Adding 5400 and 7200 RPM HDDs in one PC?

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 9, 2018

Hi guys, what is the result of adding 2 HDDs in one PC together, one is 7200 RPM, the other is 5400 RPM ?

I will be gaming, if i game on 7200 RPM, Will i be treated in a speed of 7200, and if i game on 5400 RPM, Will i be treated in a speed of 5400 ? or there will be an average speed for all ? same question about data transfer from the specified HDD to an external storage.

ALSO:

If the 7200 RPM is 3.5 HDD and the 5400 RPM is 2.5 HDD, will the previous result differs because of the way they mounted ?

jsmithepa · Aug 9, 2018

Your PC could care less how fast the platters on a HD is turning. All it knows is, (1)It asks for data from HD (2)The PC waits for HD to reply, 5400 will respond slower, but for practical purposes the PC will wait forever for the response, hence frozen PCs from systems with failing HDD.

2.5/3.5" same deal. PC doesn't care whether the data coming from HD, what size, SSD, Flash, it just patiently waits until the device responds.

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 9, 2018

jsmithepa :

Thanks for your reply, sorry i didn't get full understand of this, but did you mean i will be treated based on the speed of the HDD i'm accessing ?? so if i access the 7200 one so the speed that i will treat with is 7200 and vice versa for 5400 ??

captaincharisma · Aug 9, 2018

the speed difference does not matter. as long as they have the same connections that your motherboard has there will be no issues

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 9, 2018

captaincharisma :

Actually i'm not asking about the speed difference, I'm asking about how i will be treated when i access any of the 2 HDDs, Will i deal based on its own speed ??

10tacle · Aug 9, 2018

I don't understand what you are trying to find out. I have three different drives on my PC: one 3.5" HDD, one 2.5" SSHD (hybrid hard drive with some SSD memory on board), and one SSD (obviously 2.5"). Each drive responds differently only based on how fast it can be read from the PC. As others say, your PC does not care about the difference in drive type (or size). It only responds to the performance differences in the drive - faster access for faster drives, slower access for slower drives. Having a 5400RPM drive will not slow down your 7200RPM drive or an SSD for that matter.

I don't know how I can make it any more clear. Maybe you are thinking of RAID requirements where drives have to be the same make speed? You can mix a 5400RPM drive and 7200RPM drive in RAID, but that 7200 drive will only run at 5400 in RAID. If you just simply have each different drive connected directly into your motherboard's SATA ports, it's a non-issue.

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 9, 2018

10tacle :

My question was not that hard to understand, its very clear, was just asking about how the HDDs will respond in case of having different speeds? everyone on its own speed or there is a shared speed for all HDDs, but anyways you almost solved my problem, I understand now that when i access a 7200 RPM drive so the speed will be 7200 RPM and same for 5400 RPM, thanks anyways.

captaincharisma · Aug 9, 2018

hamada.hosny93 :

10tacle :

My question was not that hard to understand, its very clear, was just asking about how the HDDs will respond in case of having different speeds? everyone on its own speed or there is a shared speed for all HDDs, but anyways you almost solved my problem, I understand now that when i access a 7200 RPM drive so the speed will be 7200 RPM and same for 5400 RPM, thanks anyways.

nope, sorry i still do not understand. the drives are not combined where a file is spread across both drives they are 2 seperate HDD's.

even if you did combine the drives which you can do with a RAID 0 array the speed differences still would not matter

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 9, 2018

captaincharisma :

hamada.hosny93 :

nope, sorry i still do not understand. the drives are not combined where a file is spread across both drives they are 2 seperate HDD's.

even if you did combine the drives which you can do with a RAID 0 array the speed differences still would not matter

I will try to be more clear, If i have 2 HDDs installed on my PC, one with 7200 RPM, the other with 5400 RPM speed, what speed expected to deal with when i ask to access one of them? everyone with its own speed or there will be a shared speed for all ??

