pros/cons of 7200rpm HD?

After reading about the pros & cons posted, here I'm convinced that upgrading my HDD from 5400 to 7200 would benefit me.

 

It all depends on what applications or games he is running as to which will be more beneficial. When you have more RAM then the hard drive is being accessed less after the data is loaded into the RAM. When you have a graphics card that uses shared memory then it helps to have more RAM for gaming.

 

http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=104&part=full&page=1

 

At a given speed (5400 or 7200rpm) bigger capacity/newer drives often (but not always) have faster transfer rates because the areal density is higher.

If the choice at a similar price is between a smaller 7200rpm drive (eg.100GB) and a larger 5400rpm drive (eg.160GB) then the 5400rpm drive could be almost the same speed as far as transfer rate is concerned, especially if it's one of the new perpendicular recording 160GB drives

Obviously the access time will be faster on a 7200rpm drive, but this isn't usually the limiting factor for big files (where speed does matter).

 

Anybody know about this issue:

I have a stock Acer Ferrari 3200 and want to replace my dead 4200rpm 80GB Toshiba ATA100 with a 7200rpm 100GB HDD, either the Seagate or the Hitachi model. However I have heard that the controller on this machine will not support any speed higher than 4200rpm and any size larger than 100GB. I have also checked with an Acer rep and they don't guarantee that the controller will work with the upgrade I want to do.

Has anybody done this upgrade with the Ferrari 3200 or know anything about this issue? Thanks.

 

i suggest you post this question in the Acer forum as you will get more answers there

 

Are there any specific models out there with perpendicular recording 160GB drives?

Has anyone compared video editing on 5400RPM and 7200RPM drives. Some video editing softwares by default, require 7200RPM drives (even if larger perpendicular recording 160GB drives are faster). Any workaround on this issue ?

BGeo

 

Any of the 2.5" drives you will see larger then 120GB use perpendicular recording . Seagate and Hitachi both have 160GB models as well as Seagate will be releasing a new 200GB model.

What video editing software requires you to have a 7200rpm drive in order to use it?

 

100GB Hard Drive (7200RPM

or
120GB Hard Drive (5400RPM)

 

If you want to have more room, go for the 120 GB.

Both of these drives have simular power consumption. If you are just an average user, you wont notice any difference with the 7200.

JC

 

thanks for the info

 

Neither is better or worse. They are simply different. The 100gb, 7200rpm drive will be faster. The 120gb, 5400rpm has more space. You choose which is better for you, a bit more space or a bit more speed.

 

i'd get the 100gb 7200 rpm

for 20 gb less, your HD will have much faster seek times

depends if you want your HD for gaming (then get the 7200) or work (get the 120gb 5400 then)

 

Edson, merged your thread with this one.

 

ok well im reading this and im just wondering why i dont see any difference beside temp b/c i had a 40gig 4200rpm drive and i upgraded to a 80gig 7200 rpm drive and i seriosly dont see any difference besides the access time in hd tune (only like 3ms at that) so maybe some help or answers...and btw when i restart my computer it will play the windows logon music and it will show my background image but will not load task bar or icons for 3-5mins no joke and i have stripped it of junk programs at start-up aswell as taking everything physicaly out of my computer...so whats the prob?? its so annoying and it does it with the other HD that i cloned it too

ps is 106 degrees F normal for this type of drive b/c in hd tune this is what it says as a temp....i will try to get a screen-shot of it if i can

 

^^That sounds like more of a software issue than anything to do with the HDD.

I just got a LG S1 and replaced the 80g 5400rpm Hitachi with a 100g 7200rpm Hitachi and couldn't be happier. Windows start-up and application performance has improved noticeably.

The issues with heat and power I think are mundane, obviously a faster spinning disk would draw a small amount of additional power and therefore produce a small amount of additional heat but nothing that I think would be really noticeable.

 

Seems like 7200 is the way to go, but I guess one would want to go with a T2400 (1.8GHz) or faster to accompany that HDD. (Something that has to do with 'Virtualization'?)

