In the situation I say they're a good use, the problem of loading the OS and software off it is avoided, as the drive isn't being used for that purpose. In cases like this, sometimes price is more important than other factors; why should I care about how fast the OS loads off it if there's no OS on the drive in the first place?

(Also, said drives are still much faster than CD-ROMs and floppy disks.)

The most typical rpm rate fot HDD's are 5400, not 5200 :P

With that said, the rpm rating of a hard drive, has very little to do with speed. A modern high cache 5400rpm drive would spank a 10 year old 7200 in overall speed. The rpm rating on hard drives is what I call "Supermarket number", like on a big store every thing has a number to justify the price.

HDD are freaking complex nowadays but to give a simple exemple: HDD work with spinning discs inside, like cd's but magnetical read instead of optical. Imagine 2 similar drives, one with 2 internal discs, the other with 4 discs, Assuming each disc can be read equally fast, the drive with 4 discs will be twice as fast, despite the rotating speed of the discs.

Want a few more stuff to throw in the mixture? Disc density, at the same speed a 500Gb internal disc is able to read 5x than a similar sized 100Gb disc.

The size of the internal discs, "quality" and bandwidth of the sensor, cache size, speed and efficiency, even the rated power consumption has a big influence on speed.

Rpm is the same on cars engines (who dont love cars analogies), they say absolutelly zero about engine acceleration, economy, drive ability, response or rely ability...
Crap I can go on all day long but the rant iss too big now.

Tldr: rpm rating of a drive is a old number with no meaning for us, end users. It was importand back in the day when HDD were much simpler.

Or a "professional" computer, say, on a bank desk, wich is turned on at the beginning of the day and pretty much only run 1 program all day long.
I'm pretty sure some surveilance systems use HDD too.

Oh, CD-ROMs... I recently been ripping some old music cd's of my collection. When the cd is in bad shape Windows pretty much locks until the cd can be read, I had flashbacks to Win XP times...
Switched SSD to Linux Mint, it did the same thing O.o
The OS is very slow an un-responsive while the cd drive tries to read the bad cd...
I know nothing about operating systems but shouldn't the user have some kind of priority?

That's why I usually do something else(bathroom/get a snack/etc) while I wait...then the wait is hidden from view.

Both.

If you really care about speed, temp files should be on secondary drive, never primary drive. Two drives working in unison is faster than one drive working alone.

SSD for OS and applications. HDD for temp and media files.

Yeah, my mistake!

Sure yeah cache does play a part, But still i disagree in general with your post, yes, there are varying factors, but swapping between 5400, 7200 and 10k, there is a difference, sure it will likely be more than just an RPM number, but you wern't gonna get a Raptor that was slower than any other drive on the market, and every 5400 drive i used, was an absolute pain in the ass to deal with.


It was a good rule of thumb to go by, and for me still is, the money you save going for less unless you want terrabytes of storage just wasn't worth it.

Even on a storage drive i'd probably go for a faster drive, simply because if i needed to use it as a main, i wouldn't get the sudden urge to throw it out the window upon trying.

WTF? My pc kicks on in about 10 seconds and I wait another ten seconds and then get going. But, admittingly my old pc was fairly slow and always gave it a few minutes to get sorted out. And knock all you like as I don't GAF what you think.

?
you created this topic? and then say you don't gaf?

thats... strange.

I don't follow... have can you compare rpm on a simple spinning metallic axel to a spinning electromagnetic disk with data on it?

Even the music from a vinyl plate changes when the speed changes; 33, 45 and 78 (I believe) rpms depending on the how the bumps are arranged on the vinyl plate. If you go faster or slower you'll hear the change in the sound.

Here the rpm does say something about the "acceleration"... on a car without a transmission it would have been exactly the same - the faster the axel turns, the faster the wheels turn, the faster does the car goes (and I know nothing about cars, yet I'm still able to see that)

A mechanical disk like a Raptor spins faster allows for faster reading/writing than a disk with only a 5400. There’s also a noticeable difference between a 5400 and 7200 in laptops.

I'd say it's still important, same with SSD's with crappy controller, you'll notice the difference.

On-topic: Recently bought me a Ryzen 3 laptop with only M.2 PCIe SSD (420S half-size)... damn, those are small!

Maybe they fell out of bed during the night, and woke up in the morning stuck in the gap between the bed and the wall ?.

I'd say the point is that he made his decision and it's final, no matter what anyone else says. Can definitely get that.

Just sick of the know all experts in this place that offer smart arse comments.

With densities being higher on newer HDDs, it takes less movement of the armature/arm to get to the desired data....meaning a "slower" 5400 RPM disc with a higher density than a comparable 7200 RPM drive with lower data density will perform better/faster at reading and finding that data.

Serious question: Then why even ask the question if you knew you might not like the answers you got? :|

Probably shouldn't answer for another, but seemed to me that Tauto was wary of SSDs and was wondering whether he'll be convinced otherwise, yet there were some posts here that confirmed the concerns and it wasn't a question of the benefits outweighing them, so as long as he wasn't convinced that there was really no risk of what he was worried about, that was that.