pros/cons of 7200rpm HD?

i am going to shortly be ordering an asus s96j with the following configuration


Processor: Intel® Core™ Duo T2500 2.0GHz Processor w/2,048k L2 On-die cache - 667MHz FSB
Arctic Silver 5: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
System Memory: 2,048MB (2 SODIMMS) CORSAIR DDR2/667 Dual Channel Memory
Hard Drive: 100GB SATA/150 Hard Drive at 5,400 RPM
100GB SATA/150 Hitachi Hard Drive at 7,200 RPM
CD/DVD Read/Writer: Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDR Drive w/Softwares
Wireless Networking: Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g
Battery: Smart Li-ion Battery (6-Cell)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional
AC Adapter: Full Range Auto Switching AC Adapter

My question is what kind of impact the different speed hard drives will have on my system. The price difference is about 70 dollars. I will be using the notebook for college, but will also be doing some gaming (WoW, Oblivion). Please help me by listing some pros and cons of getting the better hard drive, thanks.

 

Well the faster drive will be um, slightly faster.

The downside is potentially more heat (think that's about it).

My advice, personally, I'd say not to bother, on my 8204 I've not noticed ANY issues having a drive that is 5400 rpm, I've ripped video from a video camera (which is supposed to be one of the biggest reasons for getting a 7200 drive) without any frames being dropped.

 

Rule of thumb: Your notebook is only going to be as fast as your slowest component installed.

7200rpm drive.

Pros: Faster access,decreases boot time thereby giving faster boots,and whenever a program needs to access the disk,it'll be faster. Programs that need to access the run faster.

Cons: Produces a little bit more heat.

I suggest getting it only if you want it. You could get the 5400 and upgrade later.

 

the other con is the cost. often it costs much more to upgrade to 7200 for less space

 

I upgraded my notebook from an 80GB 5400RPM drive to a 100GB 7200RPM, and here is what I found:

Pros:
-Considerably faster than the 5400, especially when opening programs and booting up.
-Very little heat difference, runs at roughly the same temperature. Heats up a bit more when it is continually accessed but that's about it.
-Still quiet. A bit more pronounced than 5400, but still negligable if the fans are runing

Cons:
-Costs a bit more to upgrade, but completely worth it in my opinion.
-Slightly increased heat, but unless your notebook has hard drive heat issues it is nothing to worry about.

 

Pros:
- Increase speed, every time you access the hard drive

Cons:
- Cost is higher

Myths:
- 7200 rpm drives are hotter. This is not true. In fact, a Hitachi 5400 rpm drive produces as much heat as a Hitachi 7200rpm drive; and the Seagate 7200rpm drives are actually cooler than some drives.
- 7200rpm drives use more power. This is not true. They use an average amount of power. Some drives actually use more and some less.
- 7200rpm drives are louder. This is not true. In fact, the 7200rpm seagates are actually some of the quietest drives. Hitachi is knows as having louder drives, but their 7200rpm drives are no louder than their 5400rpm drives.

 

For $70, I'd think about it....but if it's a tight budget, that'd be the first thing I'd axe.

I've never felt that 7200RPM drives were really necessary, especially in laptop configurations. I agree they're faster...but it just doesn't seem to be dramatically so. If you are building a gaming machine or something, sure...it's a nice thing to have, but still not necessary. It does pick up the pace of some more routine functions, but nothing dramatic.

Overall, it's a positive upgrade...but at the cost? Normally, I wouldn't be able to justify it. For $70, I'd consider it. But if I could bump that hard drive up to a 160GB 5400 RPM drive for the same money...I'd do that in a heart beat instead.

 

I think the 7200 RPM is worth it, its just that much faster.. And like someone stated, no matter how much ram, cpu and video card you have, its only going to work as fast as it can access from the HD, I wish they had 10k RPM drives in laptops. =P

 

Would you say the seagate 7200 rpm is better to get compared to hitatchi?

Got a T60 if that says anything. Also, for me, there's no discussion, i need a harddrive as fast as possible because i make music Got a sample cd with choirs that is 37 gb.

Regards
Raptor

 

Fast probably isn't the limiting factor, size would be more limiting (I would think) my 5400 works just fine for handling raw video, which (unless I'm very much mistaken) is much larger than any raw music format.

