Notebook - HHD - benefit of 7200rpms?

[Grayson02sept1980]

Hi!

I have a 60GB with 7200rpm HDD in my notebook which is actually my only PC right now..

Butz I plan to upgrade to 120gb and wanted to hear some oppinions wether the 7200rpm are better or the much cheaper 5400rpm will be enough...

thanks

[sonar732]

Well, that depends on what you really want the cheaper hard drive for. What is the cost difference? Something else that helps the decision is the hard drive manufacturer.

Here (http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=16) is a link to help you out.

EDIT: It's all about the heat that will be generated also. A 7200rpm drive will give out more heat than a 5400. Granted, I don't know what your current laptop config is like, but if you go with the 7200rpm, find something to help move the heat.

[Grayson02sept1980]

Thanks for the link!

the already installed 7200 is giving me a little heat problem that is true.... another point to get to a 5400? from the test it seems the heat is not really thge problem/difference.


But I want to run SH3 on it and right now I do not know if the downgrade in speed might be generating a problem

I will stick with the 60GB and solve the problem with an external HDD

[Tchocky]

Externals aren't much of an issue.

Also, given the smaller diameter of a notebook HDD, the downgrade in speed in not as severe as it would be on a larger HDD. Head speed is what matters.
I've got a 100GB 7200 in this laptop, and there is a good chunk of heat from it.

[Friedmann]

Going to 7200RPM makes a bit of a dent in battery life, that and the other considerations won't stop me from moving to one as soon as I have some spare cash though.

[JSLTIGER]

5400 is fine for most notebooking purposes...don't, however, go to 4200. That will be a huge slow down.

[Zantham]

Can depend a lot on how much RAM your system has, and what you plan on doing with your laptop. If you have low system RAM (under 1GB XP, 2GB Vista) then the faster hard drive will benefit you more since memory swapping will be faster.

If you are doing things on your laptop that require much hard drive usage, as opposed to just word processing, etc, you will gain from a faster hard drive.

If you are in and out of hibernation a lot on battery then a faster hard drive will benefit you.

7200rpm drives do use a touch more power than a 5400rpm, but that is made up for in faster access and load times, so depending what you are doing, the 7200rpm drive can actually result in longer battery life. Note that a low-quality 5400 rpm drive may still use more power than a higher quality 7200rpm drive.

Also getting a hard drive with a larger cache helps a lot.

[SUBMAN1]

5400 is fine for most notebooking purposes...don't, however, go to 4200. That will be a huge slow down.I'd have to agree with this statement here. 5400 is the perfect compromise on a notebook HD. 4200's are terribly slow and 7200's generate too much heat and kill battery life. I put a 7200 in a Sony notebook once and it generated enough heat to screw up the Northbridge chip resulting in the laptop not being able to function - locking it up until a cooler 5400 drive was installed.

Anyway, if you plan to use an external HD enclosure though - 7200 RPM is Da' Bomb! :D:up:

-S