5400 or 7200 internal drive and Windows 7 drive question

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ViolaMB

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Apr 21, 2014
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hello.

1. i need another secondary internal hard drive for storage, mostly for large numbers of pictures, music, shorter videos and most important big movie files(lets say from 2GB to about 25GB). normaly i just have about 3,4 games on my SSD, so basically on the HDD i only download the whole game and then install it on the SSD. i just want the new drive to be reliable as possible.

i'm choosing between a WD Blue 4TB 5400(NEW for 130€ without shipping) or a HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 3TB 7200(little used from JULY 2016 for 85€).

will the 7200 be much louder than the 5400? what other differences will they be? i already have 2x WD Blue 1TB and both are very quiet which is great to me. so you see my dillema, any suggestions or help please?

2. i have Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1 on a SSD. my motherboard is Z87-G41 PC Mate that has 6 SATA connectors(4 of 6 currently used). will there be any problems when i will connect the new 3 or 4 TB drive? you know the whole thing about Windows 7 only showing 2TB if you connect a 3or4 TB drive?

will i be able to simply do this:

'Setup:
1. Attach drive
2. Enter "Disk Management"
3. Find the 4TB drive, Add the volume, and Format as NTFS.
(I recommend a FULL FORMAT which will take many hours so plan accordingly. A Full Format will build the bad sector table.) '

any help would be appreciated...



 
Solution
geofelt
The difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM is mostly latency. That is important for fast random I/O which is what windows does mostly.
Also, a 5400 rpm drive may power down if not in use, and it takes a bit of time to get up to speed.
Not a big drawback for bulk storage.

From a reliability point of view, I would buy new and buy WD.
I might suggest WD red.
Here is a nice article on the differences:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Understanding-the-WD-Rainbow-674/
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burtman88

burtman88

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All fine and dandy i would stick with 7200 rpm drive. 5400 rpm is extremely slow, I hate slow drives. Exactly why my storage drive is also a SSD. If i were to need much more space i would go for 7200. I mean if you dont mind taking you time while installing or copying stuff over then 5400 will be fine. Both will be noticeable under full load when transferring files.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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The difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM is mostly latency. That is important for fast random I/O which is what windows does mostly.
Also, a 5400 rpm drive may power down if not in use, and it takes a bit of time to get up to speed.
Not a big drawback for bulk storage.

From a reliability point of view, I would buy new and buy WD.
I might suggest WD red.
Here is a nice article on the differences:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Understanding-the-WD-Rainbow-674/
 
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Solution
V

ViolaMB

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burtman88

ok so you're saying that noise should be pretty much the same when transferring files on both these drives? what about connecting it to my PC, there shouldn't be a problem right?

geofelt

yeah i have 2 WD Blue's 1TB 5400 and they often power down when not in use, i like that and they power up in a couple seconds, so there's no problem i agree. can you tell me do 7200 drives also power down when not in use?

i can get a new WD Blue 4TB 5400 for about 140€ or a HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 3TB (July 2016) with only 12 power on's and 30 power on hours for just 85€. here is a picture of one of the HGST Ultrastar 7200 3TB drives that i can get for just 85€ https://imgur.com/a/ZdVD8




WD red is NAS right? i really don't want NAS, i just need a simple fast, big, hopefully reliable HDD

 
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mjslakeridge

mjslakeridge

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You can set a 7200 RPM drive to power down after x minutes. I don't have my Windows 7 computer powered up right now, but for Windows 8.1 go to Control Panel/Hardware and Sound/Power Options/Change when the computer sleeps/change advanced power settings/and then click on the hard disk/then click on turn off hard disk after and set the number of minutes.

If you do get the 4 GB drive, format it as GPT, not MBR as the 2 TB limitation is in play with MBR (You can google GPT vs MBR).
 
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V

ViolaMB

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aha ok thanks for that. yeah i was reading earlier about that GPT/MBR to set it to GPT after connecting the drive.

i'm starting to think i should just buy a 7200 drive, i already have two WD Blue's 1TB 5400 so i'll see how the 7200 compares to those two.

any thoughts on HGST Ultrastar 7200 7K4000 3TB ? i read that HGST are really reliable am i right? and if you look at the pictures here https://imgur.com/a/ZdVD8 the drive date is JULY 2016 and just barely used am i right? also price is only 85€ for one.
 
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ViolaMB

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someone told me that it isn't good to have both 5400 and 7200 drives together in a PC case...he says i could hear some kind of interference because of the rotation of plates. is this true? also that HGST NAS drives are pretty loud.

to be honest i really don't need a NAS drive, so if i get a new wd blue 4TB 5400 then i would have 3x wd blue 5400 drives together in the case, i'm assuming this option would work normal as it should right?
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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The pugetsystems review I referenced above is high on the red drives for general use.

"The NAS Storage drives from WD are a very interesting group of drives that many consumers may discount simply because they are looking for an internal drive for their system, not something for a NAS. However, these are actually the main drives we use in the computers we manufacture here at Puget Systems. In many ways, these drives are simply slightly improved versions of other drives to include features like vibration protection and TLER technology which makes them ideal if you want to have more than one or two drives in your system or want to use them in a RAID array."
 
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