Hard Drives - 5400 v. 7200

so right now the dv6000t looks really appealing to me however one problem that i have iwth hp is that it only offers 5400 rpm hard drives. I was wondering if theres any difference between a 5400 and 7200 rpm hd because many people have told me that the difference is negligible when it comes to notebooks. also is the 256mb gefroce go 7200 enough to run games such as half life 2 and fear? and my final question is when purchasing an hp, can u stack the 150 off that comes standard, coupons and student discount cause i know for dell if u apply a coupon it cancels out all the other discounts.

 

please fill out the "what should i buy?" questionnaire in the "What Notebook Should I Buy?" forum.

it's a much better way to hone your notebook search down to what you really need.

 

The difference between 5400 and 7200 hard drives is there. It is a noticeable difference and is worth the small amount of money extra. It's always more expensive to buy the upgrade from the manufacturer. Swapping the drives yourself is much cheaper and you gain experience.

The 7200 really is an awful card for new games. I doubt FEAR would be playable at any decent settings on a 7200-equipped system.

 

with the Hard Drive and graphics card, the difference in speed and performance really depends on what kind of programs you use on your laptop. If you use basic programs such as MS Office, Web Desgining, Programming, Adobe Photoshop you won't notice a huge difference in performance from a 5400rpm to 7200rpm drive. However, the 7200rpm does dissapate a little more heat, but it isn't anything to worry about. Make sure you read this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053

If however, you use lots of intensive programs, such as AutoCAD, 3D Modellling and gaming, you will notice quite a significant difference in performance.

With the graphics card, the GeForce 7400, It should handle Half Life 2 at high deatil settings. FEAR however, may only play properly at low detail settings and resolutions. if you do plan to play FEAR a lot, and other modern games, I strongly suggest that you have a 7200rpm HDD as it is often a major bottleneck.

 

Have you noticed what the very first thread on this forum is called? That's right, "pros/cons of 7200rpm HD?"

 

Please check the stickies
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053

 

Hello,

Can you really tell the difference between those two?
I'm planning to buy a laptop for which I won't be playing games but will be doing quite a few simulations (matlab for instance).

Any insights would be very helpful,

Thank you very much

 

The speeds refer to how fast the hard drive can spin. The faster the drive, the more data can be read or written onto the drive. So in your case the 7200 RPM drive will be faster. It should help you as you want togame, and so a 7200 RPM drive will provide a slight performance boost over a 5400 RPM one. But for other tasks, like word processing and general Intenet surfing, then drive speeds make very little overall diiference.

The cost of a 7200 RPM drive is higher than a 5400 RPM. But for you, seeing as though you are going to be using hard drive intensive applications, i would say go for the 7200 RPM one. Hope this helps.

 

It does help. Thanks a lot Zero!

 

You can also find more info here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053

 

If you are doing simulations involving many files (I have done some where I have to load and write gigabytes of data), then it is definitely worth getting a 7200rpm drive. The disadvantages of a 7200rpm drive is that it may produce more heat and it will consume more power. However, I assume that if you are doing any intense simulation, you won't be running on battery (since simulations usually max out cpu usage, your battery will run out fast).

If you simulation involves mostly calculations and not much reading and writing, then the hard drive won't help as much.

 

Yes, it does make a difference. It is noticeable.

For more information on the pros/cons, do a search. The topic has been discussed several times.

 

Also, check out this website. It reviews the different HDs at different speeds:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/27/round/

 

I would go for it, even booting up requires a lot of disk activity, so you will notice a significant difference.

 

It has been said that there is a slight increase in heat production. Is this theory correct?

 

I don't think you'll ever notice this heat 'increase'.

 

Since this thread has been moved to the hardware forum, we already have a large sticky on this so please refer to that:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053

 

Typical harddrive speeds for notebooks seems to be around 5400, but some--IBM say, optionally--are 7600. How significant a difference is that really, and in what context would it be most noticeable?

 

It'd be pretty similar to 7200RPM hard drives.

Faster boot time, write time, etc, but most people don't need anything more than a 5400RPM drive, currently.

 

In normal use, most people will only notice a slight difference in performance. However, there are some situations where it'll be noticeably faster, mostly applications that are intensely I/O oriented, such as movie editing, archiving, to some degree gaming (to reduce load times a bit).

However, there is a cost for that speed: there will be a noticeable increase in heat and power consumption with a 7200 RPM hard drive. Not necessarily huge, but noticeable. Also, 7200 RPM drives can't pack data as densely as 5400 RPM drives, so the maximum possible capacity is lower (100 GB currently, versus 160 GB on a 5400 RPM, and I think 200+ on a 4200 RPM drive).

