Internal 5400rpm HD Vs Ext. 7200rpm eSATA HD?

Hello,

I have a laptop with a internal 500GB 5400rpm drive and a 1TB external eSATA hard drive. Which would transfer files faster. The 5400 or the external 7200?

Thanks..

 

You can check using ATTO or HD Tune.
Depending on how your eSATA is hooked up, I would probably say that the 1TB external would be faster.

 

Theoretically, the external 7200RPM drive would be faster, although sometimes the eSATA bandwidth doesn't get fully utilized.

 

Transfer speed is going to be determined by: (1) the speed of the disk itself; and (2) the maximum speed of the interface used.

There is not going to be a difference in speed with the interface used. Neither disk will saturate a SATA or eSATA interface, so interface speed is not a factor here.

Between the two disks, the 7200rpm should *theoretically* have faster speeds. But the actual speed you get will vary greatly depending on the file copy process. Copying very large files (e.g. a single 4GB file) won't really show much difference between the two drives. That type of copy pattern depends on sequential read/writes, which are roughly the same (~80MBps) between the two drives. Copying several smaller files (e.g. 20,000 50KB files) will have the 7200rpm drive come out on top, just because of lower random seek times.

However, also keep in mind that any file copy process will only run as fast as you can read from the source disk or write to the destination disk. The fastest drive in the world won't help you copy files any faster, if the drive at the other end of the copy process is slow as a dog.

 

Real e-sata is just as fast as internal sata.

But I guess some laptops do not have it setup in such a way that it works like it is supposed too. I think all desktops I have seen get full esata speed.