100GB 7200rpm/160GB 5400rpm/200GB 4200rpm

Hi,
I'm going to buy a laptop, but I'm not sure yet about which of these three options to choose. 100GB 7200rpm and 160GB 5400rpm come at the same price and 200GB 4200rpm is 150$ dollars more.
What do you think?
Thank you very much.

 

160gb 5400rpm

 

Well, first of all, I'd make my choice on how much storage space you need? Are you files mainly office files, or Photos, Music and Video, which take up more space? Do your store files on an External HDD?

The 4200rpm is a major bottleneck in performance. It also costs $150 more. It's a waste of money.

If you need that 60GB extra storage, go for the 5400rpm HDD. If 100GB of storage is enough, then go for the 7200rpm. It's what I'd go for.

100GB is a lot of storage, unless you have hours and hours of video.

The Battery consumption between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm HDD isnt huge, so thats not really a factor, and its not worth paying $120 buying the 4200rpm HDD and getting 30 minutes more battery life.

Hope This Helps,
Mayz

 

If you don't ABSOLUTELY need more than 100GB of internal space grab the 100GB 7200 rpm hard drive. 4200 is slowwwwwwww. Remember, you can use external hard drives, cds/dvds, and network storage if you need to keep larger files. A faster hard disk will decrease loading times of every sort.

 

where are you seeing figures that a 4200RPM hard disk offers 30 more minutes of battery life???

 

Regardless of the time figures, a 4200RPM is going to offer more battery life and less heat output than faster 5400 and 7200RPM drives. I think that placing a figure of 30 minutes is not reasonable, since battery life is going to depend on a variety of factors, which would need to be seen in a multiple linear regression.

 

First thanks for your answers.
I discarded the 200GB choice.
I might also need to mention that I'll dual-boot Vista & SUSE Linux. I usually keep all my movies in DVDs and music on the computer (that's about 12GB).

 

Maybe that was an exaggeration, but it really isnt worth paying $120, and suffering that slow performance for a little more battery life, in the same situation with the same other components.

Sorry, a bit misleading

 

The 200GB drives fetch a premium right now because they are the largest capacity 2.5" hard drives. The 160GB 5400RPM drive is becoming a very good deal and has similar performance to the 100GB 7200RPM, which is the fastest drive on the market.

I recently tested a laptop with a 160GB 5400RPM drive; my laptop has a 100GB 7200RPM. I had trouble telling the two apart. The 160GB drive was slightly slower but the difference was not all that noticeable.

 

OK, I'll take the 160GB then.
Thank you all.

 

Faster is better. And 100GB is a lot of space. I would take 100GB 7200rpm.

 

The 160GB 5400 is the steal. I got the Samsung one myself - love it.

4200 is too slow. 5400rpm is much better but the jump to 7200 does not produce as much differece since the 5400 gets you past the key bottleneck level, and 7200 doesnt add much more, especially when that mens 60GB of space lost.

The 200GB 4200 is a sucka move - a lot of data and dealthly slow in accessing it.

 

i say go with 100gig 7200... 100gig is way too big already.. you can always an external HDD when later you found out that 100gig is not enough...

 

160 5400.

As said before, I don`t think that 7200 will win you much. What it wins with spin speed, it looses with platter density.

 

I vote for 100GB @ 7200 RPM. Platter density is splendid enough and the speed rocks. They perform extremely well, and 100GB is a lot of storage. If you would need more than that you'd have to turn to external storage anyway.

 

definitely its the 5400 160 gb.

for thoroughput its a simple calculation.


7200/5400 is 1.33 160/100 is 1.6

So the head reads data faster. It is a faster drive. The 7200 rpm one spins faster, so it does access data faster, meaning it finds it.

In general, the 160 gb one is faster, and it is also larger. The hitachi one which is the fastest one is 119$ at newegg.com right now so its also cheaper. Easy decision here.

 

Ok, so what if the harddrives are the same brand? I am planning on buying an hp dv9000t. How do I know what brand they are anyway? The thing is if I get the laptop preconfigured at Best Buy I can get it for around $2100 (however has the dual 120gb 5400rpm drives - 240 total) . This is also including the hd dvd drive. If I configure on HP with the dual 100gb at 7200rpms it is around $2700. Now I have external drives and everything so the difference in harddrive capacity is not my main concern, but speed is - I run Poser which takes forever no matter what. I am willing to pay the extra money for the faster drive (but I will probably not get the hd drive however the price would still be $2300) if the difference is noticable enough. I have heard so many different opinions and am just trying to find out how much difference it is. Is it noticable enough to be worth the $700? I don't want to later be thinking its too slow.

Oh, and are the hp drives generally fast? Would another brand make it way faster? I remember before looking at the Sony Vaio and I can't remember what other brand - I want a 17"

Please let me know
[email link removed by moderator]

 

I'd get the 7200RPM, but your choice. On a side note, from what I've read, the higher RPM will offer more batt life because of the decreased spin times (access more data in less time)

 

If pure speed is your concern over space, go with the dual 7200s.

As for drive brands, HP uses anything from the parts bin. During the summer I ordered 2 CTOs identically equipped, and they came with different branded drives (Seagate and Fujitsu).

Having owned both 100GB 7200s and 120GB 5400s, I will honestly say that the speed difference is minimal in my daily use. I'd imagine that the 160GB 5400 would close the tiny performance gap even more.

 

Is the speed difference greater with programs that are more intense though? Because if it was the same price obviously I would go with the faster, but with such a price difference it's hard to decide especially if I will never notice a difference.

Thanks

 

Things like loading games, running AV scans & copying files is slightly faster with the 7200, but nothing noteworthy or amazing. The real difference is with synthetic benchmarks, which are less important to me than perception.

Granted, I value space over speed, so others may see it differently.

 

it's a laptop...HDD space almost always trumps speed...except for the 4200rpm drive. That is part of the portability trade-off.

 

If you look at HDD tests of the 160GB and 100GB drives, you will barely see a difference.

 

I think a question that needs answering is what do you want to use your laptop for? If you are a gamer, you'll find the 7200 rpm drive more appropriate due to faster access times. If you store many large files and rarely game, the 5400 rpm drive is a better choice, and may even provide better performance in some situations.

 

Not so much gaming but 3-d modeling and poser which takes forever to load the content.

 

Merlina, I would go ahead and go with the 160GB 5400 RPM drive. RPM's are not the only factor in drive speed, but the density of the drive as well. As Chaz stated, he had trouble telling the two drives apart, and that extra 60GB will be used I'm sure for Poser files. 3d Graphics are demanding storage-wise.

 

Agreed. If dealing with larger files I'd go for the 5400 drive.