I thought I'd start a new thread on this topic and would like to ask forum members on their thoughts and opinions on 7200 vs 5900 vs 5400 RPM disks. It seems that the slower disks generate less noise and reduce on power comsumption, biting terms of raw performance speeds, is their a really big difference between the three? Obviously the RPM speed between disks would hamper the performance somewhat, but on a rig with a 1GB port, direct SATA II mobo connection (and even try a addon SATA II with PCIe 16x, 8x, 4x and 1x card), running v4.5.3 and a newer CPU and 2GB RAM, testing read and write speeds between these three RPM speeds and vs other brands of these speeds, it would be interesting to see benchmarks. It might be obvious that the performance is simply reduced evenly between 7200 to 5900 to 5400, but actual benchmarks can say different things to what we might actually predict. Would anyone like to comment on their speeds on their disks with using the above template for testing that they might possibily have in their rig? Thanks.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5978.msg57052#msg57052

I dont recall which thread it was right now, perhaps The Ultimate unRAID Server 2, but some benchmarks already exist. There was a comparison between 10000, 7200, and 5400 RPM parity+data drive setups done using the new i3-530 CPU platform. If I remember correctly, the largest difference between the 10K RPM and 5400 RPM setup was maybe 28%.

Ah yes, it's somewhere around the 3rd and 2nd to last page in this thread "Ultimate Unraid Server - The Sequel" -- http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5076.180

 

Parity:  WD10EARS, Data:  WD10EARS

Write:  28% slower than vRaptors

Read:  9% slower than vRaptors

 

That's comparing the 1TB WD EARS 5400rpm against the 300 GB WD VelociRaptor 10Krpm drives.

Thanks BRiT, that kind of answers my question, though I expected a much higher difference rate between the vRaptors (10k RPM) vs the WD 5400 RPM disks, my a margin of perhaps 35 ~ 40% improvement, but again hence why benchmarking really tells the story. A valid point was the use of different chipsets which would obviously make a difference as well.

In the end if you want performance, you really have to pay for it, both the cost of the disk and the power it consumes and even the mobo/addon cards in which it would be running from . Good read, thanks.

 

Ah yes, it's somewhere around the 3rd and 2nd to last page in this thread "Ultimate Unraid Server - The Sequel" -- http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5076.180

 

Parity:  WD10EARS, Data:  WD10EARS

Write:  28% slower than vRaptors

Read:  9% slower than vRaptors

 

That's comparing the 1TB WD EARS 5400rpm against the 300 GB WD VelociRaptor 10Krpm drives.

It seems that the slower disks generate less noise and reduce on power comsumption, biting terms of raw performance speeds, is their a really big difference between the three? Obviously the RPM speed between disks would hamper the performance somewhat, but on a rig with a 1GB port, direct SATA II mobo connection (and even try a addon SATA II with PCIe 16x, 8x, 4x and 1x card), running v4.5.3 and a newer CPU and 2GB RAM, testing read and write speeds between these three RPM speeds and vs other brands of these speeds, it would be interesting to see benchmarks.....

 

Sometimes it's not benchmarks that matter, but response time.

I went from 2 WD 1TB 5400RPM 16MB cache green drives for parity and data (with rtorrent) to 2 Seagate 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache drives.

 

The difference in response time performance was very big.

 

Before the change if I did anything to the other drives on the array it would crawl.

If rtorrent had to do a hash check or move the files, it would cause a performance issue.

 

With the way reiserfs works, when a drive is near capacity, adding files to it seems to take quite a bit of time on the slower drives. With the higher RPM drives this takes less time.

 

So I would say, benchmarks aside, there is differences depending on applied use.

 

Large movie files are fine on the green drives.  Many small files needing rapid access are better on the higher performance drives.

I prefer 5400 rpm drives, though I'll consider 5900 rpm drives if they are on sale.  I'm currently trying to weed out all of the 7200 rpm drives in my server (only 1 left!).  I'll probably leave my cache drive as 7200 rpm, though.

 

For my use (serving files to my HTPC), 5400 is perfectly adequate.

seek times are also important, whch faster drives almsot double their seek time making general responsiveness much better, and as mentioned makes a massive differencve as drives get full.

 

new drives have generally better sustained speeds, even at a slower spindle speed.

 

it is unfair to compare with a raptor becuase raptors are desigend for seek, not sustained bandwidth which theyre beaten by 7200rpm drives.

