hard drive: 4200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm

can you really tell the differance between a 4200 rpm hard drive and a 5400 rpm one? if so, how noticeable is the differance?

 

Noticeable? Sure... how noticeable? Hmm that depends on what you do.

Booting up alone will be rather noticeable. After that it depends on the programs you load.

There are comparisons out there in regards to 4200, 5400 and 7200 RPM drives. Should take a look, makes for a good read.

Why do you ask? Plan to upgrade your notebook's current 4200 RPM drive? Or perhaps considering a new laptop and wondering to go with 4200 or 5400?

 

4200rpm drivers are rather old and slow, the jump to 5400 prooves rather worth it. 5400 is the middle mark right now its higher performance than 4200 without the "performance" premium. Going to 7200 is a diffrent story the jump in performance is not quite as big as from 4200 --> 5400 but the cost is rather large since its the leading edge technology.

So is it worth it?? id say yes since the cost of 5400 shouldnt be much if any more than 4200 and the hdd on a notebook is the "bottleneck" (slowest part of the system making every thing else run slower)

The best thing you can do if you want the highest possible performance, best price, and alot of storage is pick up a 160gb or higher 5400rpm drive.

There performance is nearly on par with a 7200rpm drive due to the higher data density, but the cost is much less for how much storage you recieve.

 

The difference is there.
And your computer will be only as fast as its slowest component, which is the harddrive.

 

i am going to hijack the thread real quick..

what do you all think about using a 4200 for the purpose of conserving battery life? all other things equal, a 4200 rpm drive should use less power than a 5400, therefore your battery will last longer..

 

Not so much, 5400 incorporate newer technologies, and may use less or equal amounts of power.

thats why the speed boost from 4200 to 5400 is pretty big even tho its only 1200rpm while the speed boost from 5400 to 7200 is not so big even tho its 1800rpm diffrence.

Somtimes theres more behind it than the obviouls. There are certian 7200rpm drives out there that supposedly use almost the same amount of power as the 5400's even. Just due to some new tech.

If you were really worried about the battery life so much as to hold back on an upgrade from 4200 to 5400 then you should be looking into SSD's they use even less power almost 1/2 the power of a 4200 drive.

 

For some real measurements, look at the Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD charts.

In general 4200rpm is slower and uses less power than 5400prm, but the higher the capacity, the faster the transfer rate. And each new generation of HDD, of whatever speed, tends to use less power than the previous generation (but Digit Life weren't impressed by power consumption the WD 160GB). Also note that SATA uses more power on idle than PATA. Such is progress!

John

 

Lots of threads with comparison results. Try the search option and you will find all your answers.

 

when i said all things equal, i meant a 4200 rpm drive that is the newest generation, platter density, cache, etc..

i guess the best thing to do though is to just find the one with the lowest overall power draw regardless of speed..