5400 vs. 7200 hard drive?

So I'm interested in purchasing an MBP but don't know what hard drive I should get. I'm fairly familiar with computer stuff so I'm assuming that if I get the 7200rpm hard drive, it'll perform faster. But I'm concerned with the heat issue. If I do get the 7200 hard drive instead of the 5400, will it generate more heat and therefore be unusable on my lap? Thanks for reading.

David

 

I used to have a seagate 4200 HD in my windows laptop but then I changed it to seagate 7200rpm one and there was on change in the heat so I would go for the 7200 alot faster

 

Strange, but true....

5400rpm drives run hotter than 4200rpm, but 7200rpm drives run COOLER than 5400rpm drives! The 7200's have some new tech in them, so they are more efficient.

 

I've never heard that before - from my experiences, with a 7200 RPM drive, your notebook will run hotter and on battery, use more power, which will shave off about 20-30 minutes of run time. The 7200 RPM drive by itself shouldn't cause any issues, but coupled with the MBP's generated heat, it may get uncomfortable.

 

I've never heard that either. Many people complaining about heat issues have fast (up to 2 GHz) Core Duos coupled with 7200 rpm HDDs in small laptops.

I think it depends on the size of the notebook. A 17" one dissipates the heat more easily than a 14" one. Just my 2 cents.

 

Man I never knew it could shave off 20-30 minutes!!! Perhaps I should reevaluate my wants/needs for the 7200 rpm hard drive. Thanks for the posts so far.

 

if you've enough RAMs in your system the rpm is not a very important factor

 

This might help
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/11/fast_and_furious/

 

Still got for the 7200 one tho. The seagate one doesn't use any more power than the 4200 plus if they use a seagate one you get 5 year warranty with it

 

stuart,

It's because the RAMs are used all the time. But the hard drive is idle most of the time. In fact,we only use it when booting up, loading programs and saving data.

However if the system is runing out of RAM, Windows uses the paging file
(which is a part of the hard drive) as RAMs so the hard drive becomes the bottleneck of the system (because it is the slowest component)

Hard drive intensive applications are few. Mostly these dealing with data of hundreds of MBs or more at a time like installing games or recoring video and audio. In these cases, the hard drive speed limits the speed, the resolution you can record without dropping frames or how many tracks you can simultaneously record.

I think the new MacBook Pro with 1GB of RAM and 100 GB 5400 HDD would be fine. Now, if you can get the 2GB version it would be better. If not, you've the option to get one stick of 1GB and upgrade later.

As for the extra 20 GB, this should not be a concern at all since the external hard drives available these days are huge, fast and really cheap.

 

i've never heard that they are louder
if you can get the 7200rpm HDD definetely go for it but if you don't need it you can save on this. personally, i do not use p2p onmy new laptop. you can
download whatever and copy it on a CD or a DVD and then use it on your new one.

 

anybody know if it would be worth it to opt for a 7200rpm drive if you already have 2gigs but tend to play games like bf2 or would one hardly notice a difference beyond loading it up in the begginning
thanks in advance

 

From what I've heard, you won't notice it, aside from the rare instances the game demands something from the HDD. Don't take my word for it tho, I'm no CE

I had a question of my own, i'm pondering the idea of purchasing a 7200HDD for a MacBook. For warrenty purposes would it be a good idea to hold onto the stock HDD, as I am thinking of ebaying it to compensate the 7200 costs.

 

You'll only notice game speed-ups from a 7200RPM drive when loading - other than that, performance is largely unaffected.

instapho: I would hold onto the original HD. Most notebook makers won't void your warranty for switching out your HD, but won't service your notebook unless it has its original HD.

 

As far as 5400rpm drives being louder than 7200rpm drives, my instinct makes me think that's BS. The only reason a 7200rpm drive might be quieter is that it balances itself out because of its higher speed (kind of how an engine runs smoother under load but can idle rough).

The thing to look for, regardless of speed, are the bearings. I'm pretty sure new drives come with fluid bearings that make them quieter. I bought a HDD for my desktop that was around $10 cheaper than a model with fluid bearings and the difference is noticeable. Either that, or my HDD just sucks... (Don't go Maxtor, heh)

IMO, 7200 vs. 5400 isn't a big enough speed difference to warrant an upgrade. I'm not very performance oriented, though. Definately buy ram (two 1gb sticks) over a slightly faster HDD.