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4200rpm HDD as fast as 5400rpm?

B

BillW50

Flightless Bird
I was taking laptops apart here and while I was at it, I tested the boot
speed on the same machine. But I cloned three PATA HDD, one a 4200rpm
and the other two 5400rpm drives. I always assumed that 5400rpm drives
were just faster. Well guess what? All three boots XP in 60 seconds. Who
would have guessed?

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 2 of 3 - Windows XP SP3
 
B

Bert Hyman

Flightless Bird
In news:hhtnk0$3ba$1@news.eternal-september.org "BillW50"
<BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:

> I was taking laptops apart here and while I was at it, I tested the
> boot speed on the same machine. But I cloned three PATA HDD, one a
> 4200rpm and the other two 5400rpm drives. I always assumed that
> 5400rpm drives were just faster. Well guess what? All three boots XP
> in 60 seconds. Who would have guessed?


Just because one disk spins faster than another doesn't guarantee that
data will be found and transferred faster.

Still, the effect that you've measured probably just means that
whatever else is going on during the boot is swamping any I/O speed
effect.

You could run some real I/O throughput tests if you really care.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com
 
R

Roy

Flightless Bird
On Jan 5, 5:46 am, "BillW50" <Bill...@aol.kom> wrote:
> I was taking laptops apart here and while I was at it, I tested the boot
> speed on the same machine. But I cloned three PATA HDD, one a 4200rpm
> and the other two 5400rpm drives. I always assumed that 5400rpm drives
> were just faster. Well guess what? All three boots XP in 60 seconds. Who
> would have guessed?
>
> --
> Bill
> Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 2 of 3 - Windows XP SP3


Aha.... that is maybe the reason why some version of Sony VAIO FW have
4200rpm HDD instead of the 5400rpm...
Does it mean that data read and write would be roughly the same?

Roy


Previously I was also curious why they did it.....
 
B

BillW50

Flightless Bird
In news:Xns9CF6A4B84A40VeebleFetzer@216.250.188.140,
Bert Hyman typed on 04 Jan 2010 22:11:33 GMT:
> In news:hhtnk0$3ba$1@news.eternal-september.org "BillW50"
> <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>> I was taking laptops apart here and while I was at it, I tested the
>> boot speed on the same machine. But I cloned three PATA HDD, one a
>> 4200rpm and the other two 5400rpm drives. I always assumed that
>> 5400rpm drives were just faster. Well guess what? All three boots XP
>> in 60 seconds. Who would have guessed?

>
> Just because one disk spins faster than another doesn't guarantee that
> data will be found and transferred faster.
>
> Still, the effect that you've measured probably just means that
> whatever else is going on during the boot is swamping any I/O speed
> effect.
>
> You could run some real I/O throughput tests if you really care.


Hi Bert! Yes that was my guess as well. And I do monitor the bandwidth
with Hard Disk Sentinel. And the bandwidth is the same with either of
the drives.

Some claim that they get far better performance from defragging. I've
never seen any improvement myself. As I always blame the bandwidth of
the I/O is the real bottleneck and even a fragmented hard drive still
reads faster than the I/O speed anyway.

One of my laptops has a SATA drive running at 7200rpm. I haven't done
any bandwidth tests on it yet. But that thing does fly. I can't run this
same cloned image, as the drivers are different. So it wouldn't really
be a far test without being the same. But it boots XP Pro in 30 seconds.
<grin>

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 2 of 3 - Windows XP SP3
 
B

BillW50

Flightless Bird
In
news:d7c49a51-69e9-4c19-9b34-025d49115a66@h9g2000yqa.googlegroups.com,
Roy typed on Mon, 4 Jan 2010 14:42:07 -0800 (PST):
> On Jan 5, 5:46 am, "BillW50" <Bill...@aol.kom> wrote:
>> I was taking laptops apart here and while I was at it, I tested the
>> boot speed on the same machine. But I cloned three PATA HDD, one a
>> 4200rpm and the other two 5400rpm drives. I always assumed that
>> 5400rpm drives were just faster. Well guess what? All three boots XP
>> in 60 seconds. Who would have guessed?

>
> Aha.... that is maybe the reason why some version of Sony VAIO FW have
> 4200rpm HDD instead of the 5400rpm...
> Does it mean that data read and write would be roughly the same?
>
> Roy
>
>
> Previously I was also curious why they did it.....


I kept the 4200rpm drive in this machine and I am playing around with
it. And frankly, it feels just like the 5400rpm ones. And I see no
difference in performance at all. These are all PATA drives though.

I have one laptop with a SATA 7200rpm drive and that thing flies. Big,
big, difference here! As it boots XP in half the time (in 30 seconds).
Maybe you need a SATA drive to see any real difference? What kind are
those Sony's using?

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 2 of 3 - Windows XP SP3
 
B

BillW50

Flightless Bird
In news:hhts52$18c$1@news.eternal-september.org,
BillW50 typed on Mon, 4 Jan 2010 17:04:01 -0600:
> I have one laptop with a SATA 7200rpm drive and that thing flies. Big,
> big, difference here! As it boots XP in half the time (in 30 seconds).
> Maybe you need a SATA drive to see any real difference? What kind are
> those Sony's using?


Oops! I guess it is a SATA 5400rpm drive. It still flies though. HDS is
showing almost twice the transfer rate of my PATA drives.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2
 
R

Roy

Flightless Bird
On Jan 5, 1:17 pm, "BillW50" <Bill...@aol.kom> wrote:
> Innews:hhts52$18c$1@news.eternal-september.org,
> BillW50 typed on Mon, 4 Jan 2010 17:04:01 -0600:
>
> > I have one laptop with a SATA 7200rpm drive and that thing flies. Big,
> > big, difference here! As it boots XP in half the time (in 30 seconds).
> > Maybe you need a SATA drive to see any real difference? What kind are
> > those Sony's using?

>
> Oops! I guess it is a SATA 5400rpm drive. It still flies though. HDS is
> showing almost twice the transfer rate of my PATA drives.
>
> --
> Bill
> Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2


yes its SATA so it stil rocks.....? even at paltry 4200rpm?
 
M

M.I.5¾

Flightless Bird
"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:hhtnk0$3ba$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>I was taking laptops apart here and while I was at it, I tested the boot
>speed on the same machine. But I cloned three PATA HDD, one a 4200rpm and
>the other two 5400rpm drives. I always assumed that 5400rpm drives were
>just faster. Well guess what? All three boots XP in 60 seconds. Who would
>have guessed?
>


I remember seing two desktop drives on the retailer's shelf, one 5400 rpm
and the other a 7200 rpm. The later had a flash across the box that read
"33% faster than a 5400 rpm drive". The actual parameters that mattered
(seek time etc. etc.) were pretty much the same.
 
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