Looking for a new hard drive. Don't want heat problems.

My current laptop's main hdd is a 7200 rpm 200GB Seagate momentus. I have my OS and all my games on it. I'm going to be upgrading to Win 7 pretty soon, and I want to get a new one. I'll still have the OS on the Seagate, but I plan to move all my games and the page file to the other one. I'm looking for one that is 500 GB, doesn't run too hot (current one can get to 50C without cooling pad), and is 7200 rpm. I like WD, but I don't think they have the one I'm looking for. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Edit: I'd also like to know how the WD Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT performs. It's only 320 GB. But I could live with that if it ran cool. It seems pretty well priced.

 

Hitachi 7K500 owns all...

 

Hitachi 7K500 and WD3200BEKT are the fastest drives. Hitachi leads with larger files, WD with smaller.

Personally I would not be concerned about 50 degrees, but if you are you'd better buy a 5400rpm drive. Like the WD5000bevt.

Edit: looking at the specs of your laptop I think any drive you fit in will run hot

 

I dont know about that Phil
In the brief time I owned a 7K500, it ran substantially hotter than my 7K320. That may be solely because I have the single platter 7K320, and had the dual platter 500gb 7k500. More parts = more friction and more heat.

I was actually quite upset with the 7K500, side by side tests in my E1505 showed a minimal performance increase if it even was an increase. I was shocked to see my single platter 7K320 open large CAD files faster than the 7K500, which Hitachi claims to be 35% faster.

Anyways, I returned the 7K500 to zipzoomfly, no restocking fee.

Still running my 7K320 until intel ssd's become cheap


as per the other part of the question, stick with a single platter drive, they run much cooler
If I were in your position, I would opt for a 7K320 160gb drive, or the 160gb version of the WD3200BEKT

K-TRON

 

What you're saying confirm what I said K-Tron:
-If you're really concerned about heat and have a hot laptop you're better off with a 5400rpm drive
-if you want 7200rpm WD3200BEKT is faster with small files (like launching applications), 7K500 is faster with large files.

Since he wants 500GB and is concerned about heat I still think WD5000BEVT is his best choice.

 

The Hitachi 5K500.B uses less power (ie runs cooler) than the WD5000BEVT (I have both).

There are some power consumption measurements at Tom's Hardware Charts, although it doesn't include the HDDs released during the past few months.

John

 

Yeah Hitachi 5K500.b is slightly cooler but also slightly slower.

 

Thats right, sorry
I was just specifiying that the 7K500 isnt as fast as it is bloated to be.
I think that harddrive manufacturers have started to hit a wall in terms of getting any more performance out of 2.5" drives.

And I will second that the 5K500.B runs very cool. I installed one for a friend, and it runs as cool as my single platter 7K320. Great drive.

K-TRON

 

It isn't just heat that I'm concerned about, there's also speed. I wasn't really even considering a 5400 rpm. I think I'm going to go with the WD3200BEKT. I was leaning toward the Hitachi drive, but since I'm going to be reinstalling Vista before I install 7, I won't be taking everything I have with me anyway. A lot of it I'll either leave or dump on an external drive. Also, the WD3200BEKT is significantly cheaper.

Why do you say that? Because the other components generate a lot of heat?

Edit: Oh, and thanks for all your replies.

 

No problem K-tron.

I think you're right about the 7K500 performance. Someone posted the HDtune IOPS benchmarks of 7K500, WD1600BEKT is clearly faster.

It would be really interesting to see a review from one of the well known sites comparing the top dogs in real life performance.

Exactly. Your harddrive may run perfectly cool in another laptop.

Then again, 50 degrees C max. is nothing to be worried about in my opinion. 60C would be.

 

Actually, my cores are in mid to low 30s and my GPU idles between 39 and 46 without cooling pad. My old CPU was in the low 20s, and the hdds were a little cooler then, but not too much. I think it's actually the poor placement of the rubber feet on the bottom. The vent for the hdd bay is covered completely when the laptop is lying flat. It's on the same level as the bottom rubber feet, maybe even a little lower.