quote:
Originally posted by Menthix
It all depends on the benchmarks. Even a big 5400RPM drive could in theory outperform a smaller 10000RPM drive these days. The bytes you fit on a platter, the closer the bytes are together (areal density). This makes seek times faster, sometimes faster than a smaller disk on a higher RPM.
The higher aerial density can result in similar or even greater sustained throughput, which is one performance criteria for hard drives. On the other hand, higher rpm drives will continue to lead for the average random seek time, the other key performance criteria.
This is because of lower rotational latency and is easy to understand. If the head is positioned just past where you need it, the platter will have to complete a full revolution before the data can be read or written. A higher rpm drive will always complete the revolution faster than a lower rpm drive, regardless of aerial density.
While the throughput can make up for slower random seek times in synthetic benchmarks that try to quantify the performance of the drive as one number, it is still generally a good idea to use higher rpm drives for volumes with random access patterns, such as system volumes and databases. Lower rpm high capacity, high aerial density drives are best suited for file storage, particularly large files like video.