 

Are there any 10,000RPM drives for laptops out there? Do they make a huge difference?

I have a brand new E1705 with T7200, 2GB 667 Ram, 7900GS, top everything - but only an 80Gb 5400 disk. Boot times aren't bad (Win XP Sp2), but it takes ages to load big programs like Pro/Engineer or CFD applications, Photoshop takes a lot to load, too... I would assume it's a HDD problem, not RAM or CPU.

Thanks,
Umpa

 

any news about bigger 7200 drives

 

The fastest notebook hard drive is a 100GB 7,200RPM. I don't know about the power consumption or heat in a 10,000RPM drive because I do not follow desktop hardware as closely as I do notebook stuff, but I imagine that it could be significantly higher. Not sure it is even feasible to have a 10,000RPM drive in a 2.5" form factor.

You would be correct.

 

Got the 7200 RPM Hitachi for my S96J, works great, it will make the trademark Hitachi "tick" sounds though. Seagate version is quieter, but a little slower.

 

the problem is that the dv2000t and the v3000t only have 5400 rpm options

i was thinking of maybe ordering the smallest drive possible and upgrading the drive myself (to a 7200 rpm drive), but with quickplay partitions and a fairly high cost (time and money), i dont think it will be worth it. if it was an option on hp's site i'd do it in a heartbeat.... :/

also, here is what it looks like is currently out there for perpendicular recording 2.5" drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0&Description=perpendicular+recording&Ntk=all


at this point i'm not sure what to do because i basically was looking @ the highest end core 2 duo (2ghz/4mb cache) and maybe getting a gig or two of memory, but with a (eeek) slow?! 5400 rpm drive that might just be a waste...... why cant i ever just get exactly the case AND components i want? >:[

desktops are so much easier.

 

5400RPM hard drives aren't that bad at all, I had them in my last three laptops (including my Sager, which is now upgraded to 7200RPM). I do not find 7200RPM drives to be that much faster than 5400 in terms of general performance.

I would get the biggest 5400RPM drive they offer. The 120GB 5400RPM has high platter density and is pretty quick.

 

So...i am actually in the market for a seagate momentus 100GB Sata 7200.1 RPM hard drive for my W2jb. However, no one has them in stock and if they do the prices are sorta high. I priced matched zipzoomfly.com's price of 162 w/ free shipping to milestonePC...hopefully they allow it. Anyone know where else i can get this drive at a good price?
I also decided on a seagate based on most of the users comments claiming that it doesn't produce much heat and it also isn't very loud.

 

For me, it's just a matter of capacity. Call me a packrat but 100GB is barely cutting it for me (home desktop have close to a TB). I'm going to get a 160GB in my next laptop so unless they comes out with a 160GB 7200 in the meantime, I'll stick with a 5400.

 

The Hitachi actually runs cooler i believe as well as it is marginally faster. Most laptop drives in general are not very loud. Their rating is only a fraction that of desktop drives so i wouldn't worry about which is slightly quieter unless you sit in dead silence all the time and are worried about the faintest bit of noise. The Seagate 100GB 7200rpm is more expensive so that is about the best price you are going to find.

 

Faster & warmer...

 

I just had a Toshiba HDD fail (40GB 5400RPM 16MB) and I am looking at either getting another HDD with another 16MB buffer or the Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM 8MB.

So what are the pros and cons on buffer vs higher rpm?

Thanks.

 

I want to upgrade my Thinkpad to a 7200 HD, and am leaning toward the 100GB Seagate. Can anyone address issues of durability between 5400 and 7200 drives? Is the jury still out?

 

Pardon me but I'm not too sure why many have said that for gaming laptops we need faster HDDs.

In game programming, the key issue is always try to do things the fastest way. So a game should be programmed in such a way disk access is kept to a minimum. This can also be seen in current games where normally a game process hogs lots of ram space.

So the issue of HDD speed in games is probably only noticeable in loading screens, and some games (like oblivion) really do have lots of those, whereas others like WoW has minimal. I've played them extensively on a 7,200 and 5,400, and in game (non loading screens) there is seriously no speed boost I can notice.

