120gb 5400rpm vs 100gb 7200rpm

is there a noticleble speed difference between a hitachi travelstar sata 120gb 5400 rpm vs a 100gb 7200 rpm drive? was planning on getting the 100gb driver but ZZF just had to sell out of them as I was bidding on an ebay auction. ebay always seems to screw me over some way or another

 

mmm.. it depends on what you're planning to do with your lappy. I have a 7200RPM drive, but that's because I had horrible experiences caused by slow drives before. Remember that HD is the slowest component in your system that is used on regular basis, and that makes it a bottleneck.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053

 

I don't think it will be a huge difference. But if you're the kind of guy who hates to wait an extra second or two here and there, then I would recommend the 7200 RPM HD. I just wish we could get the same speeds as desktop HDs.

 

Yes, there is a noticeable difference in speed.

 

yah thought so hopefully ZZF gets them back in stock or I can find somewhere else that has them anywhere near $150

 

how about a 160gb 5400 rpm drive vs the 100gb 7200rpm drive? will the increased drive density make up for the slower rotation speed?

 

I'll tell you what's a big difference: My RAID 0 array of two 7200rpm drives on my desktop versus my new laptop. Although the laptop chip ought to keep up easily with my 18-month-old P4 desktop chip, the desktop feels significantly faster in general use. I think it's got to be the difference in HDs.

How long till I can get RAID in a notebook?

Chris

 

raid 0 has no real world performance increase. anyway you can get raid 0 or 1 in several 17" notebooks. Well the laptop in my sig feels just as responsive as my desktop (Amd x2 @ 2.5ghz, 1 gig of ram, 2x250 gb hitachi travelstars)

Although I have an old 10 gig 5400 rpm drive (my school was tossing a bunch away) in my p4 system and it is very sluggish (although it is loaded with a ton of crap as my family uses it)

so will the 160gb drive keep up with the 100gb 7200rpm drive? and about how much battery life will I gain by going with the 5400 rpm drive?
I will probably just go with the 160gb drive as I think the extra storage space will be used.

 

Good choice, I would do the same.

 

good because that's what I went with. My brothers new notebook is in my sig

oh and is there a way to put columns in a signature?

 

No. I believe that would use and extra platter, so the the drive density would be basically the same. Even if it was not, the rotation speed just can't be matched.

 

It sounds like your notebook is "just as responsive" as your desktop because your desktop isn't very responsive.

Maybe you're a real computer guru. But if not, try out a RAID 0 system sometime, and then tell me it's not faster.

Chris

 

IMHO a desktop is ought to feel more responsive unless you have a tricked out laptop and crapoballistic desktop...

 

well I havn't tried a raid configuration although several review sites such as Anandtech stress that there is no real world increase of performance. I'd rather not double my chances of a corrupt HDD then gain a minimal increase in performance. My hard drives are fast enough how they are.

and btw my desktop is very responsive. I just find that my notebook is also just as responsive as well.

 

I back up to a second internal HD, so I'm not worried about that. OTOH, if Anandtech says it's no faster, I take it seriously. Do you have a link?

Chris

 

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=11

 

Just to be clear, that article says that the speed difference between a RAID array of Raptors and a single Raptor is small -- real, but small.

From that I would conclude that the speed difference between a RAID 0 array of 7200rpm disks and a laptops 5400 rpm disk could indeed be very noticeable, just as I said.

Sorry if that was a bit off-topic for this thread.

Chris

 

I think that is as clear as it gets . Although I've also read that it raid does help when you frequently move large files around. I rarely do so I can live w/o it.

 

A RAID0 implementation is usually not very beneficial to anyone unless they are working with large files and raw data. Most computer usage an average user does deals with seek time and seek time doesn't get better with a RAID0 array. It actually gets just slightly slower. RAID0 will improve your performance if you are rendering large files, doing video editing, ect.

 

Well, I do regularly have to manipulate video files in the 5-10 GB range, so clearly our needs differ.

And as I said in my last post, the Anandtech article is making a different comparison than the one I'm making. To restate my original point one last time: The difference between a laptop HD at 5400 and a desktop RAID array is really noticeable. Which should be obvious to any reasonable person.

Chris

 

I want to know who in this thread has actually owned a 120GB 5400rpm drive and later upgraded to a 7200rpm drive. I would say that most are going off little to no experience with actually using a 120GB drive. The larger arial density is a lot different then going from say a 40 or 60GB 5400rpm drive.

 

I just put together my brother's system today. With the little time I've played with it I can't say it is any slower in windows then my other z96j with the 7200rpm drive. They seem to take about the same time to boot up but I haven't had time to compare them side by side

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/fujitsu-mhv2120bh.html

http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=92&part=full&page=1