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    1TB HDD on Dell XPS 15 (Haswell) seems to worry me..only 5400 RPM?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by DarthWayne, Mar 24, 2014.

  1. DarthWayne

    DarthWayne Notebook Consultant

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    I have a 5 year old HP pavilion DV6 with P8700 Intel C2D that has a 500GB 5400RPM HDD (its IDE and not SATA) which seems to be the limiting factor and has always been a limiting factor on my laptop...anyway time to upgrade my laptop


    now i find XPS 15 to be perfect for my needs especially lightweight and yet bigger screen (reason i am willing to not buy Asus zenbook UX301LA which is around same price)

    but i am unable to find 512GB SSD model in my country (Sngapore)

    my concern is..that what kind of speeds do u get with 1 Terabyte HDD while writing or copying/moving files...and why dont they use a 7200rpm like they used on base end XPS 15 model which is faster?

    i know that 32GB SSD cache helps in booting but does it help in day to day read/write ??


    also most laptops slow down due to depreciating performance on HDD so has there been any improvement in HDD technology over the 5 years?
     
    DarthWayne, Mar 24, 2014
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  2. DarthWayne

    DarthWayne Notebook Consultant

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    bump..........looking for answer on HDD performance
     
    DarthWayne, Mar 25, 2014
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  3. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    Mechanical HDD performance is crap compared to SSD performance. That hasn't changed for years, and probably won't change for the foreseeable future.

    The caching drive will help a little, but you should definitely look at getting an aftermarket SSD if you can't get it stock.
     
    Commander Wolf, Mar 25, 2014
    #3
  4. darrenham

    darrenham Notebook Consultant

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    With Intel Smart Response, the SSD does A LOT about improving both read and write times, the performance increase on boot wasn't huge, so what I did was remove that function (Intel Rapid Start isn't set up properly on these machines anyway) and use the whole of the SSD for Smart Response.

    It's a very very quick laptop, don't worry about the HDD.

    Plus, if I ever have a bit of extra cash, I'll buy a larger msata SSD and upgrade it to being a dedicated drive.
     
    darrenham, Mar 26, 2014
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