Would USB 3 take advantage of 7200rpm HDD vs 5400rpm in real world use? I have hundreds of giga bytes of photos and movies to edit/manage. Wondering if the disc speed will make noticeable differences as we're stuck with magnetic drives we get $200 2TB SSD in the future.
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USB 3 and 7200rpm?
- Thread starter AppleHater
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Yes.
You would probably not notice USB2 but SSDs on USB 3 are in the 400 MBps transfer range, 7200 RPM drives 100 MBps, 5400 RPM drive which are designed for low power and reliability around 40MBps.
So it would take you 10 times as long to transfer a file to a 5400 RPM drive as a SSD twice as long as a typical 7200 rpm drive.... in round numbers.
You would probably not notice USB2 but SSDs on USB 3 are in the 400 MBps transfer range, 7200 RPM drives 100 MBps, 5400 RPM drive which are designed for low power and reliability around 40MBps.
So it would take you 10 times as long to transfer a file to a 5400 RPM drive as a SSD twice as long as a typical 7200 rpm drive.... in round numbers.
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USB 3 does make a difference with 7200rpm drives. These results are for my Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB HDD in a USB 3 cradle:
These are fairly respectable numbers for a (non-RAID) mechanical drive.
These are fairly respectable numbers for a (non-RAID) mechanical drive.