750GB 7200rpm faster than 250GB 7200rpm ???

Is that actually possible?? I was reading some reviews and some people state that rpm is not the only indicator for diagnosing speed of the hard drive. Apparently capacity makes a difference as well. Well I can imagine that 50Gb will be fairly slower than 1TB even considering the fact that rpm is the same. But in this case difference between 250Gb and 750gb is not that huge? thing is I am just about the get myself Dell XPS 502x and they seem to charge quite a lot for ANY I mean ANY kind of upgrade. Since i got external storage I am surely not going to need all that 750Gb. But becuase I am doing a lot of work with image processing and graphic design - hard drive's speed is crucial for me. could anyone possible explain any kind of difference between them hdd's ?? any information will be much appreciated

 

I think there pretty much no difference at all dude.

 

thank for reply man! Thats what I thought, there may be some marginal differences but I dont think it will affect my work. I have done my maths and if I would like to save some money I would have to go for a poorer spec - £700 with only 2gigs of ram (which would be immediately replaced with 2x4gb - £80 crucial ddr3) and only 250gb hard drive. also CPU would be slightly slower - i5 2410M instead of i5 2540. I think I would rather prefer to pay that extra £113 on the top of the £700 and get all that benefit of having 6gb RAM, 750gb and i52540M.

Here is the final spec:
2nd generation Intel Core i5-2540M processor 2.60 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.30 GHz
Display : 15.6" FHD B+RGLED True-Life (1920x1080)
Memory : 6144MB (1x2048 + 1x4096) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
Hard Drive : 750GB Serial ATA (7200RPM)
Graphics : 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M Graphics card
Keyboard : Internal Backlit UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard
Operating System : English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64 BIT)

Total: £813.61

worth the money??

 

Yeap. I think that's a good price. Have you considered getting the momentus xt?

 

not really, but I am now after a quick research I discovered that it has 32mb cache and 4gb slc nand and that sounds like a proper upgrade however it might be quite an expensive one so maybe I'll just hold on and wait for ssd to get cheaper a bit.
thanks for your replies man, much appreciated !!

 

Actually, there really is a speed difference. The 750gb drive stores more data on a single platter than the 250gb one, therefore having higher data density, and higher data density at the same RPM translates to higher throughput.

 

The 750GB drive will unquestionably have better sequential read/write times as sarge noted. It is going to be tough for the 250GB drive to keep up due to the 750GB's high platter density.

Dell is probably using Seagate Momentus 750GB 7200RPM drives, which are not particularly fast. With any luck you will get a WD Scorpio Black version, which is arguably the fastest mechanical drive on the market.

 

thanks for your replies guys, so it is actually truth! well in this case I am glad that I have ordered 750gb instead of 250gb. I am quite sure that the one I will receive will be Seagate Momentus 750GB 7200RPM as Charles P. Jefferies stated (it was on my order acknowledgement), and here is the question for you Charles: what did you actually mean by saying that with any luck I might get WD Scorpio Black?? Is it something that Dell has got in stock? if yes then I can try and ring Dell and see if they can change my order, I am sure that if they got that in stock then at some extra cost they will fit it for me. Otherwise I can only consider buying hdd on its own afterwards.

 

Dell sources multiple hard drive vendors, well, these days it's pretty much down to two. But either way you could get either one in your laptop, and Dell can't manage to put one or the other in the machine by request. They just use whatever is available at the time.. This is why it is generally advised to buy and install your own hard drive if you're looking for certain features or performance, not to mention price.

I don't think the Momentus is that slow, that's what's in my Sager notebook, then again, I don't use it as my boot drive, only for data and games. If you were to bench them side by side, the WD is definitely faster. But it also costs $30-40 more than the Seagate.

 

i got a WD Black 750gb in my xps 15

 

750 will be faster due to density. I suggest buying the base hard drive and adding a Western Digital Scropio Black yourself.

 

As quoted above, aerial density makes a big difference when it comes to speeds as well. This is why some 5400RPM drives can be faster than smaller 7200RPM ones.

Think of it this way, the discs (platters) are all the physical same size so if you think to virtually unwind them and stretch them out to 1 city block. One can hold 750 people per block and the other can only hold 250. Now starting at the end of the block and walk 30 steps and you'll see you've passed waaay more people when compared to the 250 people street. This is the way it would work in a HDD, when the drive rotates X amount of times the head can pick up Y more data because it's more compact.

If it was a matter of 750GB 7,200rpm vs 500GB 15,000rpm then yeah i'd say the 500GB would be more because it's picking up 2 times the information for each rotation of the 50% larger drive.

When it comes to later drives in laptops, i've always got the bigger drives even if i don't need physical storage instead of getting the smaller faster RPM. They tend to suck more juice and not be any faster anyways.

 

Disk density can be a factor.

 

Actually, the fastest and least power consuming drives are the smaller, single platter higher RPM drives. You just need to do some research to find out which drives have this.

 

I've had to quote this so everyone can read it again! You made it extremely clear SHoTTa35, thanks for your effort. From now on its perfectly obvious for me that every HDD I will possess will be as big as possible. I have contacted Dell support - bare in mind that I have made my order via telephone instead of website so I got kind of "my own order manager". It took me only 5 minutes on the phone (plus extra 20 waiting to be put through to him) to adjust my order so I can have WD Black in my laptop instead of Momentus. Additional cost was £18 including VAT so it is pretty much as HTWingNut stated about the price - price is not bad (even backlit keyboard was more expensive upgrade - £30)! It is important to make your orders via telephone - this way you get that benefit of having only 1 person (instead of 135) looking after your order and you can always adjust your spec to whatever you like as long as you contact that person. Sounds good to me, so far so good but I will hold on with final judgement cause my laptop isn't here YET. But thanks everybody who contributed to that post. Now I am sure that I have made the right choice and a good upgrade! PIECE!!!

 

I've tried on numerous occasions from Dell and HP (since I tend to be the family PC go-to guy) to request a specific manufacturer of part, but usually fruitless. Dell reps cannot dictate which brand of part you can get. It will be by sheer luck that you end up with a Western Digital over a Seagate. I hope for your sake that they can or do give you a WD.

 

I promise to come back here and share with the result. I've heard lots of negative comments about dell's customer service in general, luckily the guy that was helping me seems to know what he's doing in that area so fingers crossed. At the end of the day I have paid extra £18 to get what I actually want so if the laptop comes with something else I am simply going to return it! today i have received adjusted order acknowledgement which stated that there is a:
"Western Digital 750GB Scorpio Black 2.5" SATA-300 7200RPM 16MB"
On previous acknowledgement there was nothing else than capacity and rpm).

 

got my lappy today, and i have got wd black edition so its all good