HDD RPM and You!

for me, this laptop will never have an SSD, until SSD's have the sizes of other hdd's. (i love my bluray drive as well so the hdd bay mod is out of the question)

well 500gb wasn't enough for me, so i decided to get my hands on the bigger (but slower) 750gb WD caviar blue (1tb model was out of stock and too expensive to "test" if i liked it or not)

before swapping out hdd's, i decided to run a benchmark to compare. I know it's an old program, but hdtach is just so awesome.

I thought i'd share my results in these forums since i know a lot of us (including myself) consider this line of laptop (m15x in my case) to be a desktop replacement.

red = seagate (7200 rpm)
blue = western digital (5400 rpm)

while the seagate is understandibly faster, the difference between the two drives is much smaller than i initially thought. After using this WD drive for the last few days, i can also say my hdd temps have gotten much cooler as well, never going above 42*C even during strenuous activity. I'm now kicking myself for not waiting and buying the 1Tb model (even though it's around double the price of the 750gb)

*edit*
forgot to mention that the wd blue 750 and 1tb are thicker than standard laptop drives, fits perfectly in the m15x, however the little plastic "pull" tab gets slightly raised due to the difference in thickness.

 

It's hard to ignore a 20% differential on small (sub-1GB) files since that's the bulk of files people access. The 7200RPM drive has an edge up until roughly 200GB files according to that chart, and I really can't recall the last time I read a file larger than even 10GB except for perhaps a system image.

Do you have numbers on the temps for the 7200RPM drive?

 

Well in sequential speeds the difference may be small, but in real world performance there can be quite large differences. It will depend on your usage how much you notice of it but if you're looking for performance I wouldn't recommend the 750GB WD.

Roundup: 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drives with 500 GB, 640 GB and 750 GB Storage Capacities (page 14) - X-bit labs

Charts, benchmarks 2009 2.5? Mobile Hard Drive Charts, PCMark Vantage

Actually the 750GB is 9.5 mm high which is standard. The 1TB is 12.5 mm.

 

unfortunately i don't have any software graphing hdd temps over time. however having used both drives for a lot of copy operation to and from an external 2tb esata raid drive (mybook studio ed 2) as well as video conversion. i'd say the heat is substantially less on my system with the 5400.

i've pushed the 7200 to 61*C before i panicked. however i have not seen the 5400 reach 50, with the same sort of stress placed on it.