Will 7200 really make a big difference over 5400 HDD?

I mean, my old laptop has a 7200 and that not even with an 8meg buffer and it seemes alright (aside from the slow processor >.>)

I ordered the 100gig 5400 with my 1210 because of price mainly (that, and I carry a lot of media with me, so I assumed space>speed). Also, because while the 60 and 80 were cheaper, they only had a 2meg buffer on them.

Should I look into the price of a 60 gig 7200 for games or something? Or is it not really that big of a difference?

 

This has been discussed MANY times, 7200 really only effects boot times not ingame stuff, If your doing alot of video encoding or cant wait 2 seconds more for the next map to load then go with a 7200 keep in mind you will have more heat, noise, and less battery life for a much higher price.

 

Like Matt said, most users probably won't notice a difference. If you are a hard core gamer of do alot of video editing, then 7200 would be better. For simple word processing and normal/day to day stuff, you wouldn't really benefit from a 5400.

I have the 7200, and I don't notice any heat from mine or noise unless I put my ear near the HDD. Not sure about the battery. Just my 2 cents

 

Awesome. Thanks. All those points I assumed, just needed confirmation

I do some sound editing, but to do that, I'd get a seperate HD anyways since it needs to be isolated. Thanks again!

 

From everything I've heard and experienced, a 7200rpm drive will do almost everything in terms of loading faster.. Opening programs will be peppier, booting, shutting down, etc.. Really does depend what you want out of your system, personally the possible heat/battery trade off is well worth it.. But like the others said, it should be easy to find more info .

 

this is my first laptop and it has a 5400rpm drive in it, before that my desktop had a 7200rpm drive, i am on the computer alot and i can 100% say that the difference is neglegable.

 

From what I have seen in idle and hardcore processing my HD temperature doesn't have much variability 35-40 degrees C.

Many report nominal improvement in performance if only HD rotation speed was the difference in a system of similar configurations.

 

Yes, you will notice a HUGE difference if you get a Hitachi 7200. I had a 5400 drive with my 9300 and just recently upgraded to 100g 7200 Hitachi and everything is extremely snappy. And I mean everything from openining up Control Panel, loading Office and normal PC usage. Mine does not run hot, in fact it even runs cooler than my 60g 5400 Toshiba drive by a 2 deg.

Just to be sure it wasn't my imagination, I put back my old drive and live with it for 1/2 day and then saw a huge jump in speed when using the new drive.

Copying a 5 gig file between partitions took 7 minutes with Toshiba 5400. With the new drive it took 1 minute 29 secs. I was amazed.

I went another step further by inviting my female neighbor who hates technology and knows or cares nothing about hard drives to try both drives out. Without telling her which one should be faster, she pointed to the new 7200 drive 3 seperate times. Now I know this is by no means scientific testings , but the 7200 passed the girl test .

My point is, go with the 7200 drive. It's worth it. It improves your PC experience in every way. Remember that everything has to be loaded into memory first before the CPU fully takes over. The reason people claim that they only notice slight improvement is because they had forgotten how slow the old drive was.

 

I have an Inspiron 6400/E1505, would the 80GB SATA seagate momentus 7200.1 model #ST980825AS fit in OK?

 

I promise that the 7200 rpm drives are noticeably faster in every single way.
I have had 4200, 5400, and 7200. It's really worth the $.

 

I will be getting a Hitachi 7K60 in my M60 and have tried many IBM T series laptops with and without the 7200rpm drives.

The difference can be found when doing multiple things at once. When multitasking the 7200rpm just springs along where as the 5400rpm gets choked up.

Get the 7200rpm. The additional power consumption over the 5400rpm drives can be negated since its very small. Heat however might depend on your specific laptop and the way its built.

 

The hard drive is the slowest component in a computer by more than 1000x (the next slowest is RAM). Therefore, any increase in speed will be noticable. If you are only a basic user, then you will probably not notice much of a difference between 5400 and 7200. For those who do care a bit more about performance, you will, and right away at that. Anything that accesses the hard drive will see a boost in speed, from booting up to transferring files and opening programs.

Definitely agreed that the 7200RPM hard drives are worth it, especially for the more performance-oriented.

7200RPM drives actually have the same power specification as the 5400's, but the small difference lies in spin-up time - when you turn on your computer, it will not initiate the boot-up process until the hard drive is rotating at optimal RPM. 7200RPM drives take a bit longer to spin up than 5400's, that is where the slight increase in power draw comes from.

 

maybe it was a older 5400rpm drive your comparing it to? Keep in mind your also comparing a low data density disk to a high data density disk - not really fair IMO, There are many guides around that compare exact same sizes and series which gives a far more accurate representation.

 

I would go with the Hitachi one. Get it at NewEgg. I did. Just search for the Hitachi Hard drive, notebook hard drive. Get the HITACHI Travelstar 7K100. DO NOT get the E7K100 drive as that is NOT a good drive. It was built for server applications. The 7K100 is the best.