Good afternoon, dear readers, today I want to touch on this topic, what is rotational speed spindle hard disk how to determine it, and understand which speed is good and which is not. I think it will be interesting for novice storage engineers, since performance will depend on the understanding of this topic. Storage systems, namely how much is your disk array will be able to drag on itself, without brakes and accidents. At the time of the beginning of my career, I did not have enough of this information in the Russian-speaking segment and that everything was structured, so I ask you to love and favor.
Spindle speed
Each of us wants all of his services and equipment to work quickly, and to put in their data storage systems, not everyone has the opportunity to stick fast SSD drives, and the only solution remain hard drives... When evaluating performance hard drives most important characteristic is the baud rate. At the same time, a number of factors affect speed and overall performance:
- The first factor is through which interface you connect HDD, a choice of SATA / IDE / SCSI / SAS, it is logical that each of them has its own data transfer rate. SCSI can transfer data up to 80 megabytes / sec, IDE latest versions can support data transfer rates up to 133 MB / s, SATA up to 6 Gbps, SAS up to 12 Gbps.
- The size of the cache or buffer on the hard drive. Increasing the buffer size increases the data transfer rate.
- Support for NCQ, TCQ and other algorithms to improve performance
- Disk volume, the more data can be written, the more time it takes to read the information.
- Density of information on the plates.
- And even file system affects the data exchange rate.
But there is another factor affecting the performance of the screws and that is the spindle speed of the hard drive. If you take two identical HDDs, but with different speed spindle rotation, then you will see a difference in performance, and at what a significant
HDD device
let's consider physical device hard drives to understand what parts it consists of.
- Reading head
- Solenoid drive
- Spindle
- Plate
- Nutrition
- Connection interface
- Read / write head
- Permanent magnet
- Positioner rotary frame
- Head-block preamplifier switch
What is a spindle
Winchester is a set of one or more sealed disc-shaped plates covered with a layer of ferromagnetic material and readheads in one housing. The plates are driven by a spindle (rotating shaft). The platters of the hard disk are fixed to the spindle at a strictly defined distance. When the platters rotate, the distance should be such that the read heads can read and write to the disk, but do not touch the platter surface.
The spindle motor must be able to rotate the magnetic platters steadily for thousands of hours for the disk to function properly. Unsurprisingly, sometimes disk problems are related to a jammed spindle, and are not errors in the file system at all.
The motor is responsible for the rotation of the plates, and this allows you to work hard disk... Due to the lack of contact, the hard drive can be rewritten on average 100 thousand times. Also, the operating time of the disk is influenced by the hermetically sealed case (hermetic zone), due to which a space is created inside the HDD case free of dust and moisture.
This is what the spindles look like; for each manufacturer, they may look slightly different in appearance. These are the spindles from Samsung screws.
or here's another selection.
spindle speed, or in Russian, the spindle rotation speed, determines how quickly the plates rotate in normal mode work hard disk. It is measured in RpM, that is, revolutions per minute. The RpM speed will depend on how fast your computer will work, namely how quickly the computer can receive data from the hard drive.
How many times have I seen sluggish laptops with 4 GB each random access memory, stood there Intel processor core i3 or even i5, but there was a pancake hdd with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm, and it was a complete rub, you need to immediately pull out such screws and install the ssd, otherwise it was not possible to work
The time it takes to block magnetic heads to go to the requested track / cylinder is called search time (seek latency or delay) ... After the read heads move to the desired track / cylinder, we must wait for the plates to turn so that the desired sector is under the head - this is rotational latency time. And this is a direct function of the spindle speed. That is, what faster speed the spindle, the less the rotation delay.
The total seek time delays and rotation delays determine the speed of data access. In many assessment programs hdd speed this will be the access to data time parameter. You can read more about s.m.a.r.t indicators by following the link on the left.
The influence of the spindle speed of the hard disk
Winchesters come in two formats LFF and SFF, in a nutshell, one has a format of 2.5 inches, and the other 3.5. The 2.5 format most often goes either in servers or in laptops, and the second also in servers and conventional systems blocks.
