What is the read and write speed of a 5400 rpm hard drive?

The read and write speed of a 5400 rpm hard disk is generally 100MB-150MB per second; but the actual situation may be different. There are many factors that affect the hard disk speed. For example, AHCI mode is faster than IDE mode, and transferring a single file Faster than transferring multiple files, SATA3 interface is faster than SATA2 interface, etc.

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

Common hard drives on the market have two specifications: 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM. Therefore, many people are confused when buying a hard drive, not knowing which speed is suitable for their computer. So, what is the read and write speed of a 5400 rpm hard drive? It will be introduced to you below.

The continuous read and write speed of a 5400 rpm mechanical hard disk is generally 100MB-150MB per second, and the continuous read and write speed of a 7200 rpm mechanical hard disk is generally 150MB-200MB per second;

The actual situation may be different. There are many factors that affect the speed of the hard disk. For example, AHCI mode is faster than IDE mode, transferring a single file is faster than transferring multiple files, SATA3 interface is faster than SATA2 interface, etc.

#Why is the hard disk speed such a strange number like 5400 or 7200?

First of all, we need to clarify what 5400 RPM means: RPM (revolutions per minute). It refers to the rotation speed of the motor spindle in the hard disk, which is the maximum speed that the hard disk platter can complete in one minute. Number of revolutions.

5400 rpm means that the motor driving the disc chooses 5400 rpm per minute. Note that this is minutes and not seconds.

Where did 5400 come from? Let’s start with its father, 3600. In the first 10 years after the birth of the PC, almost all hard drives had 3600 rpm. Where did this 3600 come from? Because the AC power in the United States is 60Hz!

You may be surprised that there seems to be no relationship between 60Hz and 3600. The secret is hidden in 1 minute:

1 minute = 60 seconds

60Hz × 1 turn/ Hz × 60 seconds/minute = 3600 rpm

It’s clear. What about 5400 and 7200?

5400 RPM = 3600 RPM × 1.5

7200 RPM = 3600 RPM × 2

Tradition is powerful, even though the PC's hard drive is not used AC, but the original design drew on the design of AC motors, and the first generation PC also used the 3600RPM parameter. Once a thing is born, it has its own life and survival logic. 3600 RPM also gave birth to children such as 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM due to reasons such as tradition and laziness.

Is 5400 rpm necessarily slower than 7200 rpm?

Not necessarily, cannot be generalized. Here is another parameter that affects read and write speeds: storage density. Imagine a newspaper delivery problem. Now there are two newsboys A and B. Newsboy A drives a battery car and newsboy B rides a bicycle. Newsboy A rides twice as fast as Newsboy B. They deliver to the same community. Who delivers more? Obviously A delivers more:

#But if the community where newspaper boy A delivers newspapers is a villa area, the residences are very sparse; and the community where newspaper boy B delivers newspapers is a row house, which is very compact. . Who delivers the most newspapers within a certain period of time?

Newsboy A gave away to 5 houses and Newsboy B also gave away to 5 houses, both of them have the same number! What if the villa area where Newsboy A delivers goods is sparser?

Newsboy B wins!

The single-disk capacity of disks is constantly improving. The increase in single-disk capacity means an increase in storage density. It is difficult to say which one is faster, 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm.

Let’s give an example to illustrate. The same generation of 5400 rpm 200GB Toshiba hard drive and 7200 rpm 100GB Hitachi Travelstar hard drive. The 5400 rpm read and write speeds are as follows:

roughly 25MB/s read and 39MB/s write. And what about 7200 rpm?

Writing speed is 25% faster and reading speed is almost doubled! This shows that under the same density, the speed of 7200 rpm is much higher than that of 5400 rpm. What about the different storage densities?

The read and write performance of Samsung's 5400 rpm 1TB SpinPoint hard drive is as follows:

It can be seen that with the increase in density, the Samsung 5400 rpm hard drive is several times better than The read and write speed of the 7200 rpm hard drive more than doubled a year ago!

Conclusion:

It is meaningless to talk about speed without storage density. Under the same storage density, the higher the rotation speed, the faster. But when it comes to different storage densities, specific analysis is required.

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