HDD 7,200 v 5,400 - Studio 15

Some people may find this useful

I have two studio 15 laptops (1537); identical in spec apart from the latest one for the Mrs has the P8600 2.4ghz CPU and a 5,400k RPM HDD.

My earlier one has the P8400 2.26ghz CPU and a 7,200k RPM HDD.


My observations clearly show that in operation the 7,200k RPM really does make a noticeable difference to boot speed, program speed and overall general operation speed (for the better).


You would probably guess this anyway, but i thought i would mention it as i would defiantly recommend that any new buyers always select the faster HDD if available. It is a much better upgrade than spending £80 on a CPU that is 200mhz faster. The extra CPU power on her's is practically insignificant for 90% of things and the whole machine is slowed down by the HDD, quite noticeably as well. Unfortunatly the 7,200 drive wasn't available at the time but we can always swap it later.


And other things worth mentioning, the faster drive isn't any noisier or hotter and the battery time on both machine machines seem closely matched at just over 3 hours.

 

Are the drives from the same manufacturer and the same size? Usually the higher density 5.4k drives have close benchmarks to 7.2k drives. Yes they are quicker, but the margin seems to be shrinking.