5,400rpm or 7,200rpm hdd for notebook/laptop/no-idea-what-the-difference-is

notnik · 11 Mar 2006 at 11:51

I'm thinking of buying a laptop, as the new flat I'm moving into is butt-clenchingly small, but want a desktop replacement as opposed to portable fun.. I'm quite interested in the Dell Inspiron 9400 that OcUK's selling for £1,200, the only problem being that it has an 80GB hdd..

Do those of you with laptops think it is a good enough setup to warrant £1,200 of my increasingly non-existent cash, and is it worth coughing up extra to buy a (really difficult to find) 7,200rpm 100GB hdd to replace the slower, smaller one included in the laptop?

deadeyedic30 · 11 Mar 2006 at 16:52

A 7,200 hard drive spins its disc platters at 7,200 rpm where as a 5,400 spins at 5,400 rpm. The faster they turn the more power they use. For laptops it depends on what sort of battery life you want/need. As you say it is a desktop replacement i'm assuming it won't be used outside you flat my and therefore battery life is less of an issue.

notnik · 11 Mar 2006 at 23:11

Nattery life isn't too much of an issue. It only lasts around and hour and a half on the 9400 anyway when using it for something beyond word processing. But I'm not sure if the speed increase from 5,400 to 7,200 justifies spending an extra £100-odd on a faster hdd.

Combat squirrel · 12 Mar 2006 at 15:54

tbh as its a laptop its not -massivly- different, could save self 100 and if playin games just wait a few seconds longer for it to load

Bomag · 12 Mar 2006 at 16:40

2.5" drives are slower than 3.5" disks anyway so if you are used to a fast desktop NDD a 5400rpm laptop drive will feel exceedingly slow.

I replace a Toshiba 80gb with a 60gb Hitachi 7k100, it's twice as fast as the Toshiba

I put the Toshiba in a 2.5" USB enclosure to store documents: its limited to read/writes of about 25mb/s but since the disk tops out at 28mb/s its no great loss.

Cyber-Mav · 12 Mar 2006 at 18:31

i just changed the hard drive in my lappy from a seagate 40gb 4200rpm 2mb cache drive to a seagate 5400rpm 60gb 8mb cache drive and the difference in speed is amazing, the response time of the laptop is much quicker and booting up and loading apps is lots faster too.

next upgrade i do on the laptop will be a 80gb drive 7200rpm, when the prices of 7200rpm laptop drives come down.

jhmaeng · 12 Mar 2006 at 19:43

Just how butt-clenchingly small is the flat?

I would have though a mini-ATX case plus LCD monitor with a small footprint wouldn't take up all that much room, and probably represents a hugely better VFM than a £1.2k laptop.

Fantom · 12 Mar 2006 at 20:38

i just replaced my 40gb 4200rpm 2mb Toshiba drive with a 100gb 7200rpm 8mb Hitachi

toshiba drive is now in an external enclosure

I didnt really notice much of a decrease in battery life, according to hitachi the drive is very economical on battery life. performance was increased a lot with boot times etc (especially on my low RAM system where thrashing occurs often)

also i would have thought that the extra 6mb of cache would lessen the need for more spins (kind of :confused:

)

note to self; buy some more RAM

fonzee · 12 Mar 2006 at 22:54

notnik said:
and is it worth coughing up extra to buy a (really difficult to find) 7,200rpm 100GB hdd to replace the slower, smaller one included in the laptop?

in a word, no... for the price difference involved (big bucks) the upgrade is simply not worth it unless your minted and feel happy with windows loading a second faster etc... for 200 odd quid... you can get a 160gb laptop hard drive running at 5400rpm... or... a 100gb 7200rpm... hmmm decisions decisions

personally 80gb is more than most even these days in laptops...

if your after a speedier 7200rpm drive, id wait till the prices come down first, which should be soon when the 200gb 2.5" are fully debuted...

MagicBoy · 13 Mar 2006 at 17:40

If it's a 4200rpm drive then it's just plain slow. A mate has one in a large desktop replacement HP portable (with a power sucking P4 3.2 in it!) and it slows the thing to a crawl when under load. He's resorted to sticking most apps/data on an 3.5" desktop drive in a firewire box to help out.

It's swings and roundabouts with the faster drives. The 7200rpm drives have a much faster access time due to the lower rotational latency, whereas the latest 5400rpm drives have a higher data density per platter so deliver very similar sustained transfer rates with more capacity and less cost.

The 20Gb Tosh 4200rpm drive in my old Dell started whining so I decided to replace it about 12 months ago and went for a Hitachi 7K60. It's way faster than the Tosh drive - it boots/hibernates and loads apps a lot quicker even on a P3. If I was buying now I'd be tempted to get one of the latest 5400rpm drive and save money. Battery life was unaffected by the change.

notnik · 13 Mar 2006 at 20:13

Originally Posted by jhmaeng
Just how butt-clenchingly small is the flat?