By other ways: if i asked to access the HDD with 7200 RPM, will i got access by the same speed?
same thing with the HDD with 5400 RPM.

Got it ?

jsmithepa · Aug 9, 2018

You are asking if by inserting the 5400, the whole HDD system is going to be slowed down to 5400 even though there is a 7200 onboard, this used to happen on ole IDE when both drives are on the same channel, does it happen to SATA? I DON'T KNOW. Try Google.

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 9, 2018

jsmithepa :

I will try to be more clear again, if you have an SSD, then surely the speed on SSD is better than a HDD.

Apply same exmaple for 2 HDDs with different speeds, will the system deal with every HDD based on its own speed or there will be a shared speed for both ?? and yes it's SATA drive like WD Blue 1TB (7200 RPM) and WD Blue 2TB (5400 RPM).

jsmithepa · Aug 10, 2018

Man, we really splitting atoms here aren't we.

Since people are buying SSD and no complaint, am going to wager no diff for HD, they are dealt individually at their speed own speed, and am unanimous on that.

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 10, 2018

jsmithepa :

That's the clarification i was waiting for, but to be honest you didn't explain it well from the beginning, but hey its ok np

thank you so much

4745454b · Aug 10, 2018

You realize spindle speed means nothing right?

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda-7200-10-internal-ST3250820AS

I had these in my PC a long time ago. 3.5" 7200RPM. For the time they were good drives, but only around 75MBps transfer speed. I've got some backup drives now that are 3.5" 5900RPM. I measure over 150MBps. You can't just look at one measurement of something and figure out which is faster. Which CPU do you buy, the one that's 4.0GHz or the one that's 3.5GHz? There simply isn't enough info there to tell you which is faster.

As mentioned above each drive works at it's own speed. SATA drives are by themselves and aren't influenced or changed by other drives or things in your PC. The SSD will work as best it can, as will each drive. Which drive is faster/better can't be determined by the limited info you've given.

10tacle · Aug 10, 2018

hamada.hosny93 :

That's essentially what I had posted originally when I mentioned having three different types of drives including different speeds (HDD, SSHD, SSD). If they are plugged into regular SATA ports on the motherboard, each run independently on their own speeds. None affect each other's speed variations. Glad we all got it sorted out!

captaincharisma · Aug 10, 2018

hamada.hosny93 :

captaincharisma :

I will try to be more clear, If i have 2 HDDs installed on my PC, one with 7200 RPM, the other with 5400 RPM speed, what speed expected to deal with when i ask to access one of them? everyone with its own speed or there will be a shared speed for all ??

By other ways: if i asked to access the HDD with 7200 RPM, will i got access by the same speed?
same thing with the HDD with 5400 RPM.

Got it ?

in summary:

if you access a file from the 5400RPM hard drive it will access the file at 5400 RPM

if you access a file from the 7200RPM hard drive it will access the file at 7200 RPM

if you access a file from the 5400RPM HDD it will not access the file at 7200RPM

if you access a file on the 7200RPM HDD it will not access the file at 5400RPM

hamada.hosny93 · Aug 10, 2018

Thank you so much all people for help, really appreciate all answers.

4745454b · Aug 10, 2018

if you access a file from the 5400RPM hard drive it will access the file at 5400 RPM

if you access a file from the 7200RPM hard drive it will access the file at 7200 RPM

if you access a file from the 5400RPM HDD it will not access the file at 7200RPM

if you access a file on the 7200RPM HDD it will not access the file at 5400RPM

Correct. But as I said above I'm really lost why this matters at all. 5400, 5900, 7200, 10k, etc. That's just the rotation speed of the disks. What's the areal density? Cache size? All these come together to give you a transfer speed. My new 5900RPM drivers are faster than my older 7200RPM drives. Why worry about 7200 vs 5400 at all? It's just one metric. As I said above, it's possible the 4.0GHZ CPU is slower than the 3.5GHz CPU.

Adding 5400 and 7200 RPM HDDs in one PC?

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