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How Important is RPM for Hard Drives

Looking to purchase another 2tb SATA drive for music storage. I'm seeing 7200 rpm drives that are maybe a bit noisier and run a bit warmer than 5400 rpm drives that are cooler but slower. The 7200 drive (Hitachi) may be a tad more reliable than the 5400 Western Digital or Seagate - not sure. I do plenty of backup anyway.

Thing is, with over 1.5 Tb of music, I imagine seek times can be somewhat slow. Once a music file is found, there ae no skips or pauses with itunes. Does the rotation speed matter much for seek times on such a large music library, or is the rpm more an issue for writing/reading higher bandwidth information than music?

Thanks, Peter
peter_s
peter_s OP
1,348 posts
 
Thanks. Got the 5400 green drive. I don't mind waiting longer for the backup to occur!
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magfan
1,583 posts
 
Classic,
which RAID are you reff'ing?
Raid 0,1 / 0+1? I'd agree.
RAID 5 with a 5 disk array should be able to reconstruct a dead disk, on the fly, with few interruptions. Hot Swapable? A must.

I thought RAID was a goner? Staging a comeback? Any ESATA arrays?

Off Site may be the long term / secure answer.
sufentanil's avatar
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sufentanil
782 posts
 
Magfan, ALL of the RAID configurations you mention except RAID 0 offer redundancy and can reconstruct a failed drive in the system, not just RAID 5. RAID 5 is simply more efficient when you consider the number of drives that are necessary vs the usable total storage space.

RAID being a goner???! WTF?! Every motherboard sold nowadays has RAID capabilities built-in, and even several external HD enclosures offer the capability of 2 drives in RAID 0 or 1, not to mention the multitude of companies making NAS's.

Michael
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 
I happen to think that speed and cache (and transfer interface) are the most important issues of a drive. I run 10,000 RPM drives, Western Digital Blacks, SATA (RAID). Don't skimp on Hard Drives. Few hundred bucks for hours upon hours of ripping.
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