7200 vs 5400 rpm hard drives

Currently conflicted on whether to upgrade from 5400 rpm 80GB drive to 80 or 100GB, 7200 rpm drive.

Would there be a significant speed difference?
...more noise?
...more heat?
...more power consumption?

Thanks for input!

BTW, where should I sell memory and hard drives (brand new) that I am going to upgrade? How easy is it?

Thanks!

 

I personally don't find 7200rpm hard drives in a laptop such a great thing to have. They do consume more power, especially because it's always spinning.

Speed difference is maybe 3-4 seconds longer when opening things like photoshop or illustrator, or if it's for games, it'll only affect the loading, not really your gameplay, and by not much. Most people won't be able to catch the time differences unless you're copying a really large file or something like that.

The heat and noise depend on the hard drive, but is usually more for higher rpms. Overall though, if it's a desktop replacement laptop and you won't move it much, then higher rpms are probably more suitable. Otherwise, 5400rpm is a good compromise between 4200 and 7200. This guy also has some benchmarks if you're interested.

Don't know about selling them... ebay perhaps?

 

Does that 20GB space really matter? I have a 160GB HDD@5400 works well, they operate on ms so performance not so critical. If you want to get a 7200 fine they are faster but I would never go from 80GB to 100GB just not worth it.

 

my 7200.2 rpm harddrive conducts just the same amount of heat and power usage as 5400rpm counterparts...if not less.

i defiantly think its worth it if you can afford the upgrade. =)

 

Depends what you are using your laptop for.

If you just use internet explorer and microsoft word, then you can use a 5400 rpm hard drive.

If you are a gamer YOU HAVE to have a 7200 rpm hard drive. If you do DVD burning YOU HAVE to have a 7200 rpm hard drive.

I'm personally offended that even after all these years they are STILL selling the 5400 rpm. Very offensive.

 

That's news to me! Please substantiate this assertion. I've never had a 7200rpm HDD and I've not had trouble burning DVDs.

See the Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD charts for an excellent comparison of performance and power consumption.

John

 

Very good point as DVD burning has nothing to do with HDD and if you burn an image on HDD the DVD burn speed is the bottleneck. You have to have 7200 to game? I don't know, I think wrong on all counts! Also I do incourage to get a 7200 but not a 100GB go for it and get a 160GB or 200GB if you are going to do it!

Are you a desktop guy in the wrong forum? You are offended after all these years still selling 5400? 7200 kinda new mate! I want 10,000 but so far no go!

 

With C2D and the large cache/memory on lappies today, plus the larger size disks and Vista memory usage etc I wouldn't even consider a 7200 unless I was frequently making massive file transfers of say video. Many people say the dif between 4400 and 5400 is noticeable but not 5400 to 7200. I would believe this having tried a Raptor 10,000 on my desktop and not noticing squat (except the extra noise).

 

I went from a 5400RPM drive to 7200RPM. Trust me it's noticable. Boottimes are shorter, virus scans are shorter, defrags are shorter, everything that uses the harddrive are shorter in waittime.

The difference in performance in sequentual R/W between 5400 Perpendicular drives and 7200RPM are low but the seek time is important. The price difference between 7200RPM and 5400RPM to me is very low and I'd get a 7200RPM drive.

For the guy who said DVD burning you need a 7200RPM drive, yes and no. I like to dl a lot of shows and pick a day out of month to clear it to DVD. I have 2 ext burners and my int one so this is where 7200RPM drives come in to play. I get all 3 burners going and I can start to see buffer underrun protection come in to play, it periodically reduces burn speed.

7200RPM drives = very nice to have. I haven't noticed any extra noise or heat from my seagate drive either.

 

How about reading the stickies before you post?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053
Please do that next time . . .