5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm hard drive. Which one and why?

[northbear]

Trying to decide between two hard drives.

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-22152185

vs

SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD103SI 1TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-22152173

Same brand, about the same price (85 vs 80), same # of platters (2), same size (1TB). Only real difference is spindle speed.

I am weighing Performance vs Noise for my HTPC build.

Any thoughts?

[SleepyBum]

Are you going to use this drive for the OS/boot or just a data drive to store media? I think 5400rpm is fine for as a HTPC boot drive, if all you intend to do is to just boot, load up the media player, and play back videos. But if you want to use it beyond that, like playing games, running programs, etc... you might want the faster 7200rpm drive.

I use a WD 500GB Green drive for my old HTPC OS drive and it's fine for media playback. I am going to build a new HTPC and will use a 2.5" 5400rpm notebook HD as the OS drive, and eventually migrate to SSD when they're cheap enough. All the media will be stored on big 1+TB 5400rpm HDs and/or on the NAS.

I think both Samsung drives are faily quiet and smooth.

[northbear]

Are you going to use this drive for the OS/boot or just a data drive to store media?

The drive is planned to be used for both OS and Storage. A second drive isn't in the budget for the build and if I was going with two drives I would really want to step up to a SSD which REALLY isn't in the budget

I have been leaning towards the 7200 drive for this reason but wanted to get some other opinions. Thanks for your response!

[northbear]

ended up deciding to use an existing IDE drive for the boot drive (assuming it is not too noisy... currently masked by the loud fans in my current system)

And purchased the 5400RPM drive for the mass storage.