 

Yes, a 300 gb 4200 rpm hard drive has just been announced.

I just wished to say despite all the revulsion that comes with hearing of 4200 rpm hard drives, they really are quite fine for those with simple tasks at least. I demand very little of my notebooks, mostly websurfing, schoolwork, light 2d games, etc. and a 4200 rpm is just fine for that but thats not the point here.

I am not quite sure how speedy a 7200 rpm drive would be compared to a 5400 rpm, I have mainly used 4200 rpm drives and a couple of 5400 rpms and never ever noticed a difference because of the simple tasks I do.

You will notice the most difference in a 7200 rpm drive with things that naturally require a lot of hard drive usage, mainly video editing, picture editing like in photoshop, lots of transferring of files to and from the hard drive, etc. You'll see the most improvement in these fields.

I haven't heard of 7600 rpm hard drives being available, but I'm not in the loop always with laptop technology.

 

Those large 4200 RPM hard drives are great with those external 2.5" enclosures if you need portable data storage. SOO much more convenient that a larger one that needs a power brick.

I do have to say that my parents' Gateway machine has a 4200 RPM hard drive, and the boot-up time is pretty horrible, even after some terrific tweaking. But once it IS booted up, day-to-day stuff loads about as fast as my 5400 RPM drive. I haven't messed with any other installed 4200 RPM drives recently, so I don't know if it's just the way Gateway sets things up or not.

 

Bootups from my 4200 and 5400 rpm hard drives have been about the same, with the 4200 rpms probably just 5-10 seconds slower at the max. Its really only resuming from hibernation where the 5400 is much faster.

 

I'm looking to pick up a laptop mainly for web browsing and gaming (and some multimedia stuff). I'm trying to kep the cost around ~£800/£900 and have pretty much decided to opt for the Asus F3JP model.

My question is, how will a 5400 RPM HDD hold up for gaming? I appreciate that the seek times will obviously be much faster on a 7200 RPM, but will it have a significant impact on performance?

To upgrade the system to include a 7200 RPM HDD would cost around £110+VAT - similar in cost to including an extra 1Gb of RAM. The system already has 1Gb (1 x 1024 DDR2 667). So where would the money be better spent - extra RAM (2Gb) or faster HDD? Or (as I'm trying to keep costs down), would the system be fine for gaming as it stands? I'm not looking for cutting edge, just decent performance on existing games and able to cope with releases over the next year or so.

 

7200 RPM only improves load times, not the gaming performance, And a 160 GB 5400 rpm has just about the same performance as a 100 gb 7200 RPM. I checked the model you listed, and it said it had a 120 gb hdd, but if the 5400 RPM harddrive is a good one, you still get good performnace. For instance Seagates monetus 5400.3 series are quite good. check out Tom's Hardware guide 2.5" Hard Drive Charts

I say, go with more ram, it improves gaming performance, instead of just load times.

 

more ram = better overall gaming performance
faster HD = better load times only

I would say more is ram is better like the above poster.

 

Agreed, also remember that due to higher density a larger 5400rpm drive will be closer in load times to a smaller capacity 7200rpm drive so the loss of performance in a higher capacity 5400rpm drive, say 120Gb or 160Gb over a 7200rpm drive will not be all that great. Personaly for a gaming rig i would take the extra ram.

 

Like everyone else said go for the RAM.
The faster hard drive will only increase your load times. RAM will affect overall performance.

Do you need the 2GB of RAM? Well that depends on the games you want to play. If you're just looking for decent performance on games out right now 1GB of RAM would be fine. However you can't go wrong with an extra GB and IMO it would be a great investment in the long run if you have the money for it (I would have gotten 2GB instead of 1GB if I had the money for it at the time).

 

FEAR and Oblivion are two that almost require 2Gb of ram for good play. I know FEAR certainly is. I don't think 2Gb ram is overkill for any game released in the last 18 months.

 

I disagree with the others, with 1 gb of ram already you're hardly short for most purposes (although certainly more for some games like oblivion will help!) and the limiting factor for you will much more likely be HD access. The HD is the weakest link, and as the ram is dumped and refilled it needs to access the HD for more data - bear in mind this occurs throughout most games, not just the initial loading and shutting them down, even with 2 gb of ram. It's no coincidence that my HD light is on often while gaming, and granted I need more ram, but if the HD is slow loading in the first place the whole system is bogged down. Going from 5400 to 7200 is not a huge jump such as from 4200 to 7200, but it will make a noticeable increase in overall performance.