I would have though a mini-ATX case plus LCD monitor with a small footprint wouldn't take up all that much room, and probably represents a hugely better VFM than a £1.2k laptop.

Me and the (soon-to-be) missus will be sleeping on a pull-out sofa in the living room while the kid gets the only bedroom and all available storage (first-time buyer

). I had thought about a small form factor case, but i would still require a desk to put the keyboard and screen on. A laptop, whilst undeniably more expensive, means I can just sit on the sofa or anywhere i want (even in the "Library"!), with the added bonus of putting it on a high shelf so the sprog doesn't get jam in the keyboard or dvd drive.

fonzee, good point on the 80gig being enough. My desktop has 360gig, but most of what's on it could quite easily be backed up to dvds, with a larger hd being mainly for hoarders (like me). Besides, unbelievably cluttered. Also, if one of the hds fail (it's happened before, lost 40gigs of mp3s

), that's a lot of data to lose.

Originally Posted by MagicBoy
If it's a 4200rpm drive then it's just plain slow.

It's 5400, so not too bad.

Originally Posted by MagicBoy
The 7200rpm drives have a much faster access time due to the lower rotational latency, whereas the latest 5400rpm drives have a higher data density per platter so deliver very similar sustained transfer rates with more capacity and less cost.

Now this i did not know. Coupled with someone poiting out that replacing the hard disc would probably void my warranty anyway, I am ever more being swung to stop clawing at the next rung of ooo-shiny-things and stick with the 5400.

PS.

Originally Posted by L337 LooX
i just replaced my 40gb 4200rpm 2mb Toshiba drive with a 100gb 7200rpm 8mb Hitachi

toshiba drive is now in an external enclosure

Perhaps not for this topic as i don't want to hijack my own post, but I'm really interested in knowing how you did this and how expensive it was.

benjo plz. · 13 Mar 2006 at 20:14

notnik said:
I'm really interested in knowing how expensive it was.

I'd imagine the word "bloody" would come into it

.

MagicBoy · 13 Mar 2006 at 22:32

notnik said:
PS.
Perhaps not for this topic as i don't want to hijack my own post, but I'm really interested in knowing how you did this and how expensive it was.

I'll ignore that request

USB2 and Firewire enclosures are available for all common sizes and types of drives. I've put the leftover 2.5" Tosh drive in a USB2 enclosure which cost me a whopping £6 from a well known e-tailer a couple of weeks ago. It's bus powered so doesn't require a mains adaptor. I'm also using a spare 3.5" 120Gb drive in a USB2/Firewire box. Firewire is appreciably faster than USB2. It cost under £20 and does require mains power.

OcUK have some here

benjo plz. · 13 Mar 2006 at 22:35

MagicBoy said:
Firewire is appreciably faster than USB2.

1394b, now theres something that makes usb2 to poor.

MagicBoy · 13 Mar 2006 at 22:40

Phnom_Penh said:
1394b, drools .

In my experience even "vanilla" 400Mbps Firewire kicks USB out of the park. I get a max 17Mb/sec using a USB2 connection, 32Mb/sec using Firewire 400 with lower CPU usage. For comparison the same HDD does 40Mb/sec on an IDE connection.

benjo plz. · 13 Mar 2006 at 22:44

Indeed it would, as USB2 uses bursting. Although for use with multiple devices, USB2 would probably be better.

mj3zero · 14 Mar 2006 at 17:17

I'm a bit leery about putting fast disks in my laptop now - as I had 2 different brands fail in quick succession and the one that's there now (a Scorpio) is behaving strangely - odd reboots and the OS disappears with event viewer showing an IDE error. Once I trun off and restart it's fine though ?

One thing that you need to note is that older laptops (and laptops in general) are designed to operate within certain temperature ranges. The cooling for the case is designed to cope with what it comes with from the factory. If that means a 4200rpm disk (as mine was) and it's replaced with a 7200 rpm job, then troubles can arise.

Of the 2 drives that died, one was due to a Hitachi firmware issue, if I'd flashed the firmware as soon as I got it, it "might" have lived longer than the 6 days I had it. The Seagate lasted 2 weeks longer :mad:

The WD Scorpio I've got also had an issue that took a firmware flash to sort - to do with the powere saving "park" feature - which sounded a lot like the problem with the Hitachi. Constant clicking, which was fixed (sort of) with a flash and using a tool to turn it off.

My advice, get the larger disk to begin with - ie with the original build - to ensure the chassis/cooling is up to the job. That's what I'll do in the future when I replace my Toshiba. I know drive upgrades on laptops are a piece of cake (I'm A+ certified for 5 years) but I've been burned (and seen the same with others) and that's my feeling.

my 2p

mj