Posted July 25, 2019
dtgreene: Those HDDs, though, do have their uses. In particular, I would expect them to be quieter and use less power than the faster ones. Also, they're cheaper, and sometimes what you need is a large amount of storage at an affordable price.
Of course, I wouldn't run an OS off one these days (in fact, I wouldn't want to use any spinning disk to hold the OS on a new computer; even the cheapest computers these days have solid state storage), but they work well for things like music and other media where speed isn't an issue, or backups which you only do occasionally (but should still not forget to do). (Note that going USB for thses sort of drives is an option, particularly if it's a laptop-sized drive that doesn't need external power; do you *really* need your backup storage attached *all* the time?)
DetouR6734: Honestly the price difference wasn't worth the intolerable wait of loading the OS, and the software used. Of course, I wouldn't run an OS off one these days (in fact, I wouldn't want to use any spinning disk to hold the OS on a new computer; even the cheapest computers these days have solid state storage), but they work well for things like music and other media where speed isn't an issue, or backups which you only do occasionally (but should still not forget to do). (Note that going USB for thses sort of drives is an option, particularly if it's a laptop-sized drive that doesn't need external power; do you *really* need your backup storage attached *all* the time?)
5200RPM's should have been stopped years back, and considering how quiet 2.5" 7200RPM's were, there would be absolutely no need to drop to a 5200.
It was for the cheapskates that sold prebuilt computers.
I hate 5200's with a passion.
(Also, said drives are still much faster than CD-ROMs and floppy disks.)