Question: When buying a (consumer-level) hard disk, I normally only pay attention to storage capacity. Is it worth to compare drive speeds also, and if yes, how can this be done?
Answer: If performance is your main concern, it’s also worth considering whether solid state drives (SSDs) suit your needs. They are (usually) significantly faster than (premium) hard disk drives. But SSDs also cost more per GB, so are often used just for the boot/OS/applications drive; HDDs must still be used for bulk data storage.
So, for me, the relatively minor differences in HDD performance are almost irrelevant because SSDs can fundamentally perform better.