 

i belive most ppl use their unraid for streaming (as noticed in the what do you use it for thread) whereas i use mine for multiple simutaneous file access, which is horrdly slow on 5400rpm drives due to the slow seek. if a drive is seeking, its not reading

interesting, why are you ditching your 7200 rpm disks? Thanks.

 

I prefer 5400 rpm drives, though I'll consider 5900 rpm drives if they are on sale.  I'm currently trying to weed out all of the 7200 rpm drives in my server (only 1 left!).  I'll probably leave my cache drive as 7200 rpm, though.

 

For my use (serving files to my HTPC), 5400 is perfectly adequate.

I'm currently trying to weed out all of the 7200 rpm drives in my server (only 1 left!)

 

I prefer 7200RPM drives, send them over to me please!

 

Seriously unraid spins down my disks, there is no green savings to be had, only "benefit" to green drives is slow performance and terrible seek times.  I'd consider some green drives like the Seagate Savvio SAS disks, 10-15K, 3-5ms seeks and 5W, thats my kind of green drive. Of course the $300-500 price tag is kinda off putting.

 

 

 

 

I'm actually interested in selling my most recent replacement, a 500 GB 7200 rpm WD (Black, I think?).  It is still under warranty until November of this year, so it is either 3 or 5 years old.  If there's any interest, I'll post the model number so you can get the full specs.  I've run SMART reports on it and the only values to 'watch' were all related to how much of its life it has been spun up.

 

I also have a 1 TB Samsung 7200 rpm drive that is much newer that I would sell if anyone is interested.  It is currently still sitting in my server, but I would happily replace it for a 1.5 or 2 TB green drive.

 

I live in the Western US, by the way.

 

unRAIDed, I've decided to systematically replace all my 7200 rpm drives in exchange for the power and heat savings that the green drives offer.  My server is used primarily to serve media files to my HTPC and to seed torrents (currently using uTorrent via the desktop, but hope to move to unTorrent soon).  So my drives are spun up a lot, at least 12 hours per day.  In this circumstance, the green drives make the most sense.  I don't need the fast seek times of 7200 rpm drives, and I don't mind the slower parity checks, since they still take less than 8 hours with my current configuration.

Yeah that makes sense I guess. Perhaps you should make a new section on the forum called "Trade, Buy & Sell unRAID Part" or "unRAID Swap-Meet". I could see you do this Raj. .

Lounge or Good Deals will work in the meantime.

@Raj, Which Samsung 1TB drive?

just remember a green drive may not be _that_ green. the difference between disks doing not much at all is less than 2W and less than 3W at full io load.

I believe the Western Digital Green disks are good for silent based computers like HTPCs, but for unraid server use (it depends on the person), I'd rather compermise noise and a little power for speed. I stream and archive data onto my server, so speed is paramount too. For price, I went for 7200 RPM disks.

 

just remember a green drive may not be _that_ green. the difference between disks doing not much at all is less than 2W and less than 3W at full io load.

. I stream and archive data onto my server, so speed is paramount too. For price, I went for 7200 RPM disks.

 

I mixed it up. For applications where speed matters I use 7200RPM disks, for movie and archival storage I use 5400 RPM green drives.  The only time I have an issue with the 5400 RPM drives is putting files on it over samba when it is near capacity. The first allocation of the file seems to time out as reiserfs is finding blocks to allocate or something.

In this case, I use rsync to help alleviate the timeout issues.

 

@Raj, Which Samsung 1TB drive?

 

This guy:

 

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

 

I believe it was one of the drives that was mistakenly listed as EcoGreen when I bought it.  I purchased it on 7/10/2009, so it is still relatively new.  I'm sure it is still under warranty.  I'm interested in either selling it or trading it for a 1 TB or larger green drive.

 

I'll cross-post this in Good Deals.

@Raj, Which Samsung 1TB drive?

 

This guy:

 

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

 

I believe it was one of the drives that was mistakenly listed as EcoGreen when I bought it.  I purchased it on 7/10/2009, so it is still relatively new.  I'm sure it is still under warranty.  I'm interested in either selling it or trading it for a 1 TB or larger green drive.

 

I'll cross-post this in Good Deals.

 

If it was an F3 model I would jump on it. Those are fffff ast on reads.

Sorry to disappoint.  Here's my cheesy Good Deal thread:

 

Rajahal's used hard drive shop, open for business!