Which of These Hard Drives Would You Choose?

Hello,

Just got my DV9700T with a 250 GB 5400 Hitachi drive. I've spent the past few weeks combing over the forums and I'm close to making a decision but need a little help, please.

I'm not sure which particular hard drive I need, if I should just partition off the current drive for my personal files or if I should just go with my current setup and be done with it all.

Here's a little about what I'll be doing with the laptop...

- I edit videos and pictures.

- I have lots of text, HTML and image files for my work.

- I play Oblivion and The Sims 2. With the Sims 2, I'm in and out of lots, which means a bunch to access on the hard drive. I've only had 5400 RPM drives so I don't know how much faster 7200 would be for me.

- I do have an external hard drive for backup.


I'm concerned more about heat than noise with another internal drive but not having a lot of either would be ideal. I know that seems to be a big debate here in the forum.

If I get another internal hard drive, I'd like to take the 250 GB and just put my personal files on there. I'd make the new hard drive have the OS and programs on it.

So I'm thinking if I buy another drive, I'd like to keep it under $80, if possible. $50-60 is really more ideal since I just dropped my money on a new laptop.

I'm considering these 7200 RPM drives:

60GB Hitachi - $63.99

Hitachi 80GB - $79.99

Hitachi 100GB - $86.99


or these 5400 RPM drives:

Toshiba 120GB - $64.99

Seagate 80GB - $59.99 (retail version, not sure what that means)

Western Digital 80GB - $59.99

Hitachi 80GB - $59.99

Hitachi 60GB - $45.99



Thanks for your help!

 

spend a little more and get this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822146229

80gb, 7200 rpm, 5 year warranty, super quiet, under $90

otherwise get the 5400 rpm model.

always buy seagate.

 

I have the 80GB Hitachi 7k200 and it is a very good and fast drive. In your case, I would say use the 250GB and see how much of it you fill up. Who knows, you may need more than 80GB and while having an external is handy, it can be a pain if you constantly need to pack/unpack it to have access to files. If you have 2GB of memory, I'd say spend the money to move to 3GB perhaps instead.

 

while a 7200rpm drive is faster, as you mentioned some concern over, it also generates more heat. to add to that tho, it will also increase power consumption, hence lowering battery life.

I don't have links to the review, but there was a comparison of a new WD Scorpio 5400rpm 320GB HDD that was pitted against other 5400rpm drives and a 160GB 7200rpm drive. for the majority, the 320GB kept pace with the 160GB in everything but burst speed, where it did significantly beat the slower drive. why did the 5400rpm do so well against a 7200rpm drive? because the platters are higher density.

the story is the same in the desktop realm...most of the 500GB to 1TB 7200rpm drives meet or beat the largest WD Raptor 10000rpm in most things but burst read rates, for the same cost. I'd much rather have 1TB then 150GB, so likewise, I would rather have more storage in my laptop.

with Samsung having officially launched a 500GB 5400rpm mobile drive (expected in March I believe), I have a feeling that sucker is gonna hand the current 200GB 7200rpm drives their arses on a platter!

 

For the hard drives sizes your looking @ 60-120gbs if your going to buy a hdd in that size I would go for the 7200rpm drives, there is a large difference in performance. Now once the capacities start to get up higher (say 160gb and above) the line between 7200 and 5400 rpm drives are blurred. I have a WD Scorpio 320gb in my laptop. See the results in this thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=205899

As you can see its just about as fast as the quickest 7200rpm drive but has more storage space. Simple reason for the speed is areal density, closer the data is packed the quicker it can be accessed. Using this idea, going back to the smaller drives, a 100gb 5400rpm drive will be slower than the 100gb 7200rpm drive. So i would go for the 100gb or so 7200rpm drive.

I've used countless numbers of 2.5hdd's 4200 5400 and 7200rpm. Except for the first generation Hitachi 7K60 drives, today's 7200rpm drives don't run any hotter or consume any more power than most 5400rpm drives. When there is a difference it is very small, if you look at battery life MAYBE you would lose at most 10mins. There are alot of other devices in a notebook that drain power quicker than a hdd.

So to sum up out of the drives you have listed i'd go with the 100gb 7200rpm Hitachi drive.

 

Ditto. My 7k200 is super quiet and so fast it intimidates all of the neighborhood laptops

Was $99 on newegg (for 100gb, 7200rpms 16mb cache). Free shipping when I bought it. Highly recommend the hitachi 7k200.

 

Hrm.. sorry, but I think the 250gb you have now will be faster than any of those due to the platter density and it's probably a perpindicular recording drive.

Stick with what you have. I know the new 250gb 5400 rpm drive I put in my MBP was faster than the 100gb 7200 rpm Seagate momentus (7200.1) that I had. Where 5400 starts to loose is when you compare them when the drives are at 50% capacity or even more space used than that. But considering you will have over 100gb before you hit the 50% mark compared to the 45gb on the 100gb drive...

Stick with what you have and do something like a ram upgrade instead.

 

There's a lot of comparative data in the Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD charts.

Also, one needs to look carefully at the model and specs of a HDD before comparing performance. For example, most 160GB 5400rpm HDDs probably have the data a 2 x 80GB platters, some may have the data on 3 sides of 120GB platters while the newest drives include 160GB on just one platter so it would have read / write performance similar to 320GB on 2 platters. [And the impending 500GBs are using 3 platters so they would also have similar performance.]

John