dell section) in XP on laptops that aren't sold configured that way. Doesn't work in vista though

Everyone needs are different, I use the 2nd drive for backup and xp pro.

 

WD sells Scorpio models for notebooks (BEVS). Cavier is for desktop.

RAID 0 improves speed hard disk subsystem by twice. I had software RAID 0 partition (stripped) last year (Western Digital Cavier JD 120GB SATA +
Western Digital Cavier KS 250GB SATA II) and this partition was obviously faster.
You want screenshot as proof ?