Should I get a 10K RPM drive for storing samples?

Hey computer gurus,

I currently have all of my samples (drum hits/loops, rompler samples, etc.) on a dedicated partition that is on its own drive (i.e., not the system drive). The drive is a 7200 RPM drive and the sample partition is just over 100 GB. However, I recently exceeded that size, so I need to either: (1) repartition the drive to allocate some space from the other two partitions to the sample partition or (2) move my samples to a new drive. Also, I'll be buying Omnisphere in a few weeks, which comes with a 50GB library, so I want to be prepared for that as well. So, I'm leaning toward just buying a 250 or 320 GB drive, but I wanted to know if you think I should spend the extra cash and go for a 10K RPM hard drive. So, here are my questions (finally!):

Will there be a noticeable improvement in loading time and performance?

Do you think there will be a noticeable improvement in loading and/or performance from having my samples on their own drive, as opposed to having their own partition on a 500GB 7200RPM drive that is divided into three partitions for storing my media (i.e,. Samples, Photos, and Videos partitions)?

I will say that having a partition is not the same as having a separate drive. If you are using the other partition at the same time (such as the video drive), it really defeats the performance purpose of separating them. In most cases, a 7200 RPM drive (or multiple drives) will be fine if used for one purpose.

like the others have mentioned already,
I would not bother w/ the 1000RPM drives (even though I have three).

Not only are they very expensive $/GB, but they run very hot and loud.
You will notice very little difference in performance over the new seagate and samsung drives.

All of the 11th gen. seagate drives are perpendicular bit. xxxx.11 or 7200.11.
The new Samsung spinpoint drives are great too. Some of the F1 series are faster, cheaper and quieter then the seagates.
You can't really go wrong w/ either a Seagate xxxx.11 drive or a Samsung Spinpoint F1.

As far as partitions go, if you're going to partition,
the first partition is the fastest as it's on the outer edge of the platter, so put your samples on that.

Tomek.

Edit
PS - you want a 500GB or larger drive, not only because the cost point of the 500GB is great,
but also because those have higher data density per platter and are therefore faster!
(the fewer the platters per xGB the faster the drive)

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