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    Will a 7200 rpm hardrive be faster than a 5400 rpm drive?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by nickp45, Oct 12, 2008.

  1. nickp45

    nickp45 Newbie

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    I've got a dell inspiron 6400 and I love it. I've maxed out the memory to 2gb of ram but I want to make it faster if I upgrade from a 5400 rpm hardrive to a 7200rpm hardrive will I really notice a speed improvement?

    Nick Patton
    [email protected]
     
    nickp45, Oct 12, 2008
    #1
  2. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    As long as the capacity of the drives are the same and the drives were made in around the same time period, then the 7200 RPM will be faster than the 5400 one.
     
    Lithus, Oct 12, 2008
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  3. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    That depends on what you are comparing with what. The XP startup test in PCMark05 is one measure of performance. You can see some results at Tom's Hardware.

    Or consider the WD5000BEVT which is the fastest of the 5400rpm HDDs and runs quite cool.

    However, you are more likely to see a performance difference by tweaking the Windows installation of whatever you are running.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Oct 12, 2008
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  4. nickp45

    nickp45 Newbie

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    John I'm running vista home basic and want faster boot-up times. I'm play games and am looking for faster load times of saved games and the like
     
    nickp45, Oct 12, 2008
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  5. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    How much RAM do you have at the moment? I would recommend 3GB.

    I would also recommend using hibernation instead of shutting the computer down.

    When you have done both of those you can look at the benchmark results for the XP startup performance to see the relative difference you might get. That test is part of PCMark05 which you can download and run to get the result for your current computer.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Oct 12, 2008
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  6. Leon

    Leon Notebook Deity

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    Alright. This is what you do. Take a VelociRaptor hard drive, take off the casing and jam it into your computer. Taa-daa. Fastest drive on earth (for consumers). [You know, since taking off the casing makes it a 2.5 inch drive. This might actually work with a very good cooling system.]
     
    Leon, Oct 12, 2008
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  7. Nikolas

    Nikolas Notebook Guru

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    I don't think it's a good idea to use a naked velociraptor inside a notebook...
    It will probably fry it...
     
    Nikolas, Oct 12, 2008
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  8. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    no Leon, that will not work in a inspiron 6400. The velociraptor requires a 12volt line, which no laptop has enough current to supply the drive.
    I have the E1505, which is identical to the i6400, and I just recently upgraded from the seagate 5400.3 160gb 5400rpm drive to the Hitachi 7K320 drive and I noticed about 20 seconds faster boot times.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Oct 12, 2008
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  9. Michel.K

    Michel.K 167WAISIQ

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    Only problem besides it requires 12v is that it's 15mm thick! A standard 2.5" is 9.5mm thick and runs on 5v.

    Though i don't think cooling would be a problem, it runs quite cool without the sink of what i've seen on a review..


    EDIT: I'm gonna try it someday, just because i have the space for a 15mm thick HDD :D Only problem is to get 12v.
     
    Michel.K, Oct 12, 2008
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  10. Leon

    Leon Notebook Deity

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    Aww. By the way. I was kidding. :p
     
    Leon, Oct 12, 2008
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  11. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    We regulars knew that, but would the OP? Any more posts like that and you can look forward to the special prize called negative rep. :(

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Oct 12, 2008
    #11