Does the size of Hard Drive affect its speed?

Say if I had a 60gig 5400 RPM hard drive and a 160gig 5400 rpm hard drive, would the larger one be a lot faster?

Also are they replaceable? I mean after I buy the laptop, can I buy a better harddrive to put on?

I am either buying HP nc6400 or nc8430 so maybe the model matters, but yah they both come with 60gig 5400 RPM hard drive.

Thanks!

 

I dont think the size of the hard disk will affect performance.

And yes, you can replace the hard disk drive of a notebook. Its a simple process.

 

All platters in hard drives are about the same size so the drive's performance should not be impacted by the amount of data that will fit on the drive alone (there may be other factors that will result in different performance e.g. cache size, rotation speed - 5400RPM vs 7200RPM).

 

theoretically, yes a larger HD will be "faster" due to the density of the data on the platters. i believe there was a link somewhere in the forums to a bechmark camparo between a 100gb 5400 rpm drive and a 40 or 60 gb 7200 rpm drive and the #s were similar.

you're free to search for it or google cuz i'm too lazy to find it.

as jetstar says, replacing a notebook HD is super easy and to anticipate the followup question, no it does not void your warranty altho the new HD will not be covered (except by the manufacturer)

 

<3 Thanks and yes that would be my next question

 

I have seen this mentioned a number of times as well.

 

While a larger HDD will be somewhat faster due to higher data densities, especially the new perpendicular models, you'll only really notice it on large, sustained transfers.

It won't be as fast as a 7200rpm drive due to issues with latency, which is the product of seek time (how fast can we move to a certain track) and rotation speed (how long until the data passes under the heads).

 

Only way to really check is with the specs sheet from the manafacturer.

Yes in some respect larger drives MAY have higher density so it would perform better BUT this is not the case for all drives. The new perpendicular drives 160GB+ do have very high density so they do perform better. As mentioned only way is to check the specs for that particular model.

 

Faster, but not by a lot.

 

The 160gb hard disk makes use of the new perpendicular technology which allows for higher density platters. Theoretically it should be faster than the 60gb disk, but not by a lot. You wont even notice it under regular use.