 

Pros:
Fast loading/boot/defragmentation/games/etc

Cons:
Expensive.............................................hmm thats about it.

my 7200 RPM hardrive runs cool....so i dont have to complain about heat (the only thing that runs hot in my lappie is the graphics card) its not too loud either......but sometimes i do hear the infamous 'cricket' sound

 

What is the make of your HD? Also which make is generally regarded as better Segate or Hitachi?

 

Hard to say which is the 'best', one (Seagate) is better at like transfer speed at the interface level while the other (Hitachi) is better at at read/write performance.

Personally I think the Hitachi is better currently. Although I also think the Hitachi is a little louder then Seagate model, but its not that much louder. Also keep in mind the warranty differ, Hitachi is 3 years and Seagate is 5 years. (In honesty I don't think the warranty matters much, as not a lot of people keep the same computer for 3 years, and in addition the newer perpendicular HD coming out soon as well.)

 

mine is a Hitachi

 

Perpendicular recording's been available. This article mentions some newer releases from Seagate on that front, in the laptop market...and the cool new hybrids.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1973122,00.asp

 

The seagates are known to be quieter and cooler, but they are also more expensive. The Hitachi is consistently faster that the Seagate.

I prefer the Hitachi.

 

Seagate is the most expensive one if we compare with the same capacity and spec., may be before of their 5 yrs warranty. They still only support ATA100 for EIDE, but Maxtor can support up to ATA133 for EIDE. A few months ago, Seagate announced that they take over Maxtor's brand. Just like that Hitachi brough IBM's HD a few yrs ago.

 

Just a little bit correction, ATA133 only for 3.5" HD, it is not 2.5" laptop HD. 2.5" laptop HD(PATA) only support up to 100MBps.

 

Everyones pimping 7200 drives. Anyone know the difference for the access times between the two drives ? After all, isnt access time the dominant component for loading programs ? I belive the ratio will not be as high as 7200/5400

 

What about power consumption? My understanding is that a 7200rpm would take more power and thus lower battery time. Anyone have any experience comparing the battery time before and after a 5400 to 7200rpm upgrade?

 

7200RPM hard drives have the same power specification as 5400RPM drives. However, the battery life with a 7200RPM drive will be marginally less (perhaps a few minutes) in comparison to a laptop with a 5400RPM drive because the spin-up time for a 7200RPM drive is longer when the machine is first turned on.

 

Can someone actually do the HDtach test and measure the max, min and avg transfer rate on UDMA or SATA 7200rpm disk? Do the quick 8mb test.
My 5400 reads 33, 22 and 28 MB/s. I wonder how faster is 7200.


Thanks,

Ivan

 

I've been complemplating another upgrade around my Birthday involving a bigger faster HD for my cute little Dell. I've been wondering about the effects on battery life myself. But a friend of my tells me there won't be much of one. Perphaps I'll try benchmaking battery life if I do this upgrade before and after to give an idea of how much of difference there is between 5400 and 7200rpm drives. I don't know how true it would be. MobileMeter nearly made me cry the other day when I found my battery to be at 9% wear already.

 

My 7200rpm Hitachi 7k80 is 49, 23, 37.5 MB/s.

For those who also want to test:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

 

100gb Seagate 7200.1 shows an average read of 40.4MB/sec. The max looks to be a bit over 50MB/sec, and the min at about 26MB/sec. The min/max readings come from the graph, so the numbers aren't exact -- but they're close.

 

Do 7200rpm drives have higher failure rates than 5400rpm drives?

If they do, I think it is safe to stick with 5400rpm drives as the difference in performance for most people is marginal.

 

does anyone know what company hard drives Hp uses? for all of their hard drives
(5400, 7200, duo 5400's)

 

Thanks people,

Ivan

 

They use all different brands. It depends on the supply contract at the assemply point. I have seen a lot of Fujitsu and Toshibas in HP products.

 

I just bought a D820, and since I got the fastest processor, RAM, and graphics card I figured I might as well get the fastest hard drive, so if your getting a high end computer you might as well get the best HD you can get

 

On the issue of battery life, I would assume that the 5400 and the 7200 would be equal because, although the 5400 has lower consumption, it would spin longer than the 7200, depending upon the process one is doing.

If there's any data, I'd like to see it, but for the moment, I'm going to assume I'm right ;-).

 

Sounds logical, so the only difference is better performance with the 7200.

