160GB 7200rpms or 250GB 5400rpms HD??

At the same price, would you choose a 160GB 7200rpms Hard Disk or a 250GB 5400rpms Hard Disk? (Particularly for Dell XPS M1330)

 

It wouldn't make a lot of difference because of the density of the 250gb drive (its all science)...So ill choose the 250gb for larger storage space.

 

The 160GB 7200rpm would be a little faster than the 250GB 5400rpm but you have less space. Depends if you want speed or space.

 

I'd go for the 7.2k rpm drive, but it really depends on what you are doing.....so if I may ask, what do you plan on doing with the notebook (assuming you are in the market for the M1330).

 

7200rpms for the faster loading times. I think 160gb is enough storage, its a fair trade off.

K-TRON

 

all depends on what you do

 

I guess only my pictures and videos will occupy most of my hard disk space. Perhaps 160GB 7200rpms is good enough, but how much faster does the battery drain compared to using a 5400rpms drive?

 

not as much because it access the disk faster so little time is done for spending energy. id go for the 250gb, more space the better. do you need your stuff THAT fast?

 

Yes.

10chars.

 

Exactly, do you need more space or more speed?

 

like if your a gamer it will make load time for levels a lot fast but the 5200 rpm wont make you wait too much longer and a + is i can hold more games

 

okay, i'm still confused. both speed and capacity are important to me, but speed has a little edge. my question now is, when it comes to defragmenting, won't a 250GB 5400rpms HD take so much longer to defragment than a 160Gb 7200rpms HD given that the amount of data on each hard disk is the same?

 

200 GB 7200 RPM

Anyway, I'd say go for 250 GB. I mean, what do you want, 90 more GB of extra storage or a few milliseconds of your life not waiting? Ok, maybe I shouldn't put it that way...

 

Well when you put it that way, I'd rather take the 160 GB 7200 RPM .

It all depends on your storage needs though. If you plan to use more than 160 GB, but less than 250 GB, the choice is obvious. If you plan to use more than 250 GB you'll need an external drive anyways, so you may want the main drive to be faster. If you plan to use less than 160 GB, go for the speed.

 

Thanks for all your replies!

I've decided that I'd go for the 160Gb drive. The 250Gb drive costs 30 euros more, and as a student, I think 160Gb is more than enough for me.

And to answer your question Scythie, I prefer the few milliseconds not waiting to the 90Gb, haha!

 

traiter

 

Betwene hitachi 7k200 160gb and 5k250 250gb the larger one should be FASTER in terms of raw data if i calculated right. This comes from that even if the 160gb spins 1/3 faster, the larger one has 36% higher data density which means its has a wopping 3% higher putthrow rate! On the other hand i got a third higher acces time, so i quess its a trade off, lower acces time or higher data capacity and more power efficient.

 

more room = more stuff =more fun with more games and what else you want to throw in there

 

I'd go with the 160GB, everything else can either be backed up or networked onto the desktop/server.

 

Considering the 250gb is more dense the speeds difference would not be that much of a difference in some situations and you would have much greater space. Unless you're not a power user then 160gb is more than enough.

 

250gb is great. i mean i am using already 3/4 or half of the 160 space after installing some games, vista, ubuntu, and xp
i don't see much difference in the loading speeds either for the games.

 

If they haven't been posted already:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/02/speed_or_capacity/

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/06/04/wd_brings_250_gb_hdds_to_notebooks/

 

If you're only storing pictures and music, you probably wont notice the tiny lack of speed in the 250gb... If you need the speed for loading programs and such, then the 7200rpm may be a better choice.

 

I prefer speed. I don't need that many GB so i'm fine with 160.