5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM

I'm buying a laptop sometime soon and I'm wondering which speed HD I should be getting. I know that with 7200 rpm it'll be going quite a bit faster but how does it effect battery life?

 

I haven't noticed a difference on either of my two laptops with a 7200 RPM HDD compared to a 5400 RPM HDD. Your biggest concerns should be heat (especially in a smaller laptop) and noise. I like the 7200 RPM, but don't mind 5400 RPM all that much. It seems to be a choice of perosonal preferences.

 

check this thread out for the differences
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=50777

but as for your question directly, the area where the HDD lies will run a bit hotter than a 5400 and will maybe eat around 15-25 more minutes of battery life than the 5400rpm for the average notebook. The obvious trade off is for speed of accessing files. I think I read somewhere that thre 7200 is about a little under 2 times faster than the 5400.

and just to note, there is a vast price difference when comparing the 5400rpm and the 7200rpm. (IMO, I would go with the 5400 with more gb than speed if you're pressed for price)

 

I have both a 100gb 7200rpm Hitacki (7K100) and a 60gb (7K60). They are both noticeably faster than a 5400rpm drive. I saw no noticeable decrease in battery length. I also experienced no increase in heat.

Behind upgrading to 1gb of ram, this is the best upgrade you can do for a laptop. It gives instant performance increase.

Those are just my subjectibe impressions, for what they are worth.

 

Cost is for sure a prohibitor for me, I got a 60bg 7200 rpm as a free upgrade from dell.com, otherwise there is no way I would have shelled out an additional $150 for it!

However, I can the 7200 rpm drive on my desktop VASTLY outperforms the 5400 drive I had in it earlier.

As for battery life in the laptop, I know it's spinning faster, but if you think about it, it works less time to perform a file recall or whatever, so it may equal out in the end....

 

Is it just me, or do others question this.

My old PC had a 7200rpm drive, my new laptop has a 5400, the 5400 VASTLY outperforms the 7200 which I attribute to more RAM (2GB vs 768MB) and a vastly superiour processor (2ghz Core Duo vs 2.53Ghz Pentium 4).

The main benchmark I use is loading times for zones in EQ2, my PC seems to come in pretty much at the top of the range.

 

Yes, I think Arla has it right. Everything else being equal, you may notice a slight increase in 7200 vs 5400, but any increase in processor power or ram will likely easily overshadow HD speed.

Performance does vary by HD manufactures also. Some also change the cache on the HD, that probably affects performace more than brute RPM speed, but you see this more often on 3.5" (desktop) HD's anyway.

Here's a link from *cough*cough* someplace else that did a good review a little while ago. There are some newer HD's out now, but you'll get the idea.

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

 

The hard drive is often the bottleneck in notebook performance. You are unlikely to notice a difference in CPUs unless you are really pushing the CPU. You'll only notice a difference in memory if you upgrade from a smaller amount. It really depends on what you are doing. For office and internet the bump won't seem as big. The thickness as noted will have an affect on feeling the heat. For typical users a 5400RPM is fine, but 7200RPM drive are dirt cheap now.

 

The speed is very noticeable when you are editing video as it pushes the hard drive to its limits. What I've seen people doing now is going with smaller 5400 hard drives in their system and buying an external 7200 rpm for much cheaper than from the notebook manufacturer.