Does a Slow HDD mean MUCH Slower Torrenting ?

[FloodTheWaves]

Hello

I have a pimped out brand new 12700k system; but I've gone with a cheap but big - 8TB Seagate 3.5" 5400rpm SATA 6Gb/s BarraCuda HDD for Downloading/Storing my Torrents.

I'm wondering - does this necessarily mean that the same torrent will be much slower to Download with this drive, as compared to using a PCI-e 3/4 or even a plain old SSD drive?



If yes - by how much would you think?

25% slower, 2500% slower?


I ask - because I may get another drive if it does make a huge difference?
However, I would likely get a 1-4gb drive just for downloading them - then move them over to the slow one I have now for storage/playback.



As a secondary question...

I like to get the biggest/highest quality Torrents I can...  
Are there any limits on the File Size/Quality of MKV etc which I can play on my slow 8TB drive specifically when I cast them to my Sony Bravia TV's Chromecast (I have 50-100 mbps internet depending on it's mood)?.

Also - Could I take that same Slow 8TB drive, plug it into a USB-3 or USB-2 Caddy - and plug that into my Sony Bravia TV and play them directly from that?
Or is that where I'm likely to hit a wall at a certain file size/bitrate etc?  



Thank you for your help

[GreatestHitsUploader]

Hello

I have a pimped out brand new 12700k system; but I've gone with a cheap but big - 8TB Seagate 3.5" 5400rpm SATA 6Gb/s BarraCuda HDD for Downloading/Storing my Torrents.

I'm wondering - does this necessarily mean that the same torrent will be much slower to Download with this drive, as compared to using a PCI-e 3/4 or even a plain old SSD drive?



If yes - by how much would you think?

25% slower, 2500% slower?


I ask - because I may get another drive if it does make a huge difference?
However, I would likely get a 1-4gb drive just for downloading them - then move them over to the slow one I have now for storage/playback.



As a secondary question...

I like to get the biggest/highest quality Torrents I can...  
Are there any limits on the File Size/Quality of MKV etc which I can play on my slow 8TB drive specifically when I cast them to my Sony Bravia TV's Chromecast (I have 50-100 mbps internet depending on it's mood)?.

Also - Could I take that same Slow 8TB drive, plug it into a USB-3 or USB-2 Caddy - and plug that into my Sony Bravia TV and play them directly from that?
Or is that where I'm likely to hit a wall at a certain file size/bitrate etc?  



Thank you for your help

If the main task of your disk is a torrent, then you can do with a HDD disk, there will be no critical difference

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Those 8TB drives that you're talking about are very common now and they are used in things like Playstations to load games onto.

Because of the lack of internet speed we have currently then you'll find that trying to get a drive running with more speed that simply just downloads onto a HDD will make no difference at all because the speed of the HDD is way much faster than your actual broadband speed.  Sometimes having more patience is a better approach and not trying to download something in about 5 minutes actually taking some dedication to sharing some files which you're interested in and getting something worthwhile.

People use HDD all the time because it's much cheaper to buy and buying SSD it's all still very expensive and it will remain that which nobody can do anything about.  Having a HDD is totally fine and lots of rich people use them in NAS systems because the price is more affordable SSD technology still has a long way to go yet before things change it will take years and years..

[mr.wan]

Sorry, I'm using machine translation.

A very strange idea is to use an SSD for p2p file sharing.

I will supplement the above with the fact that it makes no sense to take a solid state drive, expecting an increase in data exchange speed in the form of a stable indicator.

Solid state drives are extremely prone to overheating. And at speeds beyond the speed of a "traditional" hard drive, the SSD will start to overheat extremely quickly. Usually, solid-state drives have built-in protection against such overloads, it is implemented in the most banal way - by reducing the speed.

SSDs really dislike endurance stress tests. After all, the average speed in such tests is not too higher than that of HDD.

* I hope that the translator coped with the transfer of the meaning of what was said)) I'm sorry, I do not speak English at the level necessary for this explanation.

[Fant0men]

The speed of your HDD doesn't really have an effect on your ability to torrent unless your internet connection is insanely good and you download / upload torrents @ hundreds of MB/s. It's your network connection, operating system and torrent client affecting your speed more than anything else.

You need a really phat connection to saturate the read/write speed of even the slowest mechanical hard drive.

[dueda]

Hello
>Hello, you!

I have a ... 8TB Seagate 3.5" 5400rpm SATA 6Gb/s BarraCuda HDD for Downloading/Storing my Torrents.
>Good choice. I've two. With USB/SATA interface it should will sustain 30-50MB/s and your internet, 50-100Mb/s (note the lowercase) = 5-10MB/s. So...
>Your drive is much faster than your internet. Seek times, spin-up times, etc will be seen as blinks or eventual hics, but irrelevant.

However, I would likely get a 1-4gb drive just for downloading them - then move them over to the slow one I have now for storage/playback.
>This is the right way to do it. Download fragmentation is baaad. Copy/move to your main storage after completion. But...
>Use a bigger drive as 4GB is nothing nowadays and you mention "high quality" so you're after BluRay rips, 80GB+ each. 
>You probably won't find any 4GB drive for sale, unless you mean USB flash drive, TF memory card, etc. Don't. Use a plain HDD instead.
>SSD+torrent=trouble. SSD suffers degradation, so intense access of small chunks isn't good; also SSD speed is unnecessary and wasted money.

As a secondary question...

I like to get the biggest/highest quality Torrents I can...  
>Then you want direct BD+ rips. 1:1 copy of the release discs.
>Better than that, only the original pre-production data in 4K RAW, but then you'll need a million US Dollars hardware...

Are there any limits on the File Size/Quality of MKV...
>Only limit I know of is file system. FAT will allow for 2GB files, NT will be 2TB. You've to check your TV and device (cast) manual for their limits.

Also - Could I take that same Slow 8TB drive, plug it into a USB-3 or USB-2 Caddy - and plug that into my Sony Bravia TV and play them directly from that?
Or is that where I'm likely to hit a wall at a certain file size/bitrate etc?  
>In Japan TV-HDD is popular for decades now, but AFAIK those have a different file format. TVs can record and playback in their own format, but others...
>You can connect a drive to a TV and test it yourself. Some TVs will not work with some file formats/disk formats, your codecs and mileage may vary.
>Japan as a whole is copyright conservative, but Sony is way over the sky IP-nazi.

Thank you for your help

>Welcome!

[maskaw]

Adding my 2 cents:

• SSD if you want to seed. Some will argue it doesn't matter, but SSDs have better seek time - vital for reading files with billions of pieces.
  
• Any of them (it can also be a pendrive) and dedicated RAM, if you download. 2GB of RAM for caching never gave me troubles. Plenty of space for file to download in RAM first then written on to disk elegantly.