Old IDE 7200 RPM vs New SATA Caviar Green

[armourcore9brker]

Hello,

I am currently thinking about installing an Ubuntu linux distro on my old P4 Computer and I'm not sure whether an older IDE 7200RPM HDD would be faster or slower than a Sata Caviar Green HDD.

The IDE Hard Drive (WD800BB-22FJA1):
http://shopping.yahoo.com/395977-western-digital-caviar-wd800bb-hard-drive/specs;_ylt=AlIe_7IdHF8nSz_Rmeb3qZECR3AD

The Sata Drive (WD20EARS):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514



Now I know that Sata is generally faster than an ide but it comes into question because the Sata is tailored to the more storage approach and I believe that the EARS run at 5900RPM. So which would be faster to run a linux OS on?

Both run through the mobo.

Thanks in advanced.

 

[LordConrad]

It's my understanding that the WD green drives throttle themselves up to 7200 during read/write, then drop to lower speed when not in use. Assuming this to be true, the WD green drive would be the pretty much the same speed as the older drive (delays due to speed change should be offset by higher areal density).

 

[Ubrales]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=696&pgno=0
http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?groupid=502&lang=en

They both seem to have the identical seek times of 8.9 ms - the EARS has 64 MB cache, whereas the IDE HDD has 2 MB, but spins faster - 7,200 RPM Vs 5,900 RPM for the EARS.

In reality, unless you are trying to transfer huge amounts of data on a frequent basis, you will not notice any speed differences between the 2 drives.

The IDE drive that you have is better suited for the Linux OS because the drive is built more rugged and is a proven HDD.

 

[sminlal]

Green drives are slower because they spin slower. But if you're comparing a new, 2TB green drive to an older 80GB IDE drive then the green is probably going to be at least nearly as fast and quite possibly faster overall.

Since the newer green drive packs a lot more data into each track, it will have a faster transfer rate than the older IDE drive. And for the same reason it have to do less seeking / shorter seeks, and that will probably offset the reduction in access time caused by the increased rotational delay.

My gut says to go with the green drive.

 

[drevin]

The 80Gb drive might have a bit better access times, but the green drive has MUCH faster sequential transfer rates. Here's a comparison:

 

[armourcore9brker]

Well after looking at the numbers and what I really want to do with the computer I think that it'll be best to have the OS on the 80GB and media on the 2TB. I'll partition as follows,
60 GB Windows XP
20 GB Ubuntu
and
2TB ext2/3/4 media drive (Still need to figure out which would be best to access/write from Windows)

Yes I understand that the transfer rate is faster on the Green drive but that is why it's media. Writing and reading from media should be faster. But since their seek time is around the same the OS itself should be good for accessing.

Thanks for all the input!

 

[armourcore9brker]

Best answer selected by armourcore9brker.

 

[Ubrales]

Thank you!