Was not sure where to put this and as i run Neon i thought here. It is a question about a HDD. I see some with 7200 64 mb written on then and then 5400 64 mb. Others 7200 264 mb. Would any of these figure have anything to do with boot times. Do all these figures have to do with speed. I have to get a new HDD and am unable to afford the new SSD at this point. Thanks for your help. KDE Neon is a brilliant piece of work. Thanks to all involved.

7200 and 5400 are the speeds the disks spin at, faster is better.
The 64, or 32, 8 etc mb is cache. More is better. Neither is likely to make a huge difference in boot speeds, in my opinion, but there will be some.

still take a peek at ssd prices as they have been from falling greatly. If you can manage with 240 gb or 120, the speed difference even on slow ones in older systems is great. But $20 for a huge spinning drive is too cheap to pass up, for sure.

I'd recommend a reasonably smallish SSD for your OS (I've got an ancient 32GB SSD for /) and then upgrade your home when you see fit. HDDs are for data storage...

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Intel-535-S ... 3?var=null Is this one a not too bad example. Price is great for here in Australia

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Samsung-Kin ... 2749.l2649 I got this one.