Hard drive option on PortableOne Website

I talked to the fujitsu customer service today about the S2110 to see why the PortableOne website offered a 7200 RPM hard drive and why fujitsu didn’t. They lady who talked to me really couldn’t explain to me at all why they had the option for that hard drive and fujistu didn’t. She said though if I got the 7200 RPM drive it would not be covered under fujitsus warranty because it wasn’t there product.

Could someone please explain to me why the hard drive is not covered on the warranty if i buy the S2110 with the 7200 RPM hard dirve from PortableOne website?

Is it just easier to go on newegg.com and get a hard drive and do it yourself?

If it is what product should I get and is it easy to install.

 

Well, portableone can install it under the Fujitsu warranty because they are an authorized reseller for Fujitsu and a service center.
Buying a hard drive online is cheaper (I prefer the 5400 rpm, as my experience is that they are less power hungry) and putting it in is simple, though you will want to keep your original hard drive in case you need warranty work, since it wasn't done by an authorized center.

Edit: If you do buy online, you will want a 2.5 inch ATA (not SATA) drive.

 

Ya, I also noticed that the 7200's offered by P1 aren't of Fujitsu make. So Fujitsu won't cover any HD problems but will P1 if any were to ever arise?

Maybe it is best to go with a 5400 like Crescentmage suggests. (Or after-market should be alright as well)

 

Crescentmage, i've probably asked you this before in a different thread, but how is the heat produced by the 5400rpm HD in the Fujitsu? Do you think there would be a noticable difference between a 7200rpm one and the one you have? Also, is the fan running quite often because you have an upgrated (tad bit more warm) HD ? [If so, how 'loud' is the noise? - in comparison to something perhaps].

 

Are you sure Fujitsu offers it? The drives for that model are SATA and as of a few weeks ago, 7200 RPM models were not on the market yet. Maybe Fujitsu just got them and P1 doesn't have any yet. You can call and ask for Ivan if you want a more definitive answer.

 

Fujitsu direct doesn't offer it, no. But P1 is offering an upgrade to either a 7k60, 7k80 and 7k100 for 60GB, 80GB and 100GB 7200rpm hard drives respectively.

The prices for an 80GB 5400rpm and a 60GB 7200rpm are almost identical which puts doubt in my mind about the quality of the 7200rpm ones (should there be? Can you recognize the make of the 7200rpm hard drives? The 4200rpm and 5400rpm hard drives are labelled 'Fujitsu', but the 7200rpm ones are not. They are presented as listed above.)

 

the 7k60, 7k80, and 7k100 are all hitachi hard drives. seagate also makes 7200rpm notebook hard drives too, but they're about 1.5 to 2x the price of hitachi's. tomshardware had a review on them before. i think there's a link somewhere in this forum that discusses these two hard drives. =)

 

Ya, I had a feeling that they would be Hitachi hard drives. But I wonder why they wouldn't be covered by Fujitsu (the brand of notebook). It would be a pain to have to go and contact a third party if a problem were to arise.

 

Does anyone know why the 60GB 7200rpm hard drive is so similar in price to the 80GB 5400rpm one? They both perform nearly identical?

 

As mentioned earlier P1 is an authorized Fujitsu dealer and service center. You won't have any issues with their service (sale or warranty). There aren't cheap or lower quality 7200 RPM drives. Seagate and Hitachi are the ONLY manufacturers of 7200 RPM notebook drives. BTW, Fujitsu doesn't soley rely on Fujitsu hard drives in their products. There are a lot of Fujitsu notebooks shipped from the factory with third party vendor drives (Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba). Upgrading from a 5400 RPM to a 7200 RPM drive does not take much of a toll in the way of heat or battery life. Tests have shown that the newer 7200 RPM drives use about the same if not just a touch more power than 5400 RPM drives. From personal experience I've found my 7200 RPM drives run cooler than some of my 5400 RPM drives. There are so many different types of drives out there that you can't just make a sweeping statement regarding temps and power usage.

 

Because they are about the same price from the manufacturer. Which do you value more speed or storage? If you pick speed you loose space. Choose the other and you loose speed. The 80GB drive is not in the same performance category as the 60GB. The 60GB is noticeably faster.

 

Well there was a technical comparison of these two (somewhere on the forum) stating that because of spindle size ect, these two perform similarily.

I'll be more specific though. Is an upgrade from a 5400rpm Fujitsu 80GB hard drive to a 60GB 7200rpm Hitachi hard drive, worth it? Regarding the heat/noise : performance boost?

 

The drives have similar (although the 7200 is still the leader) max throughput. This is due to the arial density. The 80GB drive packs more into the same space to put it simply. Due to the faster rotational speed the 60GB drive has less latency and less access time. So the drive feels (and is) faster when you request data. The newer 100GB/7200 RPM drives have greater arial density (than either one of the drives you mentioned) along with the low latency and access times.

As far as a choice between the two drives it really depends on your needs. If you need max storage space go for the 80GB drive. I prefer the faster drives as my storage needs are fairly low.

 

Well, as I mensioned earlier, lets assume my storage capacity is irrelavent (why I mensioned the storage is because it will, as you said, have in impact on comparing the two). My search here is I want to know which of the two (for my kind of program needs: MS Office, photo editing, web, little gaming) will be the right balance of performance vs heat/noise. Basically, will the extra heat/noise (if any, and I can probably count on it) from the 7200rpm hard drive, be worth that marginal performance boost gained? Or would it be best, if performance is so similar, to just go with a cooler, less battery eating hard drive?

 

I would go with the 7200 RPM drive.

 

Ya, that's the overall response I seem to be hearing lately. Any other reasoning though of why? I'm not looking for just raw seek time here, other aspects are important. As listed above, in a few of the posts.

 

The tradeoff difference of MARGINAL performance and size makes it very obvious to take the 80GB/5400.

You are getting 33 percent more storage space, but the difference is actual response time ie true speed advantage is less. It is not as simple or direct a calulation as subtract the number 7200-5400.

Plus you will NOTICE the usage of 20GB more of HDD space. In contrast the 5400 is already pretty snappy and in pactical usage you wont get much more out of what little actual speed increase there is to 7200rpm.

It it was 4200 rpm on the 80GB size - okay you don't want the 4200, but at 5400 its different.

My two cents.

 

Hmmm, I see what you mean. I think 7200rpm is more benificial in rendering data kind of programs and not daily activities. But I ask because those to are so similarily priced, I wouldn't considor if the 7200rpm one was much more expensive. Well, I know I could get use out of that additional 20GB (but for comparison sake, lets say they are of equal capacity, and equal price). Is the difference still marginal? - As in, just because the one is faster, does it make it advantageous to go with that for my kind of needs? (I am still searching to find out how much more warmer the 7200rpm one is [thus creating more fan noise]).