Hard Drive speed question i.e. 5400 vs 7200 rpm
#1
Hello,

Newegg is running a pretty good deal right now on Samsung 2TB 5400 rpm drives. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822152202

I am getting ready to build a server for my videos and such and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on any differences or problems with the slower speed drives? Would these work in a server without issue. I will probably be serving everything but blue ray titles over a gigabit network to 5 extenders (Acer Revo 1600's). I am planning on getting at least 5 of these. So....any issues?

Thanks,
Mark
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#2
5400 rpm drives are more than enough to stream HD. I run them in my server and stream 1080p content to multiple revo 1600s without issue.
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#3
Should be OK from what I read. The bonus is that 5400 RPM drives are often quieter than their 7200 counterparts.
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#4
Think about it this way. What is the average size of one of your movies? How long do you think it would take to transfer that from a 5400 rpm drive? Much less time than the full length of the movie (granted that doesn't account for variable bitrate, but gives you an idea that it would be more than enough).
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#5
Thanks guys.

You've made my wife a little bit happier tonight.Big Grin
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#6
This topic is suggesting that 5400 RPM drives are slower then 7200 RPM drives. That is a wrong assumption. 5400 RPM drives are not always slower and sometimes the difference is very small.

For data storage, speed is not important at all. If you would use USB storage you cannot go faster then 30-40 MB/s since USB2 is limited. Even a 4200 RPM drive can go faster.

So there is no reason to select on speed if you are talking about storage. Even if you want to stream fullhd.
Hell I can even stream 720P mkv movies via my WiFi 54g connection!
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#7
I'd go for the 5K4 RPM HDDs undoubtedly!

TOP 3 advantages;

- Less noise
- Less heat
- Less power consumption

And the cherry on the cake would be that there are no advantages at all for streaming using 7K2 RPM HDDs

voilà Smile
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#8
I really depends on what Samsung drive you are getting. They have two platter drives that run at 5400 that give about the same performance as the 7200 speed wise because of the denser platter. I have 3 of those in my media server box, mainly cause they run much cooler, about 24-32c when under a full load or being used for hours. I also bought one of their 2.5" 640g ones for my MacBook and it works awesome in there, the lowest temp in the damn thing and was noticeably faster then the older 5200 I removed (which had a fresh install on).

If you are going to use these drives a lot where temps could be an issue get the Samsung 2 platter drives.



mwkurt Wrote:Hello,

Newegg is running a pretty good deal right now on Samsung 2TB 5400 rpm drives. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822152202

I am getting ready to build a server for my videos and such and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on any differences or problems with the slower speed drives? Would these work in a server without issue. I will probably be serving everything but blue ray titles over a gigabit network to 5 extenders (Acer Revo 1600's). I am planning on getting at least 5 of these. So....any issues?

Thanks,
Mark
Reply
#9
I have these exact drives in my file server. I can easily get 100MB/s from them which is many times more than you would ever need for streaming HD video. The downside to 5400rpm drives is mainly in lower seek times, but that hardly matters for video.
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#10
Thanks for all the info guys!

Mark
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Hard Drive speed question i.e. 5400 vs 7200 rpm0