harddrives

Is it better to have a 100gb 5400 or a 60/80 gb 7200rpm?

 

Well, the rotor speeds have a good amount of influence on the performance of hard drive. The 7200rpm HDD would be faster but the 5400rpm HDD's arent too far behind.

These 2 reviews/comparisions should give you a good idea on the performance...
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-315-1.htm
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=80&part=glance

 

How much space do you need ? Hard drive space has a lot in common with memory (and a lot of things)--if you don't use it, it does you no good.

 

It all depends on your needs. If you're using your notebook for gaming and/or as a desktop replacement then the faster (7200) would probably be better seeing as you will get faster load/seek times and all that stuff. But the 5400 rpm hdd will most likely be quieter and often (*note i said often) use less power if you want the mobility, although a 4200 might be your best choice. There is a good guide on Laptop Logic about which harddrives to go with and it has data to backup each case. If you have trouble following it just read the summaries and each graph has a nice little guide to it ("Longer is better." and the like) But you will notice that performance and differences between the 5400 and 7200 that they tested weren't that much.

 

Now that the price difference isn't so huge, I personally would opt for the 7200RPM. The perfromance difference is noticeable to me although not as big as 4200RPM to 5400RPM.

 

As posted, depends on your needs. If you're video editing, it will definitely make a huge difference if you have the 7200RPM drive. Also, it will help if you have a lot of applications where you need to load a lot of data - photo editing, games, etc.

If you don't need the extra space, I'm recommending the 7200RPM drive.