Still, adding more ram will help more in some regards, while a faster HD in others. So it's half a dozen of one and six of the other.

 

I agree it's not overkill to have 2GB of RAM. I'm playing Battlefield 2142 right now and it runs fine with my 1GB but have an extra GB would be great.
If you have afford 2GB I agree go for it. If you play games like Oblivion or Fear you're better off getting 2GB to be on the safe side.

If you're tight for cash (like I was) 1GB will give an alright performance for most games. And you can always upgrade your RAM later when you have more money.

But by all means if you can afford 2GB go for it.

 

Hey everyone, I'm about ready to pull the trigger on a new Dell Latitude D820, but I have a few ("noob") questions regarding the hard drive.

1. Does a bigger hard drive add size (thickness?) or weight onto a laptop?
2. Does the speed (rpm) of a hard drive have a significant impact on the battery life of the laptop?

I'll be taking this laptop to college with me this year. I've mostly been leaning towards a 120 gig 5400 rpm hard drive, but if it adds a noticeable amount of bulk onto the laptop (compared to, for instance, an 80 or 100 gig drive), then I won't pay the extra cash for space I may or may not use anyway. I've also heard that there is a significant benefit to be had from upping the rpm to 7200... but at the same time, I need all the battery life I can get. Can anyone point me in the right direction here?

thanks.

 

1. No.
2. 5400rpm should be the best balance for most people between hard drive speed and conserving battery life.

 

1. Yes, but not noticeable unless the difference is huge or if the form factor is different (most are 2.5" but some are smaller).

2. No, and not really much more to add. In fact I'm just writing this for filler. And this. And this. And this...

 

No, the hard drive's size capability doesn't effect the size or thickness of the laptop.

The best bet nowadays is indeed the 5400RPM drive as it's plently faster than the 4200RPM drives and uses about the same amount of energy.

 

5400 vs 7200 rpm? I always thought 7200 was faster but apparently both give 1.5gb/s? so, which one is faster? Wouldn't that make them equal?

 

Neither will actually give 1.5 GB/s. The 1.5 GB/s is the speed at which the interface will run at, whcih means it is the maximum data that can be sent along the interface. It can be anything up to that. The hard disk will actually transfer data at a much slower rate. Some of the latest 7200 RPM drives transfer at around 70 or 80 MB/s, and not GB/s. The 5400 RPm drives will be less, because they have a slower spin rate, so you were not wrong in your belief that 7200 RPM was faster.

 

Any thoughts on a hard drive at 7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm? I thought I read somewhere that the higher the number, the quieter the laptop -- or is it the other way around?

 

7200 RPM drives generally have faster transfer rates, so they can shift more data from one place to another, in a given time, when comapred to 5400 RPM. That means that when you start the notebook, it will start up faster with a 7200 RPM drive. Noise is something that increases if you increase the spin rate, however, some 5400 RPM are known to be noisy and loud. If largely depends on manufacturer.

 

There are so many posts on this, it's ridiculous. I am going to merge this with other posts with the same question.

 

this article will answer all ur questions about HDD rpm speeds:

http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT061801032003

so i say: get a bigger Ram, 5400 does not effect as much, i am using 160GB 5400rpm in my dv6291ea with 1gb ram, and haven't came across any problem when playing hitman bloodmoney and advanced warfighter.

 

This data is over 6 years old!!! There is a lot of information on this site on the matter that is a lot newer.

 

if i ordered my hp dv 6000t by phone with hp, can they upgrade from the 5400 to the 7200 for me?
thanks

 

They should be able to. Ordering by phone shouldn't restrict your customisation options.

 

The opinions and facts on the capabilities of 5400 and 7200 RPM drives haven't changed. I wanted to merge up a lot of postings on the matter, so people looking for info could get a lot of opinions on their question.

 

It's fairly easy to sum up, I think the issue has been over-complicated by nit picking. In general, the 7200 drives noticeably out-perform the 5400 rpm drive, especially in terms of load times. New 5400 drives with perpendicular writing technology have closed the gap somewhat, and may even outperform the 7200 drives when loading very large files and when the disk is about 60 to 70% full and the 7200 rpm drive is nearly full due to data density.

A hard drive is always a "bottleneck" for any computer system, an effect that can be reduced with the addition of more ram (within reason). But at some pont the hard drive needs to be accessed, and faster access times and more rapid rotational speed allows for better performance. If you want to maximise the performance of your machine, the 7200 rpm drive will accomplish that. It will improve load times for most programmes. But overall, the 5400 rpm drive is not holding people back provided they have sufficient ram, and 15-25% slower load times won't affect most applications and games once they are loaded.