7,200 RPM vs 5,400 RPM

What kinda of improvements would I see? I mainly play games, do homework/work, watch movies/TV shows, and browse The Internet.

I currently have a 5,400 RPM 320 GB hard drive and I was wondering what kind of improvements I would see with a 7,200 RPM or higher 500 GB hard drive.

 

For any noticeable performance gain you would need to buy a 320gb series 7200rpm drive or a 500gb 7200rpm drive when they become available.
If you want to stick with 5400rpm, the only faster drive is the 500gb 5400rpm drive, which has similar performance to the 320gb 7200rpm drives.

The higher spindle speed of the 7200rpm drive makes access times/seek times shorter thus making boot/load times faster.
Most of the latest generation 7200rpm drives are very power efficient, so regardless of using 5400 or 7200rpm drives really doesnt effect battery life.

K-TRON

 

Why does a 500 GB 5,400 RPM drive have a similar performance to a 320 GB 7,200 RPM drive? And do you mean to say that a 7,200 RPM 500 GB hard drive is not available yet?

 

7200rpm will reduce boot time, and loading time of games and applications.

 

Yes, but by how much? Is it really noticeable?

And would the faster spin cause more wear and tear?

 

In a harddrive the spinning platter doesnt actually touch anything. The platters are held onto the motor of the drive with large round washers, which are bolted to the shaft of the motor.
The heads of the harddrive (the parts which move) do not actually touch the spinning platters. Their is a very small gap between the heads and the platter. The gap is nominally around 100nm, or about a hundredth of the thickness of a blade of hair.
A 7200rpm drive will be more audible, but that is because the platters are spinning faster. How much louder it is, well that is dependant upon how good your hearing is, and how the manufacturer made the shell of the drive.

A 500gb 5400rpm drive is comparable in speed to a 320gb 7200rpm drive because of data density differences. In both drives their are two platters. (leave the three platter hm500li and the 5k500 out on this for ease of comparison)
The 500gb 5400rpm drive has two platters, and four heads. so on each platter their is 250gb of data capacity.
On the 320gb 7200rpm drive their are also two platters and four heads. So on each platter their is 160gb of data capacity.
Since both platters are the same physical dimension more information is stored per unit area on the lower rpm disc. Since their is more data density more data can be read in the same instantaneous point of time on the 5400rpm drive than on the 7200rpm drive.
The higher data density of the 5400rpm drive helps decrease the difference in performance between the higher rpm drive.
Thus in most cases a higher density 5400rpm drive will perform nearly the same as a 7200rpm drive.

However the 7200rpm drive will always perform a little better because of its faster spindle speed. This results in lower seek times, which helps more in boot time.

K-TRON

 

Wow thanks, repped! Would my laptop have a 2.5" hard drive?

 

I second what K-Tron said.

In my experince, yes. Comparing a 120GB 5400 and a 120GB 7200, i notice a big difference in boot time/logon time. A smaller, but noticable diffference in loading time.

For noise, it depends what haddrives you are comparing...
Between my 5400rpm western digital, and 7200rpm Fujitsu, there was very little difference. between the same WD, and a 7200 Seagate, the Seagate was louder and more vibrration.

Yes, laptops have 2.5" HDD's.

 

Almost all laptops use 2.5" harddrives. Some of the old ones used larger drives, and most ultraportables use 1.8" drives.

Just make sure that you buy standard thickness drives. Your laptop supports 2.5" drives up to 9.5mm thick.
So basically that means to stay away from the two 12.5mm thick drives, the Hitachi 5k500 and the Fujitsu 500gb 5400rpm drive.

In your case, I would wait a few weeks for the 500gb 7200rpm drives. They are going to be released in February.
I dont think buying a 320gb 7200rpm drive will show enough speed difference to justify the upgrade

K-TRON

 

http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/expert/are-ssds-worth-the-money.aspx?page=5

Black: 7200rpm
Blue: 5400rpm

 

I tried looking up news or information to confirm this but couldn't... You happen to have any links to these rumors/information? I am about to buy a new compuer and need to figure out if I should wait before upgrading the HD or not... Thanks.

 

It's uncertain when they will arrive. Some say February, but some SR from Seagate said Q2.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=271131&page=28&highlight=seagate+7200.4

I think it's better to get the WD3200BEKT at the moment. It may even be quicker than the Seagate 7200.4 in real life, because previous Seagates were not that good with I/O.

 

I am actually looking at getting a 15" Macbook Pro which comes with a 320GB drive at 5200rpm... I can upgrade that for $50 to a 320 GB HD @ 7200rpm, but may instead keep the stock HD, or down grade to save a bit more money if I can get a 500GB 7200rpm drive in the near future. Thanks for the link by the way.