7200RPM Hard Drive

I just purchased the ASUS G50V-A1 and would like to upgrade the hard drive to a 7200RPM. I will loading Vista 64 onto this drive. I want it to be quite and run cool. What hard drive do you recommend?

 

What size hard drive are you looking for?

 

Suggest doing a search, there are dozens of threads on this topic already.

 

200 - 320 Gb

 

160GB single platter 7200RPM drives are probably (one of) the quietest, coolest, and fastest drives around. The 250GB single platter drives should be coming soon though (next 1-2 months).

 

that means we'll get 750gb laptop HDDs then as well! sweet!

 

We've had one member (simonov) with a Seagate 7200.3 320GB in an Asus G50V. His would reach 60C.

If you really want to have cool drive, I recommend a 5400rpm drive. The WD5000BEVT is fast and comes close to 7200rpm performance.

I agree.

 

I'd say WD5000BEVT too actually, though it's 5400rpm it's smiliar performance as the 320GB 7200rpm drives out there. That'd be cool and quiet + alot of space!

 

seagate is probably the most quiet of all, so 500gb 5400 rpm - provides enough performance to compete with 320gb 7200rpm drives

 

I was thinking of using the HITACHI Travelstar 7K200 200GB or Western Digital Scorpio Black WD1600BEKT 160GB as my OS Drive and get a Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB as my storage drive for music and video. What do you think?

 

Go for a single platter or dual platter 7K320, 7200.4 or WD Black for the primary drive, and go for the WD 500gb for the secondary.

The 7K320 series is more power efficient, quieter and outperforms the 7K200 series drives.

K-TRON

 

What i've concluded of all people saying things about the 320-7200rpm drives they think the Hitachi is the most quiet actually!


And 500GB 5400rpm drives can compete with those drives just because higher data density, doesn't need to spin as much as there is more information per rotation comparable to the 320GB drives that has less info per rotation, therefor they are pretty equal, though 5400rpm should be more quiet.

 

If you'll be upgrading to a 500GB drive, you might want to wait for the Hitachi 5K500.B, since it has an insanely low power consumption, and should be very cool and quiet.

If 7200RPM, go for the Hitachi 7K320, since I have heard almost nil complaints regarding it.

 

Can't agree there. I've read quite a few complaints about it. Here's one: Installed 7k320 drive in T400 - vibration galore!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=318274
On the Lenovo forums, Newegg reviews and Macrumors forums I've read a lot more.

Least likely to cause noise/vibration based on what I read (2 platter versions):
1 Seagate 7200.3
2 WD3200BEKT
3 Hitachi 7K320

But mind you, all of them have received complaints! One way to reduce vibration is to change the AAM value.

I agree.

 

Does anyone know if the ASUS G50V-A1 is SATA or SATA2? I called ASUS tech support and they said they don't have that kind of information released to them. How stupid is that.

 

It is probably SATA2. Though it really doesn't matter since both standards are pretty much interchangeable. Furthermore, no hard drive today can even come close to saturating the theoretical bandwidth of either standard.

 

Now that's something I never knew before. Interesting.

 

It is true, the WD5000BEVT comes close to 320GB/7200rpm performance. But the 320GB/7200 still have higher transfer rates and faster acces times. So in real life they will be a little bit faster. It will be very hard to notice though.

 

The 7200RPMs will have faster app load times due to the lower access times.
EDIT: The same ^