T61 upgrade 4GB Ram or 7k HDD?

I am thinking of upgrading my T61, 4gb ram is around the same price as 7k HDD drive (all £60), which one do you think I should do?

I currently have Hitachi 5k hdd 160gig and 2gb ram.

I don't take my laptop around that much, so I was thinking HDD upgrade, but if 4gb ram will make it run faster then I thought I'd better of go for the ram, I meanly use it for internet and office stuff, and web development, I ran MYSQL Workbench yesterday and that was really slow.

Thanks for your advise.

 

What operating system are you running on the T61? Personally, I'd probably go for the 7200rpm HDD upgrade.

The 7200rpm Hitachi Travelstar with 16mb cache is a really fast notebook hard drive.

 

How much RAM are you currently using?

Web development memory usage can vary widely. PHP development does not require as much memory as say JSP. On top of that each library you use adds up, and the amount of data your web applications are handling can be a factor.

If you are using Vista, I would keep an eye on the Reliability and Performance Monitor. If you are getting high number of hard faults and high % of used physical memory, your system is thrashing. It's time to get more RAM. Keep in mind that unless you have a 64-bit OS, you can only use about 3GB of the 4GB installed RAM.

 

Ye, that's the one I was thinking to go for.

I have 2GB ram, and I meanly use WAMP, and I think the Mysql workbench didn't use much ram, but it was just slow, not sure why maybe the software itself.

 

well, every rdbms uses a lot HDD, as the db is stored on it + db's physical structure could have a lot of files.
and last, HDD is on of the slowest parts of modern computers(it is mechanical part).. so getting a faster HDD would improve overall performance more than adding new ram...

ps: imho

 

Ye, I think HDD is more realistic update.

But when I design dbs I only use my hdd as temporary storage, once the design is finished, the database will be on the server.

 

5400 hard disks are pretty fast these days, so, i would go for the RAM.

 

Gotta say I agree. Today's 5400rpm hard disks are much faster than designs only 2-3 years old of the same rotational speed; optimized firmware and caching algorithms have done a lot, as well as higher-density platters (less platters + data closer together = faster access times).

Upgrading RAM should allow you to have more tasks open at once, make switching between what is open faster, and allow the OS to do a better job of caching. It will probably have less of an effect on battery life as well.

 

I have a new Hitachi 100GB 7200 HDD that came from Lenovo - 75 usd shipped in US, pm me if interested

 

Thanks for the offer, but I live in the UK. And I would prefer avoid the hassle to chip all the way from oversea to here.

Thank you thou.

 

any numbers? speeds? refs to some benchmarks?

 

If you already have 2GB, for your purposes, I think you will notice a more specific difference with the 72K than with the additional ram... plus the HD, unlike the added ram, will make a general all around improvement. I can tell a specific difference on everything between a 54K and a 72K in the same notebook (at least until I get used to it).

Quinn

 

Yes, I got the 100GB 7k200 disk, I could have got 160GB for cheaper, but considering it will be slower and use more power, so I went for the 100GB.

Only 1 platter, 2 heads should be less power than any of the 2 platter ones, and it has the same density as the 200GB, as it should be as faster as the 200GB. Great.

 

Just let you guys know that I've bought and installed a new Hitachi 7K200 100GB drive, and this thing is fast, and explained lots of low performance of Vista that I had. And 5400 rpm spin drive are completely waste of time.

Now the question is how can I get my whole 5 years life back with these 4500 and 5400 rpm drives????