Notebook and desktop hard drives

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Thread: Notebook and desktop hard drives

  1. #1
    Catfish Coolme's Avatar
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    Notebook and desktop hard drives

    I'm wondering how notebook and desktop hard-drives compare in performance at equal speed (7200rpm).
    Thanks for the help.

  2. #2
    Administrator Steve R Jones's Avatar
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    7200 rpm is 7200 rpm

    The "cache" can play a role... But if both are the same - the drives would preform the same.
    "Vegetarians live up to nine years longer than the rest of us...Nine horrible, worthless, baconless years."

  3. #3
    Catfish Coolme's Avatar
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    I imagined since they are not the same physical size, the diameter of the plates might have had an impact.

  4. #4
    Great White Shark
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolme View Post
    I imagined since they are not the same physical size, the diameter of the plates might have had an impact.
    It does. Specifically on sequential access. Also, depending on firmware, the 2.5" hdd's actually get a benefit in the random IOPS department due to less area to travel across. (smaller platters.) However, most laptop oriented drives have been tweaked and optimized for power savings, not performance.

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  5. #5
    Catfish Coolme's Avatar
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    ok thanks.

  6. #6
    Great White Shark
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    Here's a more detailed (but still simplified) explanation:

    Think about a 3.5" circle and a 2.5" circle. They have the following diameters:
    3.5" = 10.99" diameter
    2.5" = 7.85" diameter

    For every revolution of that 7200rpm spindle speed, the outside edge of each platter makes one full revolution past a fixed point. For the sake of argument, we'll make that fixed point the read/write head of the hard drive.

    That means in the same amount of time, one drive passes 10.99" of drive surface beneath the r/w head, the other passes 7.85" of platter underneath the head. If we assume that platter density technology is the same (same number of bits per inch), that means that a 3.5" drive will give us 40% (10.99/7.85 ~ 1.4) more data being able to be read from the outer most track, per revolution of the drive.

    This is why all modern drives start recording data from the outer most tracks and work inward. It maximizes sequential performance.

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  7. #7
    Catfish Coolme's Avatar
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    Thanks for this explanation, sounds logic to me.

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