If you look at the average speed of standard 3.5 "hard drives, then this is a spindle speed of 7200 rpm. The average half-turn time (Avg. Rotational Latency) for such drives is 4.2 ms. These drives usually have an average seek time of about 8.5ms, which gives an average data access time of about 12.7ms.
There are discs that have a rotational speed of the magnetic platters of 10,000 rpm. This reduces the average spin delay time to 3ms. The Raptors also have smaller diameter plates, which made it possible to reduce the average search time to ~ 5.5 ms. The resulting average data access time is approximately 8.5 ms.
There are several SCSI models (such as the Seagate Cheetah) that have a spindle speed of 15,000 rpm, and even smaller platters. The average Rotational Latency is 2ms (60 sec / 15,000 RPM / 2), the average seek time is 3.8ms, and the average data access time is 5.8ms.
Discs with high frequency spindle rotations have low values search time and Rotational Latency even with random access... Hard drives with a spindle speed of 5600 and 7200 have lower performance.
At the same time, with sequential access to data in large blocks, the difference will be insignificant, since there will be no delay in accessing data, therefore it is recommended to regularly defragment hard disks.
At 2.5 colleagues, the speed also jumps from 5400 to 15000 rpm.
Determine the speed of rotation of the spindle of the hard disk
Here I will not open America for you, the spindle speed of the hard disk is determined, not just that simple, but very simply, there are two options. If you have the opportunity to physically look at the label located on the disk, then you can see this RPM in these examples is 7200RPM.
If you have a hard disk in a device or server, then we will look at the spindle speed of the hard disk in special programs, of which there are a bunch, I can advise
- crystalmark
- aida64
- speccy
Of course, the higher the spindle speed, the faster the disc, but there is also back side medals, with an increase in the rotational speed of the plates, the disk heats up more and becomes more noisy. This can be offset by technology, WD IntelliPower, which reduces power consumption and noise by reducing spindle speed. And the loss of performance is partially compensated by optimizing caching algorithms. A similar technology in HGST is called CoolSpin in order to reduce power consumption.
conclusions
I think you are once again convinced that, if possible, you need to switch to solid state drives since they have many advantages
- Do not heat up
- Not mechanical parts, if it falls, then nothing will happen to him
- The speed is many times faster
- More durable
- But, unfortunately, they have a smaller volume and are still more expensive, although this line is decreasing every year.
Warm greetings to everyone Hard drive, this is probably one of the most important devices in a computer, but one of the most important devices... After all, it is on your hard disk that you store files, games, programs, pictures, videos, and everything in general is stored there. Everything you have on your computer is stored on your hard drive.
Hard drives are still the most reliable devices for me, I mean, compared to SSDs. But if hard drives in terms of technology have exhausted their potential, then SSDs still have everything ahead, as it seems to me. Today, that is, in 2016, I am sure that SSDs have a great future and that the day will come when even I myself will believe that in terms of reliability, SSDs (I mean not only the most expensive ones) will not be inferior to conventional ones. hard drives.
But, excuse me, I deviated a little from the topic. Just why are SSDs good? Of course the speed. In hard drives, it is the spindle speed that affects the speed of the hard drive, but it's not that simple. But these speeds have long been established and it is impossible to jump higher than them, it is simply physically impossible. No, maybe you can jump over, but firstly, such a disc will be terribly expensive, secondly, it will be noisy, and thirdly, it is not known how long the disc can work at such speeds. Standard speed hard disk, normal, not the slowest, it is 120-140 mb / s, I mean not new. The new one can operate at a speed of 150-170 mb / s.
