Harddrive Spec Differences?

How big of a difference is there between a 160GB 5400rpm and 250GB 5400rpm? Is it worth a $50 upgrade?

How big of a difference is there between a 160GB 5400rpm and 160GB 7200rpm? Is it worth a $75 upgrade?

 

No, not worth $75 to switch to 7200rpm.

You are much better off buying the western digital scorpio 320gb 5400rpm drive. This drive is faster than 160gb 7200rpm drives and twice the size.

 

Always get a higher capacity HDD.

 

I'm on a tight budget and 160gb is already more than enough space for me. However, will I get a noticeable speed boost with a 250gb 5400rpm instead of a 160gb 5400rpm? Is the $50 worth it?

 

If you're on a tight budget you would be better off upgrading the RAM instead of the hard drive.

The RAM will be a more useful and noticeable upgrade. But don't buy it from the manufacturer. If you do upgrade the RAM, buy it from a company like Tigerdirect.com or Newegg.com. Much cheaper.

That's my opinion at least

 

A 160gb 5400rpm drive is able to maintain on average 34mb/sec.
a 250gb 5400rpm drive is able to maintain 43mb/sec
a 160gb 7200pm drive is able to maintain 45mb/sec

I would spend the extra $50 to get the 250gb 5400rpm drive because you will physically be able to notice the difference between 34 and 43mb/sec. Its actually like a 25% performance increase.
The 7200rpm drive is no worth it at all.

If you feel that 160 gb at 34mb/sec is fast enough than you will be fine with that. But if you game, do adobe cs3, or any kind of video editing you will want a faster harddrive.
If your system is for work, internet and typing/ basic things than a 160gb 5400rpm drive will be fine.

K-TRON

 

What exactly does a "faster" harddrive increase? Program (including Firefox?) load times?

 

A faster harddrive will decrease boot times for windows and applications. Basically everything will load slightly faster with the 250gb 5400rpm drive.
Firefox loading is not based on the harddrive alot, but more on security which is why it takes like 10 seconds or more when you first open it.

If you will be loading a bunch of different applications at the same time than I would advise getting a faster drive which can take the additional load.

K-TRON

 

It increases everything you do. Most everything stores and fetches something from your hard drive. So, like K-TRON said, it will decrease the time it takes load most everything by about 20%-25% theoretically (if it isn't being affected by other factors).

But if all you really do is browse the internet and type stuff, then you won't notice that performance increase as much as if you were a hardcore gamer or graphic designer.

The cheaper drive will not be a hindrance. Mine is 5400RPM and it has served me well.

 

For example, with different speeds doing the same thing, my friend and I play LAN games between my desktop (7200RPM 200GB) and laptop (5400RPM 160GB). The desktop loads about 10 seconds quicker the first time we load a game but every other time the laptop is quicker by about 10 seconds (because it had 1GB extra RAM). Just recently though the laptop had been trashing the desktop on loads (by up to 30 seconds) because it has more RAM. So hard disk speed against more RAM, no contest. More RAM wins.

Grand Admiral

 

I usually just like to have Firefox (maybe 20 tabs open at the same time), 3-4 folders, Winamp, Trillian, ObjectDock, and Kaspersky Anti-virus open at the same time. I will sometimes use Photoshop CS3 and use WinRAR quite often. Will the 160gb 5400rpm be enough for these tasks?

Also, it seems like the harddrive only affects the load time and not how fast the programs run once they are loaded?

 

Sorry, but I just had another question - is it easy to upgrade to a new harddrive if I want a better one in the future?

 

With most laptops it is pretty easy to replace a hard drive. Usually just a few screws. Easy as pie. Usually. Some laptops back in the day made it really hard... I don't think many do currently.

With your sort of use, RAM would be a wiser upgrade than the hard drive at this point. With almost any sort of typical use RAM is the best upgrade.

 

Yeah if you're running ALL those applications, I suggest getting 4 GB of RAM rather than a speedier hard drive. Usually I'll have 10 tabs open, outlook, itunes, msn webcam, antivirus, skype and some folders open, and I run on a 160GB 5400 RPM drive. I don't really notice anything. What I DO notice, however, was when I had 4 GB of RAM inside, it ran fast as hell.

I do suggest more RAM over a faster hard drive.

 

Hi folks,

@ K-Tron ... loved your Post #6 ... straight to the point and "dummy proof" ... for me that it is anyway.

Thanks,

G!

 

What about 250g 7,200 VS 320g 5,400?

 

If we can assume right, since the 200gb 7200rpm drive = the 320gb 5400rpm drive in performance, the 250Gb 7200rpm drive should be faster than the other two drives.
Also by the same idea, the 320gb 7200rpm drive should be faster than the 250gb 7200rpm drive.
Unfortunately we have no benchmarks on the 250 or 320gb 7200rpm mobile drives so we cannot give you any firm numbers.

K-TRON

 

Hi Outphaze,

If you are talking about the Seagate 7200.3 ... probably way faster than 320GB, 5400RPM WD Scorpio ... that is if those are the ones you are comapring.

I think I read the specs on Seagate one and it said 80MB/s sustained Transfer Rate ...

G!

 

Seagate is full of lies on their page, do not believe them. They also lie about their power consumption of their drives. They always list their idle power usage, not their maximum power usage. This is why seagate drive labels say like 400-600mah power draw instead of 800-1200mah draw like they should say.

The new drives should average about 58-62mb/sec for the 250gb 7200 and the 320gb 7200 should average about 64-68mb/sec.
They are definitely not doing 80mb/sec on average, cause that is a lie. It is too much of a performance jump.

K-TRON

 

Hi K-Tron,

THANKS as usual ... so, I am not going to read too much inthese guys "Sales Pitch" ...

You are right we should wait and see the actual benchmark data ... you know from the regular "Forum" that do the actual comparison.

G!