5400rpm versus 7200rpm. Why not?

I just upgraded to a new Dell Inspiron Core i3 and was pretty surprised to find that the hard drive was 5400rpm without even an option to upgrade it on the Dell website. I had to go into a higher cost line that would have added 300 dollars to the cost of the notebook before I could get to the option.

Even a quick check shows that the difference in price at an online retailer between 5400 and 7200 is only about 10 bucks. Yet, I must first pay 300 more for my laptop so I have the option to add the 7200rpm drive on the Dell website and, for guess what, 10 bucks.

So, I checked out Toshiba's line and its the same thing. I have to go to a much higer priced model to add a 7200rpm drive.

Now, I can understand that companies are out to make money, but it seems pretty strange. I would gladly have paid 50-75 more for a 7200. But I am not paying over 300 hundred more.

So, I was wondering whether putting in a 7200 drive was something that might shorten the life of my notebook due to the added heat? Are manufacturers figuring in a higher failure rate for their notebooks when they add a 7200 drive?

I was thinking of waiting til the year warranty expired and then popping in a 7200. Hopefully by then there will be reasonably priced SATA 3 notebook drives and I can get a double benefit.

Thoughts?

 

Nope. Just money.

If it's a 2 year warranty you'll probably be able to put a reasonably priced SSD in there.

 

The heat isn't a significant difference, my 1st Z61t has a 5400 rpm 640 GB Seagate MomentusLP HDD and my 2nd one has a 7200 rpm 750 GB WD Scorpio Black HDD, and the Scorpio Black runs about 4C hotter.

Manufacturers make the 7200 rpm upgrade more money or to an entire new line to get people to buy up and spend additional money.

Hard drives are cheap enough, just replace it during the warranty period, CRU do not void the warranty.

For most people there is no difference between a 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm drive. They just want something that works. Most 7200 rpm notebook drives don't even saturate SATA 1..

 

Upgrade now, and use the 5400 RPM drive as a backup HD. That's what I did.

 

7200 vs 5400RPM is not a big power difference.
Maybe 0.6 watts idle with 5400RPM and .8watts idle with 7200RPM, something like that.
It's just their way of making money!

Replacing a hard drive or RAM should not void your warranty, although I'm not positive for your particular laptop

PS: The difference in performance between a 5400RPM and 7200RPM drive is usually 1 notch at best. If your laptop has 2 hard drive bays, get a SSD and keep your 5400RPM drive in the second bay for storage

 

As stated by the others, it is just a gimmick used to get people to buy a higher priced laptop. You can upgrade it yourself easy and cheap.

 

What's holding me back is the fact that for 3.5 inch drives SATA3 costs pretty much the same as SATA2 now.

I am hoping that in year I can get an SATA3 notebook drive along with the 7200 speed for about the same price. The larger caches would really benefit from the SATA3 interface.

btw I am a computer tech and just this morning I set up a customers new Dell Latitude with a 7200rpm drive. The difference is really noticeable.

 

I've been contempating upgrading my HDD.
I think I have this HDD in my computer according to the Device Manager:
Amazon.com: Western Digital 320GB Scorpio Blue SATAII 5400RPM 2.5IN 8MB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive WD3200BEVT: Electronics
I've been thinking if it is worth it to upgrade to 7200rpm. I already put a new keyboard in my laptop (with backlighting) recently. I have a USB 3.0 ExpressCard on the way. And soon I'll be putting Windows 7 on it. I want to buy a new headset and mouse too however that will have to wait a long while. Is it beneficial at all to upgrade to a 7200rpm drive of the same size? I have a 2:50 boot time (due to the programs I have). Everything still loads at decent speeds too. Just not sure if it is worth the hassle of reinstalling everything (although I will have to do that for Win7, but if I get a new HDD, I will have to install Vista first):
Amazon.com: Western Digital 320 GB Scorpio Black SATA 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD3200BEKT: Electronics

 

Just my 2 cents is that if you can find a place to clone your old hard drive to your new one, for less than 60 bucks you should get a noticeable difference.

 

No, unless you get a 1-platter 320GB 7200RPM drive, you won't see much difference.
If your looking for any big difference in boot times and such, I'd wait for the 1TB Momentus XT to come out, which should be out by the end of the year.
Either that or the Scorpio Black 750GB that is out now or the 500GB Momentus XT right now (Although it doesn't caches writes on it's flash memory ,the new 1TB should though).


Use cloning software to copy everything over easily.

 

LOL! It's a very good bet that the new Momentus XT will cache writes as well as reads but who knows for sure
Seagate Momentus XT Hits 1 Million Drives Shipped, Second Generation Due This Year | StorageReview.com

 

When was the last time you wrote the exact same file repeatedly?

 

Personally I didn't notice a difference from a 5400rpm hdd to one with 7200rpm except for the fact that my windows activation key doesn't work anymore.

According to microsoft support companies like Dell, Acer and HP preinstall the OS on the hdd which comes with your laptop and when you change it, you don't have a licence anymore. (I'm recently dealing with this problem, Acer told me that if I have the windows cd that the key should work, while it doesn't, and microsoft can't help me cuz its Acer's licence and not theirs).

Anyway, As I said the difference in performance is barely noticable and if you want to avoid the same problem i'm having just go with the 5400rpm. If Dell support is better than Acer support you could just buy a seperate hdd for 35-55€ (depending on the memory capacity) and hope you won't have the same problem or hope that it will be fixed easily by the support.

 

I wouldn't have told Dell or MS that I changed hard drives.

And, anyway I've replaced lots of laptop hard drives, and the Windows keys still worked.

 

Hybrid hard drive/ full SSD FTW. I'm sure there is a way to get your Windows activated again. going from 5400 to 7200 is just a bit faster usually, unless the existing drive is very outdated.

 

That is windows caching on the computer's RAM, also known as 'lazy-write'

 

If it's just used a temporary cache like current hard drives use but it's just a lot bigger then I can kinda of see a point, but it's nothing new. If the current momentus HD's can't write cache in that sense then they're pretty stupid, I'd be surprised if they didn't do it already.

 

That's because it's one of those what I call "down the line" advantages.

You know, it's like that premium Diehard battery vs the one you get on stock with the car. For the first year there won't be any difference as long as you're driving doesn't require anything out of the normal.

However, once that first year is over, or if you put a load on it, the difference in performance will become abundantly clear. A new 7200 HD is not only faster, it will operate more efficiently as well.