But what exactly is a spindle? This is the axis in the hard drive on which the hard drive platters are mounted. The plates are fixed rigidly, so that they can withstand high revolutions, so to speak, and at the same time the reading heads can read or write data from them. How to find out the spindle speed? Well, I think this information shows that many programs, I just, frankly, did not particularly look at this information, because I always knew how many revolutions. But, nevertheless, there is the CrystalDiskInfo program, you can easily download it on the Internet, because the program is popular, so it shows the number of revolutions in the Rotation Rate:
Turnovers are usually always marked with a label such as RPM
So what is our speed? Conventional hard drives have a spindle speed of 5400 or 7200 rpm. Those that have a speed of 5400 are considered to be quiet and not very fast hard drives (the speed is somewhere around 80-100 mb / s), they do not get very hot and all that, so they are often found in laptops. 7200 rpm, this is already regular hard a disk for an ordinary computer, it is not bad in speed, although over time, of course, the speed of reading / writing data decreases, but insignificantly and depends on the operating conditions of the disk. The speed drops because the sectors on the disk start to work slower, I don’t know why, I won’t lie, but this is a common occurrence for both new disks and old ones. That is, if the speed of the new disk was 150 mb / s, then in a couple of years it can drop to 100 mb / s, roughly speaking. Those sectors that no longer work at all, they are automatically replaced with new ones from a special reserve area.
There are generally cool discs, and believe me, they are really cool, but I don't know if they are released now, I mean a series of discs from Western digital, called the VelociRaptor series. This is very fast disks, run at 10,000 rpm, a little noisy, but really fast and really expensive. Too expensive for today, you can take an SSD for the same price, I'm honestly telling you this. By the way, I also wrote about VelociRaptor disks here, you can take a look
So, I wrote a little about the speeds, now let's think about what the spindle speed affects then? Well, of course, what about the speed of the disk .. But look, even if the disk has a spindle speed of 5400 rpm, it will be able to read a file at about 100 mb / s, roughly speaking. But the trick is that not everyone knows that this means LINEAR speed, that is, it will actually read or write a file at this speed, provided that the file is ONE PIECE. If it consists of many parts, then the speed will be ten times less, that's the catch! A file of many parts is the same as writing or reading a bunch of small files, this is what weakness any hard disk, this is the RANDOM READ speed, it is tens of times higher for SSD!
That's the catch, you know? So even Western Digital's high-performance VelociRaptor series won't be faster than the very first. SSD drives. Modern discs VelociRaptor has a linear speed of about 200 mb / s, which is about the same as first SSD... However, this line speed, the first SSD speed random access was several times higher than that of modern discs VelociRaptor!
Well, I'll write to you already so that you understand exactly, the spindle speed affects the launch of programs, the higher the speed, the faster the programs and games will start. But again, there won't be a huge difference between 5400 and 7200, because the speed random reading the hard drives are still very low. Western Digital Black Series discs have two special processor, increased cache, they run at 7200 rpm, but still the Black series is optimized for speed, so my opinion is that this is best discs today in terms of price / speed.
In games, the speed of the hard disk will not do much, the loading of the levels will depend on the speed, well, and some more points, everything related to reading data. It is much better when there are a lot of operatives and powerful processor, video card, in general, in the gaming computer hard I would put the disk on last place... If you need good tough disk, then it's better to look towards the SSD, my advice to you
To understand the difference between hard disk and SSD, check out this picture with the test:
Take a close look at the third column, well, that is, where is 4K, you see what's the difference? This difference is the MAIN difference! This is working with 4 KB blocks, and this is the biggest disadvantage of hard drives! As you can see, the SSD has a much better situation here. But these are rough tests, so to speak, this is about to understand the difference. There are faster hard drives, there are slower SSDs, well, I hope you understand what I mean.
Experts or just advanced users will think, but what about the RAID0 array? Yes it good question! RAID0 know what? Well, for example, you bought 4 WD Black hard drives, all new and fast, and now they are all connected into one, created a RAID0 array and now they all work as one drive. The speed will also quadruple. They will work in parallel, that is, the files will be written IMMEDIATELY on 4 disks and then read IMMEDIATELY from 4 disks, because of this, the power of the disk will be increased 4 times. You can copy files much faster, especially large ones. Small files, of course, will also be copied faster, launching programs will also be faster, but all the same, it's SO far from SSD! Do you understand what's the catch? The random read or random access speed of hard drives is very slow. For SSDs, it is not two or three times higher, but tens, so whatever you say, if you put even 10 hard disks in RAID0 (to be honest, I don’t know if you can put that much), then the resulting array of disks will still be slower than a single SSD in terms of random read speed.
