Which Is The Better Hard Drive To Install OS/Games On?

I own two hard drives: (both 16MB Cache)
WD SE16 640GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136218
Seagate 7200.10 250GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148262

Seagate is a single platter of 250GB
WD has two-320GB platters.

My question is, which would be faster in running my operating system and games? (Booting up, shutting down, running OS, loading levels, etc). I'm planning on using one HD for my OS/Games and one HD for storage.

I assume that it's the hard drive with the faster latency? According to Newegg, the Seagate has a 4.16ms avg latency. However the WD6400AAKS does not list its latency and I cannot find anything online about it.

While I do think the WD6400AAKS is faster overall, it also has two platters, albeit each platter being bigger than my Seagates. Since the OS is small and I don't have too many games I want to install, would it be better to run them off my single platter Seagate?

Thanks in advance

Get HD Tune at http://hdtune.com/download.html and see their actual performances in your system.

The WD will be faster. All other things roughly equal (which they are in this case), the larger platter size will win.

Latency of all 7200 rpm drives is about the same.
7200rpm = 7200/60sec = 120 revolutions per second.
It takes 1/120 = .00833 seconds for a full revolution. that is 8.33 milliseconds.
Latency is the average time for the data to come under the read/write heads, whis 1/2 a revolution.
That is why the latency of a 7200rpm drive is 4.16 ms or so.


The larger drive will have more data packed into the outer rings than a less dense drive, making it somewhat faster in data transfer.

Still, it really won't make much of a difference in performance.

Is it worth it to put OS on 10k rpm and games on WD 1TB Caviar Black or just shove everything on the 10rpm Raptor? The Raptor dropped in price! Or is it a waiste and just get a 1TB WD Caviar Black for everything?

10k determines the latency. There is no direct correlation of 10k to the maximum data transfer rate. What matters is the density, and how much data can be transferred in one revolution. What matters for application and level loading is the maximum data transfer rate.

If you use a WD 1tb caviar black, it will be faster than a 10k raptor.
http://www.storagereview.com/php/b [...] h_sort.php

The 300gb 10k velociraptor will be the best conventional drive you can use.