Another Clueless Sales/service person?
Dear Fred, Please add my thanks for your excellent publication. It has a priority to be read when it hits my inbox.
I have a question that your article in the last issue raises as a part of replacing an existing hard drive.
I recently had a hard drive on my Desktop reported by the HDD monitor to be increasing in temperature, and at the same time the noise level of this hard drive was becoming ever higher. This drive was a Maxtor 5400 RPM version drive and I requested some assistance in selecting a replacement drive from my desktop support organization. I really wanted to replace the sick drive with a 7200 RPM version.
However, the tech support person was adamant that I had to replace it with another 5400 RPM HDD.
Is this an appropriate recommendation or can I upgrade my defective HDD to a higher rotational speed model? Thanks again for your work. ---Bill Clark
I can't think of many good reasons why a higher rotational speed would cause trouble on a PC. I suppose there could be an issue with power-supply size and current draw--- the faster drive will probably need more power at spin-up, and could cause a problem if your system were teetering on the ragged edge of electrical sufficiency. But is that likely? No. And besides, the answer there would be to get a new power supply. They're cheap and easy to install.
Faster drives may generate more heat, so if your PC were at the outer limits of thermal specs, adding a new heat source might cause trouble. But is that likely? No. And besides, the answer there would be to improve the PC's cooling with a cheap and easy fan upgrade.
Perhaps the sales/service person was referring to something else entirely. If the new
drive was serial ATA for example, and your system allowed only parallel ATA;
that could be an issue. But most motherboards built in the last few years have
had SATA connectors on them; and in any case, this has nothing to do with
rotational speed. (
http://www.google.com/search?q=parallel+ata
http://www.google.com/search?q=serial+ata )
Perhaps the new drive optimally uses an access standard beyond what your PC
can handle; a DMA mode versus PIO mode issue, for example. (See
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=dma+pio&as_sitesearch=langa.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=dma+pio ) But there too, most PCs simply use
the fastest available access, whatever it may be; and this also has nothing to
do with rotational speed.
There can be issues of drive capacity, especially if you're using an old version of Windows (eg Win9x). In some cases, you have to partition a drive into relatively small chunks so that an older OS can see and access everything. In other cases, with *really* old hardware, the BIOS simply may not recognize a huge hard drive. But we're talking truly antique gear in that instance; and even that has nothing to do with rotational speed.
In short, I don't think rotational speed has any real, deal-breaking downside; your support person either misunderstood, didn't know... or was trying to unload some extra 5400rpm drives. <g>
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