But no matter how good SSDs are, they have their fat drawbacks, these are price, volume and durability. The hard drive of the WD Blue series is a regular midrange, 7200 rpm, it costs about ... well, $ 60, roughly speaking. And this hard drive in terms of reliability will be much better than any SSD up to $ 120, well, that's my opinion. I am already silent that a $ 60 hard drive will have a volume of 1 TB, and good SSD for $ 120 will be about 250 GB. And then, the hard drive will definitely be able to serve for five years, well, if it works in good conditions, but SSD for $ 120, I don't know if it can live for 5 years. Keep in mind that the hard drive is much more durable in terms of the recorded information than the SSD! Therefore, the price of an SSD, which is as reliable as a hard drive, is still high.
In general, these are the things guys, I hope that everything here was clear to you, and if something is wrong, then please forgive. Good luck in life and that everything is fine
10.11.2016HDD, HDD or Winchester- a storage device for permanent storage of information based on the principle of magnetic recording. HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive , hence the name - hard: inside the device there are disks made of metal or glass, on which magnetic sputtering is applied. It is on this layer that the data is written.
On the market today HDD format 3.5 inches are represented very widely, and there is a variety not only in the volume of hard drives, but also in the speed of their work, internal structure, type. It is worth understanding these parameters in order to understand which hard drive is better to buy.
The device and types of hard drives
As mentioned above, a hard disk is intended for permanent storage of information, and the difference between its memory and RAM is that it is non-volatile - that is, it is stored on the media when the power is turned off. A hard disk is an electromechanical device, that is, it has moving parts, and consists of several main parts.
This integrated circuit, which manages the write / read processes and the operation of the disk. It mounts on top of the main drive body. In the case itself, the heart of the hard drive is hidden, consisting of a spindle (electric motor) that rotates the disk; read head (rocker), which is movable and reads information directly from the surface of the carrier, and the magnetic disks themselves (they can be different amount, they are located one above the other, in layers).
There are three types of hard drives currently on the market:
Expensive HDD models can differ from cheap ones with an equal volume of data transfer rate, it will be noticeably higher, due to many factors: the cache memory can be better optimized, an electro-mechanical unit is organized differently, a different number of magnetic disks for an equal volume. Also, expensive discs are often more reliable and resistant to external influences.
The data transfer speed is the cumulative result of all other parameters and technologies used in the disk, therefore, if your choice depends mainly on the disk speed, then it is convenient to navigate by it. The more high-speed the disc, the more expensive it will be.
How much should you choose?
· 250 - 500 GB- it is worth choosing how a budget option, or to an office pc when not required large volume for storing media files. However, there is enough space to install programs and systems. Also a small volume, in the case of a high-speed model, can be used exclusively for installation operating system, and store the data on a slower, larger disk.
· 1 TB - 4 TB- this volume is suitable for home computer, enough to store a large collection of HD movies. A minimum volume of 1 TB is now standard for the average user.
· 5 - 10 TB – maximum volume for hard disk drives today. It will cost you a lot, and rather necessary when working with large volumes of files, for example, for professional editing. Alternatively, create RAID array the same volume from 1-2 TB disks, which will increase the speed.
What else should you pay attention to?
· Optimized for a RAID array... It will be needed if you want to create an array of several disks. The point is that instead of several individual discs the system begins to see one united, which in different types array improves speed or reliability. It is definitely worth choosing if you need maximum reliability or maximum speed in an array.
Every year the IT industry in almost every component system unit, seeks to increase speed. Computing speed, access speed, transfer speed - all this is increasing quarterly.
Not spared these speed changes and the field of storage media - hard drives. Here, the spindle speed of the hard disk has been constantly increasing and is increasing, which, in turn, affects the speed of access to data, the speed of writing and the speed of reading information.
Hard disk spindle speed
The spindle speed of the hard disk is the main characteristic of the hard disk, which directly affects the resulting performance of the device.
On the this moment for desktop systems, three are popular kind of hard disks in terms of spindle rotation speed are 5400 rpm, 7200 rpm and 10,000 rpm.
