battery life & 5400 vs. 7200 rpm HDD

My coworkers think that a 7200RPM HDD sucks down more power than an equivalently sized 5400RPM drive, shortening battery life. Does anybody have any official information or real world experience with this? In particular, I'm interested in this issue in conjuction with the new Latitude D620.

thanks.

 

i have a E1505 with the 5400 Rpm and my friend has almost the same computer with the 7200. when running a virus scan from full battery to dead, i get about 5 hours to his 4 and when gaming i get 3.5 hours to his 3. not huge differences but it was enough to make me happy with my decision

 

I have used both of my two laptops with 5400 and 7200 RPM drives, and there is no real world difference in my opinion. I use batteries when I am at school or at home and want to be on the couch. Those times I am either surfing or working on a paper. When doing those, the HDD isn't super important, and you probably won't access it enough to make a difference. Most 7200 RPMers are advertised to have similar power usages to 5400 RPMers, so get what makes you happier. I saw a maximum of 20 minutes difference, and that was with a 5 hour battery time, instead of 5 hours and 20 minutes.

 

Thanks for the info. Since the type of stuff I do involves a lot of disk access, but a potential 33% faster throughput is not too important, I think I'll opt for 5400RPM. Thanks for the input.

 

Both 5400RPM and 7200RPM drives have the same power specification, and should have very little difference in battery life. The only real reason you'll get a few minutes off with the 7200 is because it takes longer to 'spin-up' when you turn the machine on vs. the 5400RPM drive.

 

Could you elucidate more on this? Or point out good links!
Do you mean more time=more power draw to S-U 7200, thus < battery?
I thought I saw settings in my BIOS for HDD spin up or spin down. But as I knew nada on this topic, thought it was better to leave as is.

 

Yeup it won't make a huge difference depending on which drive you get of course.

How about getting yourself a 5400rpm western digital scorpio? Its power consumption is similar to that of a 4200rpm harddrive yet it performs on par with all the other 5400rpm drives.