Does RPM matters for Hard disk Performance

[bunty]

Hi
I am planning to purchase hard disk for customer data storage /cloning etc.
Obvious choice is Toshiba Enterprise hard disks.
For less critical data (secondary backup / testing etc) I am planning to buy Surveillance hard disks (24X7 support) ,these hard disks are AV disks having less RPM (5700)
My query is whether there will be performance degradation as compared to Toshiba 7200 RPM disks?

Here is drives for comparison ----
MG04ACA400E TOS 4TB 3.5 INCH SATA 6GBPS 128MB (Enterprise 5 year warranty) X MD04ABA400V TOS 4TB 3.5INCH 5400RPM AV DRIVE (3 year warranty)

There is another drive type in Toshiba -- NAS drives MN04ACA400 ( TOS 4TB NAS 3.5INCH 7200 RPM )

Since there is hugh price different in all drive types ,I would like to know - is there substantial difference in design , architecture of these drives?
Thanks

[data-medics]

I'm too lazy to look up the full specs of those two drives, but you can bet the Enterprise 7200 RPM one will be faster. Assuming they both have the same number of heads/platters and same aerial density the 7200 RPM one will simply have more sectors flying under the heads each second compared to the slower one. It'll also use a bit more power. Also since it's an enterprise drive you can bet it'll have larger cache size and faster seek time. DVR / Surveillance drives almost never need to seek since 99.9% of their time is spent writing sequential video stream. I've yet to see any Toshiba surveillance drives come in for recovery, but if they are anything like their WD counterparts they are nothing special and very much the same as a consumer grade drive. Enterprise drives, on the other hand, are usually far heavier duty construction overall with larger magnets to stabilize and whatnot.

[bunty]

Hi Jared
Thanks a lot for detailed explanation.

[digitalferret]

error correction v command completion / time

Worth a read:

http://archive.techarp.com/showarticleb ... 659&pgno=4


Some unscrupulous or misinformed dealers are promoting such AV-optimized hard disk drives as "superior" versions of their desktop cousins with appropriately higher price tags. Nothing could be further from the truth. These AV-optimized hard disk drives are neither superior nor inferior to their desktop equivalents.
They are designed to be used in very specific applications, and are not meant for use in desktop or server environments.

[bunty]

Hi digitalferret
thanks for detailed explanation.

I have heard that Even there is not much difference between WD purple & WD scorpio Blue (Low profile consumer grade desktop)
Even heads are intercompatible.
So in conclusion AV drives are not supposed to be used in PC environment.

here are more details ----

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2HFQZ ... sp=sharing


Thanks again.