Drive speed important?

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http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-270-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

I'm looking at that drive to install windows 7 on and use as my primary hard drive. The cheaper 1.5Tb drive is only 5,400rpm. £18 more expensive than that is the seagate that's 7,200rpm. The one linked above is priced in the middle... and doesn't have a speed mentioned at all. Just says: - Spin Speed: IntelliPower.

Can anyone translate this into English? I'm guessing that using a 5400rpm drive as an OS drive isn't too good a move, since its going to slow things down, so is this a good choice?
 
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WD Green uses variable spin speeds I think and may be even slower than 5400 rpm.

It depends what you use your system for. If it's general stuff, I doubt you'd notice.

You are correct that it would be best to use a faster drive as the OS though.
 
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It's 5400rpm, not variable - WD just put out some very misleading info.

The difference between these 500GB platter 5400rpm drives and their counterparts is quite a bit in terms of transfer rates but you don't rerally feel it to be honest. The WD is slower than the cheaper and faster Samsung F2's I've used though.
 
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So I should spend that little bit more and get the 7200rpm 1.5Tb drive then?

The PCs going to be used for gaming and storage. I've got a 1Tb drive with vista on at the moment, and its getting full, so a new drive for 7 also means I don't have to format that.

But 1.5Tb seems to be the best value £ per Gb.
 
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Why don't you continue to use your existing 1TB drive (as your OS drive) and simply add the 2nd 1.5TB drive in, as your storage drive?

If you do the above, then you can get the cheaper/slower drive and you probably won't notice the difference in speed, had you opted for a more expensive/faster drive.

As far as moving to Windows7 from Vista, whats the urgency? From what I hear, W7 isn't that much better than Vista.
 
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Because I've been hearing lots of good things about 7, and grabbed the student discount version of it anyway.

As for keeping the 1Tb drive, I'd like to have my vista install still there in case of incompatabilities or problems. A just in case sort of thing. And like I said, the drive is almost full anyway, and I'd rather not have to delete everything, and it'd be a hastle to copy everything from the 1tb to the 1.5tb drive.
But still, the ability to use the slower drive as a secondary instead is appealing... Hmm.
 
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