5400 vs 7200

[Brian Ferrell]

I want to add a new hard drive to my existing 7200 RPM one. The purpose of this would be to keep the non-audio files on the 5400 RPM drive and continue doing recording on the 7200 drive. Will this cause less wear and tear on the 7200, thereby prolonging its life? I like playing PC games and wonder if lowering to 5400 RPM will degrade gaming performance. Also, does the slower speed drive have less of a chance of wearing out than the 7200?

 

[christiaan]

A 5400rpm drive in general runs cooler than a 7200. A good 7200rpm drive should be just as reliable than a 5400 though. 7200rpm drives are sold with one up to three years warranty, just like 5400rpm drives.
If you're really worried about reliability, then you should think about a decent backup system. Having valuable data on a hard disk alone is in general just not wise.

In gaming, the main bottlenecks are the CPU and the videocard. Harddisk performance is less important.

 

[Emeric]

Just an FYI, Seagate recently changed all hard drive warranty to 1 Year, Western Digital and Maxtor / Quantum followed suit.

Any hard drive you buy after October 1st is one year warranty.

 

[ambi]

na it won't make a difference in life span, but it will make a big difference in performace. Anything you run off of the 5400, or transfer so it, will run slower. Considering the prices, i'd just pay the extra 20 or 30 bucks and get a 7200.

 

[Brian Ferrell]

Thanks for your input, guys. It looks like I'd better get that new drive before October. I really thought that they would last longer. One other question- will an extra drive make the machine noisier while recording?