HD upgrade Question

since my manufcturer warranty has expired, I'm thinking of ugrading my HD. Firstly, if I just use basic apps on a Fujitsu S6231 is it even worth it?

Also, I was thinking of upgrading to the Hitachi 7K100. Are those louder or harder than the original drive (I guess I need an s6231 owner to answer that one)?

One last question, when looking at newegg for the drives, I even though some models have the same HD size they are priced differently e.g. a 7k100 60GB priced at 115 and a 7k100 60GB priced at 135. Is there something there that I don't know about to cuase the price difference?

thanks for all the help in advance.

 

What is the current speed of your HD 4200? Going from 4200 ==> 7200 will indeed be a noticeable difference in load times and other applications that are disk intensive (video editing, etc) . But the higher the RPM on the drive, the more heat it generates something else to consider. Others can chip in, if this will be an issue (heat) with your machine.

Nothings beats a RAM upgrade (assuming you have < 1gig) for a 'noticeable' performance improvement.

As for price difference, could be the amount of cache that the drive has, also part of branding - why is Tide more expensive than Cheer let' say?

 

"louder and harder" ... what do you mean by harder?
The hitachi's aren't the quietest, they do produce a bit of clicking noises, but not too annoying in my opinion. But they do run hotter than some other 7200RPMs, but they are the fastest.

The difference in pricing is because one is PATA and the other is SATA. You want a PATA (parallel IDE) for the S6231.

As for will you benifit from the upgrade. HDD transfer speeds can go up as much as 30% or more when upgrading from a 4200RPM. So you will notice a decrease in boot times, and faster application loading

 

Good catch PATA / SATA (must have beat ya by seconds ....)

 

thanks. I meant hotter. lol. I wonder what was on my mind at the time I wrote that. haha.

thanks again.

 

Well then seagates are cooler, but they are slower, but by no means not fast. Any 7200RPM is still MUCH faster than any 4200RPM

 

will the seagate be less noisy?

does the change in RPM speed significantly effect battery life? I figure it might a little (but probably not so significant).

 

Check out the link to an extended review I had previously posted
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=41603
I think it will give you a better idea before you purchase

 

thanks for all your help. I'll so that.

 

Nice and cheap HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822153014

 

I read the review. I'm a little confused. So the 7200 Seagate dissapates power at close to 1 watt on idle, 3 on seek. Hitachi's is less on idle. However, Hitachi has a much greater startup peak power disipation. But if idle and seek are used more would that not make the seagate generate more heat than the hitachi?

ALso, is the Seagate much more quiet than the Hitachi. The review says they are the same. What is this high pitch sound they say the 7k100 makes?

thanks again.

edit: oh yeah, if you quickly look at this link

newegg 7200 HDD


it shows many PATA HDD with the same capacity. Is there a reason that the ATAs while they all look the same to me are priced differently?

also it seems that all the Seagates are SATA. Even the one listed as ATA says it is SATA in the description. SO are all Seagates SATA? That would pretty much make that decision for me.

thanks again.

 

I've read your review but i do not understand why a 7200 rpm hitachi is much faster than seagate 7200 rpm? Both of them have the same speed specified by their manufacturer. Are they then lying about the right speed of their drives?

same speed but one is faster... sounds contradictory...

 

Not my review, just posted a link

No it is not contradictory. In all of the HDD market (desktops and laptops) drives running at the same spindle speed don't perform similarly. It is not only the platter spinning speed that determines performance, the circuitry and on-board (on HDD) processors do affect the performance.

So even if you look at 4200RPM, 5400RPM you will see differences from one drive to another. And when you start having varying cache size (mainly in 5400RPM) that also plays a role.

 

Sorry, i thought it was your review.

Thanks, now it's clear. Sorry for my ignorance.

 

No problem ... there is always something new to learn about

 

SInce I keep reading that the jump from 4200 to 5400 is much more significant than 5400 to 7200. Will I be able to use photoshop efficiently with a 5400 rpm drive?

I understand my s6231 is not designed for high power graphics, but occasionally I will need to touch up images and data (tiffs, jpegs) to make them nicer for publication.

thanks again.

 

I have a 4200 rpm HDD and uses an integrated graphics like the one you have. I used photoshop a lot of times and it works efficiently. if it can work efficiently with 4200 HDD, how much more with 5400. I'm planning to upgrade to 5400 HDD.

But consider also upgrading your ram coz photoshop is a ram demanding prog.! So you better have enough ram installed.

 

By the way upgrading 4200HDD to 5400 will also increase an overall system performance!

 

i recently bought a 100gb ata HD....does anyone know if my laptop is compatible with an SATA HD?? if so...i may return this one and get an SATA. At the time I just bought an ATA HD because my old one was also ATA but now that I know what SATA is, I'd like to have it.