100GB 7200RPM VS 160GB 5600RPM. Real world performance? (done search)

Hi all, first of all, Happy 2007! Wish all the best for you guys.

Now, I want to upgrade my HDD from current, 60GB Toshiba brand 5600RPM to bigger and hopfuly a faster. I'm deciding between Segate 5600RPM 160GB HDD(the latest 5600RPM drive from Seagate) and Seagate/Hitachi 7200RPM 100GB HDD.

I have spent many hours searching and read lots and lots of reviews of different today's HDDs and comparisons. But all those numbers from benchmarks didn't mean much to me to figure out which would be the best "deal" for my use.

I use my laptop as a mobile workstation. I don't play any games on it, but I do lots of video editings. I use Adobe aftereffect and premier, commotion, flash, lightwave 3D and other DVD authoring software, simple capture softwares and encoding softwares such as virtualDub. This means the size of files I deal with is large chunks.

What I want to hear is not the little numbers from general benchmarking softwares, but rather a first hand expriences and opinions from "real world" usage of these drives, especialy under video production envirionment.

I can get both drives at the similar price tag, 5600RPM drive slightly cheaper though not much. But I do like the bigger size of it. My major concern is how much speed difference would there be, between both drives and whether 7200RPM drive would be worth to sacrifice extra 60GB!!

Thanks in advance.

 

For video editing, you will probably want the faster HD. It is said that the higher density 160 GB drive will make up for some of the slower RPMs.

I think you're better off with the 100 GB 7200 RPM drive for your current project and a larger external drive for storage.

Here's a great thread to read through for personal accounts:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053&highlight=pros%2Fcons+7200+rpm

 

I would take the 7200 RPM HD over the 5400 any day of the week, and if your looking for extra storage backup to External HD - Suggestion would be to keep Windows / Apps on your Internal 7200rpm HD and keep your projects on the External -

Also the only differences left to check now is cache size on the 7200 RPM models, I know they have 8 and 16mb cache out there - I *beleive* toshiba makes a 7200RPM 100gb 16mb cache HD - but I would rather have a Seagate or Hitachi notebook HD for reliability.

If your moving large amounts of data make sure to keep in mind that you need to defrag more often -

 

"to sacrifice extra 60GB!!"
160gb is not really 160...
In fact you'll only get 145-150gb only..

 

That's due to the way that hard drive manufacturers count a gigabyte versus the way software counts it. It's still 160GB, but you have a filesystem, as well as a different base (1000bytes = 1KB for hard drive manufacturers, whereas 1024bytes = 1KB for software). It's that way with ANY size drive though. You're still sacrificing a lot of space for the higher speed.