Need 5400rpm or 7200rpm hard drive suggestions

I am leaning more toward a 5400rpm hard drive due to noise, heat and price concerns. I am looking for 60-80GB and want something that will last. This is for a Thinkpad X31.

I am upgrading because I gave away my old external hard drive and will be moving the 40GB 4200RPM hard drive in the X31 to the external enclosure.

 

Western Digital Scorpio. Best hard drives - extremely quiet, no clicking. Can't even hear a sound in a dead quiet room.

I have an 80GB 5400RPM one with an 8MB cache. Runs really cool. Beautiful drive.

I've had Hitachi's - well made, but hot and 'clickety', Toshiba's - junk - Samsung in my current laptop - pretty quiet, however there is clicking, and it runs a bit warm . .

All comes down to the quality of components. That said, WD is the best in my opinion.

 

Thanks Chazman. I see samsung has some drives with 8mb of cache. Would this be noticeable from a speed and battery life stand point?

Edit-Sorry I ment 16mb of cache. It looks as if 8 is becomming the standard.

 

I don't think that a 2MB cache vs. an 8MB would have any noticable effect on battery life. Definitely get the 8MB version for best performance, it's quite noticable between 2MB and 8MB.

 

i got westerndigital runnin my server 24/7 for bout 2 years now with no interruptions or failures so that scorpio ought to be good...

8MB is on a chip that takes lil more power than an led to best of my knowlege

 

From zipzoomfly.com-

Western Digital Scorpio WD600VE 60GB Ultra ATA 2.5in 5400RPM Mobile Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer- $92.50 or $1.54 per GB

Western Digital Scorpio WD800VE 80GB Ultra ATA 2.5in 5400RPM Mobile Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer-$120.90 or $1.51 per GB

Newegg.com-
TOSHIBA MK6026GAXB 60GB 5400 RPM ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM Cache: 16MB- $99.99 or 1.67 per GB
I only listed because it has 16MB of cache.

 

Toshiba's are really bad, steer clear by all means. There is no practical difference between an 8MB and a 16MB cache to my knowledge, and what I have heard people say; it might be useful in 7200RPM drives, but even then, 8MB is just fine.

 

I will tell you one thing. I ordered my M60 direct from Toshiba, with the 60GB 5400 rpm drive in it, and guess what they stuck in it? Hitachi and what's that mean........well...I'll let you decide.

Matt

(p.s. they don't trust their own components)

 

I have Toshiba 5400RPM 16MB cache version drive, which I think reasonble fast. But Frankly I have not seen much advantage because of 16MB cache. Toshiba new version are little better at power consumption and heat, but still not top teir.

Personally I think, you should look for Seagate new version 60GB 5400RPM drive. This is really good, low power, less heat and more performance because of high-density single platter design.

And also single platters design generally produce little less heat, consumes little less power( esp while spinup)

 

If this design proves to be reliable in the long haul, I think it will become the new standard. I just hope that it is at least as reliable as the current hard drives. It seems to be better all around, so that could close the gap a bit between desktop and notebook hard drives.

They might be onto something.

 

Are these the "Momentus" drives?

 

You have to make my decision harder don't you?

So if I am understanding everyone correctly it seems I should get the proven and efficient Western Digital or go with the new design Seagate with a platform more hard drives could potentially follow if it proves reliable?