hard drives 4200, 5400, 7200 rpm how much better ir one to another

Hello everyone, ill write this post to know how much important are the speed of the disc over the general performance of the laptop.

I mean if anyone can explain in real world experiencie the advantages of these several speed and how much improve the specs and if the user really notes the differences using web browsing burn dvd, typing docs. thx you to al and this forum, maybe the most complete real review of notebook around

 

Always get at least a 5,400rpm HDD.

If you want faster load times, write times, ect get the 7,200rpm.

These is not much of a difference between 5,400rpm to 7,200rpm but it depends on the usage.

However there is a large difference between a 4,200rpm and 5,400rpm/7,200rpm HDD's.

Summary: Stay away from 4,200rpm HDD's.

 

I second that!!! 4200rpm drives suck!! (I have both)

 

The only advantage I can think of in using a a 4200 RPM drive is that you can get higher capacity drives. I think the highest for a 4200 is like 200gb right now, and only around 120 for the 7200. This in turn, might actually compensate for a little of the lower speed because the information is packed more densely on the drive platter...thus the drive won't have to spin as much to read a set of data.

But in any case...usually go for the higher speeds.

 

There is a lot of information on this site on the topic, I would suggest doing a search first and coming back with some more specific questions if you're still uncertain.

Good luck!

 

Not true!

4200rpm drives have several advantages. Current generation 4200rpm drives are cheaper, run cooler, use less power and are quieter. They are also widely available. If a person is on a tight budget or is especially concerned with thermals and/or power ussage, a 4200rpm drive can be a good option.

That being said, performance does take a hit.

 

5400/7200 are drives that are good in performance... you can have faster load times in your apps and boot... 4200 rpms are enough for those who just do simple tasks in their comp, want to save battery life and doesn't want so much heat on their drives.....

 

I've played games on a 4200RPM drive. It's not too painful, but nowhere near as nice as a 5400RPM or 7200RPM. If you do go 4200RPM, get as high a capacity as you can, because that will help offset some of the performance loss from the lower speed. It WON'T save you any battery life or anything, though.

 

I also have the same question. I bought an acer 5100 (which is similar to acer 5102), it come with a TL50 CPU, 2G of ram and an Hitache 120G 4200rpm(8M cache) hard drive. Initial I worried about the harddrive will be a big performance bottleneck (which is true for most notebooks), but it terms out to be not that bad. The laptop runs pretty smooth in everyday applications and not very slow in windows XP start up. Previously I only used 20G 4200rpm, 40G 4200rpm, and a Hitache 80G 7200rpm hard drive in laptop, my feeling is that this one performances noticebly slower than 7200rpm one, but also much faster than my old small 4200rpm harddrives.

I then runned HD tune, it turnes out to give me a average transfer rate 26.5Mb/s (min 8.6MB/s, max 34.7Mb/s) and access time 19.8ms, if you compare it to some 5400rpm drive(e.g the toshiba 120G 5400rpm, http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3563), the average transfer rate is only 2.4MB/s slower and access time is 2.7ms slower, which is not a big difference I think although I personally never used a 5400rpm one. The minimum rate is a big difference though. And compare to a smaller 5400rpm the difference is probably even smaller (it is sometimes even faster in transfer rate compare to some smaller 5400rpm hard drive in HD tune). So my opionion is get a 5400rpm or 7200rpm if you can, but don't rule out large 4200rpm drive when you get a deal . I also found that keep your windows clean and defragment your hard drive will help a lot for keeping your harddrive speed.

 

What do you people think about this ( http://www.dukes.org.yu/hdtune.jpg) HD Tune result of an 4200rpm 300GB hard drive, from a Toshiba Satellite P200-14H laptop? It seems to be very hot, and has very slow access time. Though, CPU usage is very low.

 

Your wrong , a 4200 rpm 200gb hdd peforms alot better than alot of 100 gb 5400 and 100 gb 7200 rpm ones because of the plates with less movement of the head.

 

What about result numbers, are they OK? When comparing to results from some recent reviews of notebooks with 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives i find access time to be much higher and transfer rates to be lower.

 

One of the best comparisons of .2.5" HDDs is the Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD charts which have results for a range of tests.

The current 250GB 5400rpm and 200GB 7200rpm HDDs have peak data transfer rates of ~60MB/s dropping to 30MB/s (see HDtune results elsewhere in this forum). 7200rpm will always give the best access times and 4200rpm the worst.

One-off temperature measurements are not a good indicator. They depend on the ambient temperature and the design of individual computers. I don't think HDtune's CPU utilisation is a good indicator of the HDD performance - I believe it is a measure of overall CPU utilisation during the test so it includes other processes.

Also note that some of the high capacity 300GB HDDs are 12.5mm (1/2") thickness and will not fit into the majority of notebooks.

John

 

Some 4200rpm drives outperform 5400rpm drives.
Some 5400rpm drives outperform 7200rpm drives.

So really rotational speed is an unreliable way of predicting real life performance.

If you want to know how any specific drive performs it is better to check on sites like:
www.Storagereview.com
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html (like John mentioned)
www.anandtech.com
http://bestenliste.pc-professionell.eu/Bestenliste.aspx?Id=38
http://www.chip.de/perl/tpdb/tpdb_out.pl

 

I have recently made the move from desktop to laptop. I really notice the difference between the 5400 and the 7200, specifically for loading applications and files. My 5400 gives me a peak transfer rate of 45Mb/s. While the drop in performance is tolerable, I am still looking to upgrade the drive. Hopefully more snappy Hybrid 5400's are on the way soon.

 

Think 5400s are the sweet spot. Considering a quality 5400 rpm often outperforms a 7200 as someone else posted its often not enough to justify the big price difference between the two. I love my 5400 seagate because it is a great combination of proper speed, heat, and energy usage.