Notebook Hard Drive 7200 vs 5400 rpm

im about to purchase a lenovo thinkpad t61p. is it worth the money to upgrade to a 7200 rpm drive for the ammount of increased performance? Also, how much will the 7200 rpm drive effect the battery life oposed to a 5400 rpm drive?

 

No it is not worth it to go for the 7200rpm drive.
If you are able to purchase a 250gb or 320gb 5400rpm drive for less than the 7200rpm drive, go with one of the 5400rpm drives. Both 5400rpm drives have a high data density which means that more data is crammed into the same amount of space. So when the head of the drive reads the data from a sector, more data can be read, and thus the drive will run faster.
A 320gb 5400rpm will give you near identical performance to a 200gb 7200rpm drive.
A 250gb 5400rpm drive will give you near performance as a 160gb 7200rpm drive.

You can always upgrade your harddrive to whatever sata harddrive other than the hitachi 5k500 in the future. The 5k500 is a 12.5mm thick drive, so it will not fit.

K-TRON

 

thans alot! but im not planning on exceding 200gb, too much money.....still same thing? im basically between a 160 at either speed with $25 moer for the 7200 rpm drive.

 

The 160gb 5400rpm drive will most likely use two platters, which will make the drive perform around 38mb/sec
The 160gb 7200rpm drive will perform around 44-46mb/sec

If you are going to be doing a lot of video editing, photo editing I would get the 7200rpm drive, but if you are more concerned with battery life, get the 5400rpm one.

K-TRON

 

exactly how much is the upgrade cost to go to 7200rpm at the same sizes? It may be worth it for you to just go with the 5400rpm drive and buy your own 7200rpm drive and put it in afterwards (if you're ok with doing this). Then you can put the 5400rpm drive in an external enclosure.

 

In my opinion it is. As long as you go for a 200GB Hitachi 7K200 or 320GB 7200rpm you will outperform any 5400rpm HDD on the market.

The reason why some people do not agree with that, is that they are using synthetic benchmarks like HDTune, and therefor believe it does not really matter.

In reality it does matter, and any benchmarks that measures real life performance will show the difference.

 

Well the most demanding thing im gonna be doing is gaming (probaly mostly bf2), and i can deal with a little extra loading time while im not at my desktop. Plus i figure the gpu will be amking enough heat as it is, i might want to watch how much heat im puttin out.....

thanks for your help

 

For gaming there are some benchmarks here:
http://www.storagereview.com/Hitachi250WD320.sr?page=0,3

Heat is not a problem afaik.

What it comes down to imo:
If you want the best performance: Hitachi 7K320 or WD Black Scorpio 320GB
If you want very good performance: Hitachi 7K200 200GB
If you want good performance at the lowest price: WD 320GB Scorpio 5400rpm

 

the 160gb 5400rpm drive on my laptop
surprisingly good.

 

Wow - I have that same drive but not that performance. Wonder why??

 

Amount of process running in the background can influence HDTune a lot. Maybe that's it?

 

Maybe - I don't know enough to know better!

 

Have you tried pressing Ctrl-alt-del to see how many process you have running?
Sony is notorious for having too much bloatware installed.

 

I did a clean install and only have a minimum of Sony software even loaded at all. I have 58-63 process running at a time and I think I ran that test with less about 3 weeks ago.

 

That's not too bad. Not very good either but it should not be a problem.

You may want to try running HD Tune two more times to see if you get different results.

I've noticed you guys have a different type harddrive. One ends with 21AS, the other with 27AS so that might be it.

 

If you want near-infinite (ok so this might be an exaggeration) performance: Mtron, Samsung, Memoright, OCZ, Geil, or Imation SSD.

 

Duh, I am sure that makes a difference - I did not look close enough in the beginning.

 

Yep you're right. Forgot about that.

 

haha, a ssd is a little outta my budget, i just ordered my laptop today. here it is, tell me what you all think. and again, thanx for your help!

ThinkPad T61 15 Widescreen - 1 Yr Depot Warranty 6459CTO $1,481.24
-Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T8300 (2.4GHz 800MHz 3MBL2)
-Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista Business 64 1
-Operating System Language: Genuine Windows Vista Business 64 - US English
-Display Panel: 15.4 WSXGA+ TFT
-System graphics: NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (256MB Open GL)
-Total memory: 4 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
-Keyboards: Keyboard US English
-Pointing Device: UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader
-Hard Drive: 160GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
-Optical device: CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo 24X/24X/24X/8X Max, Ultrabay Slim
-System expansion slots: PC Card Slot & Express Card Slot
-Card Reader: 4 in 1 Media Card Reader
-Wireless cards: Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (supporting Centrino Pro)
-Battery: 9 cell Li-Ion Battery
-Power cord : Country Pack North America
-Language Pack: Language Pack US Englis

 

Get rid of the 4 GB of ram and go for 1 GB 1 DIMM. Buy the rest from Newegg, will save you a lot of money.

 

damm, we almost got the same computer. i just didnt think it was woth the money to upgrade the cpu w/ what i am gonna be doing... Well i am very good with desktop hardware, but i never owned a notebook b4 and i didnt want to mess anything up just yet by taking it apart so im just gonna let the factory take care of dealing with the guts and ill enjoy the finished product lol

 

I understand your feelings but you are wasting your money for nothing. You could take that money and put it toward the higher processor. The RAM install is very easy and can be done with a basic screwdriver. It is up to you....