Naturally, in addition to advantages over smaller brothers, faster hard drives have disadvantages for the consumer - they are higher price, higher noise level and higher power consumption. As for the noise level, this is a rather controversial and insignificant point. Against the background of the overwhelming majority of noisy coolers for conventional systems, it may not be noticeable at all.
What does a higher spindle speed give to increase the speed of the system? Firstly, it is the speed of random access to any information on the hard disk. Naturally, the time it takes for the read head to reach a certain place on the hard disk platter, in the case of 5400 rpm. - drops significantly compared to 7200 rpm or 10,000 rpm. The situation is the same with the write speed.
Testing hard drives
Now let's look at all this with illustrative examples. At ixbt.com, we tested four hard drives, which differ significantly in parameters. As a result, very indicative graphs were obtained, which clearly show the superiority of more high speed spindle rotation.
So, the models for testing:
- Western Digital Green - WD10EZRX(5400 rpm.)
- Western Digital Blue - WD10EALX(7200 rpm)
- Western digital black WD1002FAEX(7200 rpm)
- Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ(10,000 rpm)
We are mostly interested in three models with different rotational speeds.
Now let's take a look at the test graphs:
1. Reading speed and writing speed
As you can see from the test graphs, the Green-series with 5400 rpm falls behind everyone else. Particularly clearly you can see the gradation of the spindle rotation speed, precisely on the graph of the access time when reading.
2. Random access
Again, there is clearly a noticeable advantage of 7200 rpm hard drives. above the "low-speed" Green-series, and on one of the graphs they are close to Veloci Raptor with 10,000 rpm.
At testing hard drives in most applications, as well as in gaming loads, the same Green series lag is observed.
Outcomes
After all this, it remains only to sum up small results. Of course, not all tests failed on the Green's side with 5400 rpm, since the spindle speed does not solve everything, but the vast majority of tests turned out to be sad for the Green disc. In any case, you should not focus on one characteristic. For the same copying of files, it is necessary to increase the recording density, and not to increase the speeds of the rotating elements of the drive. So the complexity of the analysis of characteristics remains the only one the right decision at choosing a tough disk. It is also important to remember about the main characteristic of hard disk is HDD memory capacity, after all, "whatever one may say", the main task of the drive is to store information.
Greetings to all, dear readers and visitors !!! 🙂
We continue the series of notes about hard drives, and today I would like to draw your attention to such a HDD parameter as the spindle rotation speed, on which the actual data plates are mounted. Is this parameter important?
Of course…
A hard drive is a complex electromechanical device. It combines mechanical and electronic part... The mechanics provides rotation of a disk or a package of disks (if a hard disk is built on several platters - as a rule, these are disks large capacity), provides ultra-precise positioning of the head over the plates ... Electronics - reads, writes and changes data on the disk continuously at a very high speed.
These two components must work together and be as reliable as possible. To a greater extent, reliability depends on the mechanical part - about 80-90 percent.
One of the main components of disc mechanics is the engine. He must have required parameter- the ability to maintain a fixed spindle speed for a very long time.
The spindle must rotate at the specified speed. Today there are several types of discs, if you look at the number of revolutions of the plates:
5400 rpm- Mostly used in laptops, because low speed means higher reliability and lower power consumption. And this is critical for laptops. Also found in desktop PCs in the so-called "green" (eco-friendly) hard drives, which are distinguished by record low energy consumption.
7200 rpm- 90% of all hard drives. They are mainly used in desktop PCs - they are not critical to energy consumption and they need high performance... And the productivity is the more, the more revolutions the spindle makes (this is one of the factors). We can say this is the golden mean between speed and reliability.
10 or 15,000 rpm- The most productive discs, but also the most unreliable ... High speed leads to strong heat Plates - and the threat of data loss is enormous! And of course - mechanical wear ... This factor, as they say, has not been canceled. 😉
So, the most acceptable today are discs with a rotational speed of 7200 rpm platters. Heating is acceptable and performance is better than 5400 rpm drives. And the price is reasonable. High-speed disks are usually very expensive, and the performance gain is not justified at all, due to the low reliability of the media.
And who needs a hard drive where it is dangerous to store information?
P.S. I remind you that my new project, which will be entirely devoted to such an important issue as Information Security... Details:
