5400rpm disks for storage?
 

Is there a good reason *not* to buy 5400rpm disks if they were only ment for storage? It would hold music, movies and pictures.

I've got 2 fast (but small) sata disks for both my workstations, on which I only install local apps and perhaps a few games.

All other data is kept on my tiny server: a via epia with 2 ata133 connectors and 10/100mbps lan.

The via epia is supposed to be silent and low in power consumption. Is there a good reason to buy 160GB maxtor 7200rpm 8mb cache (115 euro) instead of 160GB Samsung 5400rpm 2mb (95 euro) drives? The latter produce a little less vibration, less heat and less noise.

If all the data is transferred through a 100mbps switch, i asume i have no benefit of using fast 7200rpm drives above slow 5400rpms?

the extra €20 is worth the increase in speed, higher rpm also translates in lower access times, which make the hard drive more reponsive during usage.

If you are the only person accessing the drives, and the data has to go through a 100Mb switch, there'll be no difference if you are reading big, unfragmented, files.
If you read small files that are spread over the medium (or fragmented files) 7200 will be noticable faster, but again, the 100Mb bottleneck might decrease that difference to the minimum.

Pro 5400 argument: get less hot, are much quieter and, I think/suppose, they last longer (pretty important fot data-storage).

Contra 5400 argument: will drop faster in re-sale price, meaning you will get a lot less for a 2nd hand 5400rpm drive, then for a 2nd hand 7200rpm drive!

buy seagate 7200RPM drives, silent & fast. They get pretty hot underneath that seashield, but the 7200.x version doesn't have this.