Pardon me if I'm saying anything wrong here, just my 2 cents (which might be wrong).

 

Well I think no one ever said it is necessary for gaming. The good point is that it loads games much faster. Oblivion is a good example. Loading levels and places is just much faster.

An upgrade to 7200 rpm can lead up to 12% faster load times. And I think if you are getting a gamers notebook for about >1500$ you must also have a 7200 rpm HDD.

Charlie

 

My theory:

If a 7200rpm hard drive causes more heat, then is would use more power aswell. This is because the notebook will heat up quicker, making the fans run faster and longer; therefore using more power.


Matt

 

You reople might like this article form storagereview.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200511/notebook_1.html
It profiles both of the hard drives in question.

When I was ordering my notebook I specified the hitachi 7200 100gb but they were out of stock and I couldnt wait the 3 weeks so I just took the seagate 7200.1 100gb. I personally know that int he desktop market, hitachi is known for its speed and perfromance in the 7200rpm market, easily blows away seagate. I was jsut wondering why the other "big" notebook brands such as fujitsu,toshiba and WD havent gotten into the 7200rpm hd's... I see some "top of the line" toshibas offer 200gb 4200rpm hd's. To take a 4200rpm hd now is madness.

PS. My PC specs... I got it about 3 weeks ago

Asus S96J... ordere from www.istnc.com
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16ghz (4mb cache)
2GB Samsung ddr2 RAM @ 667mhz
100gb Seagtae momentus 7200.1
Ati X1600 GPU
DVD MULTI DRIVE
Silver artic cool thermal paste
15.4 " WXGA screen

Total price? $1605...came with 2 yr warranty also. No other site can match that price.

 

Will this work in my HP DV6000t? I want to try a faster drive, and am willing to invest the time and money, if I knew it would physically work. It is a 10K 2.5" drive, but I don't know if it will work with my laptop. Any comments on the drive:
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__product.asp?pid=502&inf=dsc&wg=83

 

I dont think it will... the drive is an SCSI drive. There are other options if you want a blazing fast hard drive that you cant really put ibside the comp. You can buy a 10,000rpm WD RAPTOR, put in in an enclousre and connect it to your laptop via A SATA card (preferably expresscard).. That way you wont compromise speed, storage capacity or cooling. For internal notebook HD's, Seagate and Hitachi are the only ones with 2.5" 7200rpm drives.

 

Also its 15mm thick... Standard 2.5" notebook drives are 9.5mm thick so it wouldn't physically fit anyway.

 

OK who knows the Facts ??? For 7200 RPM Notebook drives ?

I've read that the Seagate is cooler, but not quite as fast. Then I've heard the Hitachi is cooler. But the Seagate is faster ???

1.Who makes the Faster 7200 ?

2. Which one runs cooler ?

3. Which one uses less power ?

4. Which is more reliable ?

 

jgscott, I doubt you'll get a definite answer to all of your questions. Basically either hitachi or seagate drive should keep you happy. I personally think that Seagate is more realiable, but I have a hitachi drive in my laptop and it's performing just fine. At the end it comes down to personal preference.

If you want hard facts, here you go
My hitachi 100gb 7200 RPM drive is running at 34C right now with peak of 37.
Sustained read speed maxes out at around 43000KB/sec, and sustained write at 42000KB/sec.
The drive is fairly quiet. At least quieter than my 3.5" Seagate 7200.8 drive in an external enclosure.
Can't say anything about power consumption.

 

jgscott... read the article i posted up three posts above, thats the closest you will get to a actually comparison between the two hd's

 

Now, about the games,
So the HD is really only accessed when dramatic changes happen, like levels or new environments, but never during gameplay itself (like a fight).
Considering that, and that the 7200 RPM is less than a 20% faster than the 5400 RPM. Does it really worth the $70 difference?
I mean, ok, so when you pass the level in the game, instead of waiting 5 seconds you wait 4. Or when you go out of the castle in Oblivion, instead of waiting 1 second you wait 0.8 seconds. Is that so much of an improvement?
Don't think so (I better put more RAM with those 70).