 

ok i have a sony sz 160 with a 5400 100gb drive. i need at least a 120 but would love a 160 i would also love 7200rpm. what are the current maximum speeds (7200-100gb) and size that will fit in my notebook? ps i did read this whole forum

 

Huge Impact, My Comp came with a 5400 rpm drive i used it for a while now i bought at 7200 wd 80gig drive, it runs cooler because it isnt being accessed half as much, people say there louder, I have noticed no difference even with the silent technology stuff turned off. Things mint.

 

you will see great difference between the 7200 and the 5400. trust me. if you want to test, try to run 1 big executable archive file (winzip but with .exe to be executable), the 7200 just load the mount point of the file and will load the rest as the installation goes on, while the 5400 tries to unzip all the file in that big zip file and then redo the unzipping as the installation goes on. therefore it takes ages.

the biggest difference between laptop and desktop imho is the hdd. since the size of the laptop is limited and is designed to be mobile, manufacturers tend to decrease the disc's rotation speed. and thats why 7200 hdds are known to have more problems than the 5400 and 4200, cuz they run faster.

 

What problems of 7200rpm drives are you referring to?

 

Failure rates?

I don't know, I've had 3 7200 RPM 2.5" drives and haven't had any problems with any of them.

Personally I think they made the drives slower (4200/5400) for power consumption issues. But as technology is refined/improved, they are able to increase the speed for negligible amounts of power increase and sound difference.

It would be interesting to see a 10k RPM 2.5" drive, but I wouldn't hold my breath for that. They'll really run into noise/power issues on that since the focus of 2.5" drives is low power and sound. I think they won't make a 10k RPM, instead move onto solid state (NAND/flash) hard drive, perpendicular and the hybrid versions that are showing up now.

 

at the moment we are talking about maximum 100gb at 7200 and 160 at 5400 right?

 

Yes you can buy 100GB 7200rpm drives. Seagate and Hitachi both do them.. Yes if you buy a notebook drive it will fit. As long as you know how to dismantle your Sony SZ with care then there should be no problems swapping it out. The Seagate 160GB perpendicular drive is a good drive and I wouldn't go down to 100GB for the performance increase. The 160GB carries a premium too..

Oh and make sure you buy the correct type of notebook hard drive whether its SATA or PATA. I'm not sure what your model uses.

 

i just checked cnet and it seems like the travelstar has better specs. any thoughts on seagate vs. hitachi

 

the sz is sata

 

I'm ordering a hpdv8000t tomorrow and I was goign to rock the dual 100 gigger 5400 rpm, but after reading this I might stick with the 100 gig 7200 rpm. What kind of things would benefit from this. I will be using the whole Adobe Creative Suite (except GoLive), Studio 8, Solidworks, and some video editing with production studio. I like the fact that I could have a massive 200 gigs of HD space, but here is another thing to look at for me. RUNNING SCRATCH DISKS. I hear that helps photoshop performance, but what about regular use? Does the 7200 rpm mostly help with boot up of the system and programs? Thanks for your help

Paul

 

This is an interesting read comparing the Momentus 7200.1, Momentus 5400.2, Travelstar 7K100, and Travelstar 5K100 drives.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/mobile-hdds/index.x?pg=1

 

dude get the mac pro. it will do all that and more

 

Would it be better to spend $100 when ordering to upgrade my hardrive from 100g-5400 to 100g-7200 OR to spend that same $100 to upgrade from 1 gig of DDR2/667 ram to two gigs of DDR2/667? I know both can be upgraded later, the ram would be easier, however there may be much much better solutions to HD's in the near future-say next year or so.

 

Does upgrading the HD yourself do anything to the warranty? (for a toshiba)

 

7200rpm FTW! 5400rpm just doesn't do it for me.

 

There is no point getting a lot of RAM if the RAM cannot access data quickly from the HDD in the first place. I recommened getting the 7200rpm HDD upgrade. You will notice a significant speed diffference when gaming and using intensive programs. After the HDD upgrade, I don't really think a RAM upgrade is totally beneficial. IF, after you have put the 7200rpm drive in and you still want a little more "boost" you can then buy more RAM.

 

to the original post topic it seems my 7200 rpm harddrive runs a good 5 - / + degrees warmer than my 5400 that came with the notebook :/

 

I suggest asking a toshiba tech support agent, they should be able to check easily. It likely veries by model, some may have an easy acess door that comes off with one sqrew, and be considered user modifyible like ram, or it may be more complex like my sony v505, and require taking off most of the keyboard/wrist rest assembly plus some.