# 500gb/7200rpm/16mb vs. 500gb/7200/32mb cache



## puma99dk| (Aug 14, 2009)

Whick will be fastest for Windows 7 OS with Gaming Disk?

i have a plan of 100gb for OS and the rest for Games.

at the moment i use a Western Digital Green 500gb with 7200rpm and 16mb cache for OS/Gaming would a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500gb 7200rpm and 32mb cache be faster with Windows 7 and Games?

i am asking 'cause i am not sure even than i had looked at Tom's Hardware Chart 

so a little help would be nice


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## newtekie1 (Aug 14, 2009)

You won't notice a difference.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 14, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> You won't notice a difference.



other than my WDC use less power than my Seagate


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## 3dsage (Aug 14, 2009)

I think you should skip the 7200.11 and go straight to the 7200.12, its alot faster and its reliable. I had my 7200.11 fail in less than 2 weeks, the access times where sluggish and it had the latest firmware. 

Also the 7200.12 had higher AVG. Transfer rates than my 300GB Velociraptor. Only Alot slower Acces times.

7200.12





7200.11


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## puma99dk| (Aug 14, 2009)

now i only have a Seagate 7200.11 or a WDC Green both 500gb and i won't buy a new 500gb 'cause for less than 200DKR i can buy a 1TB hdd like i orded yesterday and got it today.

it's wierd it's only some 7200.11 that have failures and i most be one of the lucky ones 'cause my 7200.11 haven't made any wierd things yet \o/


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## newtekie1 (Aug 14, 2009)

Wait...I thought the Western Digital Green drives ran at something lower than 7200RPM...

Sorry, I missed that you were using a WD Green, in that case go with the Seagate it should be noticeably faster.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 14, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Wait...I thought the Western Digital Green drives ran at something lower than 7200RPM...
> 
> Sorry, I missed that you were using a WD Green, in that case go with the Seagate it should be noticeably faster.



one on Tweak.dk's forum says that it won't be notice if i change from my WDC Green 7200rpm, 16mb cache to my Seagate 7200rpm, 32mb cache so now i don't know what to believe


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## angelkiller (Aug 15, 2009)

puma99dk| said:


> one on Tweak.dk's forum says that it won't be notice if i change from my WDC Green 7200rpm, 16mb cache to my Seagate 7200rpm, 32mb cache so now i don't know what to believe


WD Green drives spin at 5400rpm. But due to platter density, performance is decent. 

However, a standard 7200rpm drive with 320GB/platter or greater will be faster. The difference is about 20MB/s on average. If you're looking for the fastest drive, the 7200rpm Seagate will be faster. _Generally speaking_ a 7200rpm drive will outperform a 5400rpm one. 

And assuming what games you play, you _will_ notice the difference. Games that access the disk often will benefit from a faster drive. For example, loading levels is pretty disk intensive.

That Seagate 500GB 7200.12 posted above looks pretty nice.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 15, 2009)

the WDC Caviar Green uses IntelliPower so it spins at 5400-7200rpm depending on what it's working on maybe that's why i score 5,9 in Windows 7 WEI 'cause i over run a WDC Caviar Blue in Windows 7 WEI it only scores 5,4.

Will i get to Score 6,0 in Windows 7 WEI by chaning my OS/Gaming Disk to my Seagate 7200.11 or will it be the same?


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## angelkiller (Aug 15, 2009)

puma99dk| said:


> the WDC Caviar Green uses IntelliPower so it spins at 5400-7200rpm depending on what it's working on


Unfortunately, that's not true. IntelliPower is WD's marketing term which basically says the drive spins at 5400rpm or 7200rpm, but it doesn't specify which. However, one sure shot way to determine how fast a drive is spinning is to analyze the frequnecies of the noise it generates. Different rpms produce different frequencies of noise. You can't really argue with that because that's physics.



			
				[url=http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page2.html]Silent PC Review[/url] said:
			
		

> Western Digital doesn't want to say that they're selling 5,400 RPM drives — those became second class in the desktop market years ago. Instead, they rate the drive's speed as "IntelliPower" and take pains to emphasize that there are other factors that affect performance.
> 
> Western Digital has caught a lot of flak for withholding the rotation speed of the Green Power, especially when the product was first launched and the marketing material listed the rotation speed as 5,400-7,200 RPM. This led some to speculate that the rotation speed changed dynamically during use — which would have been an impressive engineering feat had it been true. The reality is revealed by a sentence that Western Digital added to the description of IntelliPower: "For each GreenPower™ drive model, WD may use a different, invariable RPM." In other words, Western Digital reserves the right to release both 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM drives under the Green Power name — without telling you which are which.
> 
> We were able to confirm that our 750 GB Green Power had a spindle speed of 5,400 RPM by doing frequency analysis on a sound recording of it. Why sound? Sound is vibration; the pitch of the sound corresponds to the frequency of the vibration. Hard drives vibrate at the speed of their motor, so they produce a noise at the same frequency as their rotation speed. Our sample had a sharp spike at exactly 90 Hz (cycles per second). Multiplying that number by 60 (to get cycles per minute) yielded a measured rotation speed of 5,400 RPM.




I can't really say much about the WEI scores. I don't know how WEI measures performance. However, I _can_ tell you the difference in performance based off bandwidth and access times. How about this, you download HD Tune and run a benchmark. Then I'll show you the same benchmark run on other drives so you can compare them.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 15, 2009)

What can i use a benchmark for if the disk i wanna use i empty and doesn't have a OS on it?

isn't a disk with OS that runs alot of programs slowere than a HDD with nothing on and not in-use?

Seagate 7200.11






WDC Green






(Another thing my WDC is split in 3 partitions at the moment)


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## angelkiller (Aug 15, 2009)

I see what you mean about the disk with an OS on it being slower. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to that. It would make sense that the disk with the OS on it would be slower, but the benchmark may be set up so that it doesn't matter. I'm not sure.

Anyway, your results look just as I expected. Look at the average transfer rate of the two drives. The Seagate is about 20MB/s on average. (just as I predicted) The Seagate also has a lower access time, by almost 3ms. So the Seagate is 30% faster in sequential reads and has about a 20% faster access time.

That is a significant difference imo. If I were you, I would make the Seagate your OS drive and the WD Green as your backup or storage drive. The Seagate is on average 20MB/s faster on any point on the disk. So if the drives were put into 2 identical computers, the computer with the Seagate could access data at 20MB/s faster. PLUS, the Seagate has a faster access time. So when both drives have to look for something, the Seagate will get there faster, _then_ deliver the data at a higher rate than the WD Green drive. Now imagine that happenning 100 times in a row. Do you see how the advantage would be compounded? The Seagate would finish will beat the WD Green every time. The Seagate is clearly the faster drive, you can see the numbers right in front of you.

Does that make sense?


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## puma99dk| (Aug 15, 2009)

angelkiller said:


> I see what you mean about the disk with an OS on it being slower. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to that. It would make sense that the disk with the OS on it would be slower, but the benchmark may be set up so that it doesn't matter. I'm not sure.
> 
> Anyway, your results look just as I expected. Look at the average transfer rate of the two drives. The Seagate is about 20MB/s on average. (just as I predicted) The Seagate also has a lower access time, by almost 3ms. So the Seagate is 30% faster in sequential reads and has about a 20% faster access time.
> 
> ...



it does make sense i don't hope the speed will fall then i install Windows 7 i can always test it 'cause i got 2x1TB i use for data in the moment so it only takes time to install and test 

another question does it make the disk slower it's connect to Channel 5 than in Channel 0?


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## subhendu (Aug 15, 2009)

western digital caviar blue is the best.....


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## angelkiller (Aug 15, 2009)

puma99dk| said:


> it does make sense i don't hope the speed will fall then i install Windows 7 i can always test it 'cause i got 2x1TB i use for data in the moment so it only takes time to install and test
> 
> another question does it make the disk slower it's connect to Channel 5 than in Channel 0?


Or you could clone your WD Green to the Seagate and then you would have 2 identical disks. Then you could see which one is faster. (Boot one disk, time how long it takes to do stuff, boot the other disk, time how long it takes to do stuff, then compare the times)

It makes no difference between Channel 0 and Channel 5. Each Sata port/channel are exactly the same.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 15, 2009)

Fresh Windows 7 x86 Build 7600 installed and activated.

KAV, Daemon Tools installed... like all the drivers i use...

and the test now looks like this, and i spilt the hdd in 2 partitions... Partition 1 OS and 2 Games....






and before where is was un-used:


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## angelkiller (Aug 15, 2009)

Well then. I've learned something today. You've just proven that a HD Tune benchmark is slower on a drive that is running an OS on it. Of course it made sense in speculation, but you've run the tests to prove it.

But what I said still stands though. The Seagate is still faster than the WD Green.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 15, 2009)

angelkiller said:


> Well then. I've learned something today. You've just proven that a HD Tune benchmark is slower on a drive that is running an OS on it. Of course it made sense in speculation, but you've run the tests to prove it.
> 
> But what I said still stands though. The Seagate is still faster than the WD Green.



yup, but WEI in Windows 7 is still at 5,9 so it doesn't really matter you go from 5400-7200rpm and 16mb cache to 7200rpm and 32mb cache...


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## angelkiller (Aug 15, 2009)

puma99dk| said:


> yup, but WEI in Windows 7 is still at 5,9 so it doesn't really matter you go from 5400-7200rpm and 16mb cache to 7200rpm and 32mb cache...


But remember, that's only in WEI.... Every synthetic benchmark will show that the Seagate is faster. Plus in disk intensive tasks, the Seagate will finish quicker.

I think the WEI shows that for average usage, both drives are about equal. And I would agree with that. If all you do is web browsing and check your email, you won't notice the difference. But if you want the better performing drive, it's the Seagate.


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