 

I think the biggest performance impact of a notebook hard drive is if your OS is paging (virtual memory). Asumming you have enough RAM, 2gb is IMHO the minumnum these days, does any one have (or know of) performance comparisons between [SATA] 7200rpm 100gb and perpendicular 160gb drives?

I suppose alot it depends on ussage patterns, some applications/scenarios will benefit from fast(er) seeks while some will benefit from faster sustained speeds. Is there a definitive on this?

If a 160gb is similar in price to a 100gb 7200 drive (and both are an aftermarket upgrade), assuming limited to no page file usage, which, if either do you think is the best upgrade?

thanks

 

Over the weekend I installed a 7200 RPM Seagate ST910021AS in my HP
DV6000t. It came with a 5400 Fujitsu 5400 RPM MHV2120BH PL. I cloned the Fujitsu drive to the Seagate drive, including D: recovery partition and the other partition that is used for the multimedia stuff (so I could make a fair comparison). I defragged each then benchmarked both. Results were similar from HD tach, Sandra, and HD Tune. Here are the results:

-------------------- Seagate Fujitsu

Drive temp------------47-49 c 44-46c

Burst----------------117MB/s 107MB/s

Seq. Read low--------25.2MB/s 20.1MB/s
Seq. read hi----------45.8 43.1
Seq read av.---------37.6 33.4

Time to boot to--------34 sec 40 sec
win XP logon

Time to load all---------24 sec 26 sec
prog after logon

Access time------------15.1 ms 18.5 ms

HP doesn't offer a 7200 drive in the 6000 series. The Seagate cost me $160, plus a $40 for the hardware and software to do the cloning. I think the investment was worth it.

Now I am going to reformat the Seagate, and do a clean install.

 

I think that 1GB is the minimum nowadays for good performance. 1.5-2GB is about all any normal notebook user would currently need even with the upcoming Windows Vista. Tomshardware has a good guide to 2.5" hard drives that benches a large number of drives including the 100GB 7200rpm and the newer 160GB perpendicular. If performance is the main concern then stick with the 100GB 7200rpm. If you can benefit from the added storage then go with a 120-160GB 5400rpm instead. I wouldn't bother with the 60GB 7200rpm drives at all because their performance is lacking in comparison to the 100GB models and you lose 40GB of storage.

 

thanx that really helped i was considering upgrading to 7200 rpm

 

To the OP, If I had the $70 choice of a 7200rpm over a 5400rpm, bye bye $70.
With a 7200rpm, to me there is a noticeable and pleasant difference every time your computer writes to or reads from the harddrive.
While other laptops are thrashing, you are zooming.

I have 2 7200rpm PATA notebook drives that I was trying to figure out how to put a SATA adapter on them and stuff/force/cram them into my new ACER SATA based notebook. If only.....!!

 

You can't mix the two inside of notebooks. I'm not even sure you can do that in a desktop machine.

 

Me too. If it were an upgrade ona new machine I might consider it but as for a swap, I see no need to drop this hard drive for a 7200rpm one, given the times you posted. There are other upgrades that would benefit me a lot more!

 

I just bought an HP dv9000t 3 weeks ago and the HDD is a Seagate 7200rpm 100GB.

Ron

 

I need to chime in for this one. i know this is an old ass thread but...

In my new HP DV6000t, it came with a seagate 5400 sata drive. i ran it for about a day only because my segate 7200 sata drive hadnt arrived from newegg yet.

I immediately noticed an exact 10 degree difference. both seagates. same interface. same capacity.



Now then. i also own a dell inspiron 710m. I put a hitachi 60gb 5400 in. used it for about a year. quietest drive EVER. then i got the 7200 rpm bug. ordered another hitachi. same size. 7200 rpm. LOUD as a dump truck. but blazing speed.

just thought i would comment. you just happen to mention products i actually own, so....

 

I too have read about people not favoring the noise it produces. Just a quirk to mention.