Is a 2.5" HDD and a 3.5" the same performance wise?

[bingaloman]

I am building a small form factor micro atx PC and I wanted to get a laptop hard drive to save space for cable management, and I was wondering is the performance between 2.5 and 3.5 the same if they both show similar specs?

Like for example if the 2.5 has 7200 RPM with 16mb cache and so does the 3.5, will they both basically be the same? Or will the 3.5 somehow still be stronger and faster because it is for desktops?

Thanks!

 

[pasta815tim]

If they show the same spec then they will be equally fast. However, most mobile harddrives have much less cache and lower RPM. Most 2.5" hard drives are 5400 rpm, whilst the 7200 is much more expensive. So if you have space, definitely go for the 3.5" 7200 rpm for it is better price/performance. If you really strive for performance, go for a Solid State Drive. The physical limitation for hard drives make the performance not as distinct from other physical hard drives. So though 7200 rpm drives will be faster than 5400 rpm, they are both slow no matter what. If you don't care about space and got perhaps a few more bucks to spare, SSD is the way to go.

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