Is 200GB 4200rpm hard drive bad?

I've got a really good deal on a "scratched" Dell E1705 from the outlet site. It has a great spec but has a 200GB 4200 rpm hard drive. Is this really slow? Can I use an external hard drive if I want faster?

Machine is to be mainly used for internet, music, photos, video (not video editing), word processing.

Spec
T7200 core 2 duo
8X DVD/RW
2048MB 667MHz ram
200GB hard drive
17" ultrasharp WUXGA screen
256MB NVDIA Geforce Go 7900 GS graphics
Vista home premium

Thanks for any advice.

 

For the tasks you mention, a 4200rpm should be fine. However, if you want Windows to boot faster, or for programs to load quicker, you'll find the 4200rpm to be a bottleneck.

 

You can always sell that and buy a smaller but faster drive. Unless you need all that space, I suggest you get a faster drive as it will speed up ur machine.

 

Sounds like a decent machine. I agree that the 200GB 4200RPM drive should be fine for most uses; its high platter density does compensate somewhat for the low RPMs.

Remember, you can always replace the hard drive later on. You could turn that 200GB drive into a great 2.5" portable external hard drive.

 

There was a recent post here that showed faster transfer rates on the 200 GB 4200 than 80-120 GB 5400 drives, although as access times will be slower. Just avoid 100 GB 4200 drives, very slow.

 

It would be the ideal drive to put in an external case.

Perhaps replace it with the new 160 gb 7200 rpm hd

 

I've only seen external cases support 100GB drives, which is specifically why I got the 100GB drive with my machine, then upgraded to the 160 that I have in there now, and have the 100GB in an external enclosure. Don't count on an external enclosure accessing 200GB.

But I agree with everyone above. I used to have a 4200RPM 60GB drive in my old laptop... I even gamed on it. It will NOT ruin your experience. The only time you'll wish it was faster is if you're copying big files around.

 

I'm with Pitabred on this one; I used to have a 40GB 4200RPM HDD. I played CSS and HL2 without any problems.

 

I'd have to disagree, my upgrade from a 4200 drive to a 7200 drive made world of difference for gaming, more than halved load times and improved gameplay overall. Better gameplay had to do also with my low ram (512 MB), and increasing ram would've helped that too, but the upgrade was absolutely worth it for gaming, and even general use.

 

I never said it didn't make a difference. But a 4200RPM drive is still VERY usable, especially at higher densities. Seek times go down, but loading time on games will not change much if your drive is properly defragged. A 200GB drive is VERY dense, so it will read quite quickly even at lower RPM's.

Think about a DVD vs. a CD. A DVD spins at between 570 and 1600RPM's. A CD spins at around 200-500RPM. Very similar rotation speeds, yet a DVD holds a lot more data, and reads it off MUCH faster (a 2 hour movie + 5.1 surround sound vs. a 1 hour music piece). That's because the data is denser. Same principle for these hard drives.

 

I understand, I did note above that the 200 GB 4200 has a faster than the lower density 5400 rpm drives at copying large files. I was referring more to the 60 GB unit you played on - definitely would drive me nuts waiting, but I tend to be an impatient kind of person.

I'd agree that there should be no concerns about using the 200 GB 4200 drive for the most part, and it can always be converted later to external storage.