Hard Disk Speeds

For desktop PCs, 5,400rpm is the lowest you should consider (and even that only at a push, or when buying an exceedingly large drive), while 7,200rpm tends to be the most common. 10,000rpm drives are slowly becoming more commonplace. Drives are available even faster than these, but they require a different kind of connectivity. Incidentally, laptops tend to have slower drives which consume less power and generate less heat, with the premium laptop hard drives currently spinning at 5,400rpm.