need help looking for good 7200rpm 2.5"

Would you be interested in non-hitachi drives? Personally I think there are ok, but I would not recommend one.

there are only 2 brands of 7200rpm laptop hd (2.5in) out there

hitachi (hgst) e7k60, 7k60, e7k100, & 7k100 models
the 7k60 being the older generation of 40/60gb 7200rpm models (cant remember if they had a 20gb model of this)
the e7k100 & 7k100 are their newer models which are 60/80/100gb models

they all have 8mb cache

the only other manufacturer of 7200rpm 2.5in hd's is seagate
the seagate momentus 7200.1 models
they come in 40/60/100gb models, 8mb cache
in both pata (ide) & sata-150 (sata-i) formats

iirc the hitachi are doing both interfaces also

it looks like (didnt know this when i started looking) that toshiba has a 7200rpm drives that have 16mb cache

i have had no personal experience w/ these toshiba drives, but i have had problems w/ toshiba drives and laptops (having to service about 20 @ school)

i would suggest the hitachi 60 or 80gb / 7200rpm; which you can get now (zipzoomly or newegg) @ 135 / 165 respectively

Toshiba sucks... I've had to replace every Toshiba drive I have own. If you're going with segate you should get close to 5 years of warranty if you get a larger drive since they are rather new.

I may be wrong, but I did some looking at benchmarks and it seems that a 2.5" 5400rpm drive is generally about the same speed as a 7200 3.5" desktop drive.

I would get the seagate 7200.1 It may be more than the hitachi but it has 5 year warrenty and is quieter.

qustion... where can you get cheap SATA 7200 rpm drives. Both Newegg and Zipzoomfly only sell ATA drives. For that matter can you use an ATA drive in an SATA slot?

does the i6000d use sata or pata?

from what i can find on dell's webpage; the i6000 is all listed using ata-100 hd (pata rather than sata)

but i just noticed that icdragon asked that rather than ziddey

hrm, i looked around iand i couldnt find a 'reputable dealer' that had them
you could try emailing newegg or zipzoomfly and see if they have them in sata models avaliable

where did you find this information? it's grossly incorrect.

Yes, the above statement is true only in specific cases.

When comparing a 5400rpm drive with a high density, versus a 7200rpm drive with a lower density, the higher density/slower rotational speed hard drive would be faster with some processes.

Most of these comparisons though were done with a 100gb 5400rpm (16mb cache?), versus the older 7k60 60GB 7200rpm (8mb cache?). In this case, the 100gb would have a faster access time, and data transfer rate. Larger files would be processed quicker....but i think the 7200rpm matched or slightly oupaced the larger drive with small, burst files. BTW, i don't think the cache played to much of a crucial role for speed. There was a Tom's Hardware review that compared a 16mb drive....but i think it was just a bad company design to begin with (Toshiba).

I haven't seen any formal reviews of the 7k100 drives yet, so I can't say for sure how'd they do. I'd guess a 60GB 7K100 would be as fast as a good 100-120GB 5400rpm drive.

If you shop around, you'll find that 80GB 7K100 drives are getting easier to find, and the prices are a little easier to swallow too. ($170-$190). This is the drive i'm going for because anything larger is just too expensive for me to justify costs. The 80GB range would give me great value, and the benefit of a higher density drive versus a 40gb or 60gb drive.

i have heard this but not with regards to desktop vs. laptops drives. even lower density 3.5" 7200 drives w/ 8mb cache, generally well outperform any 2.5" 5400 drive, regardless of 16mb cache.

Go with 100gb Hitachi 7k100 they're amazing http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=80

My notebook came with fujitsu 60gb 5400 rpm drive so I can tell you exactly what you want to know. No the 7k100 isn't loud compare to the fujitsu. Though when I first had it there was this clicking sound that came from the hd every 5 second. This can be easily solved by using Centrino Hardware Control or Notebook Hardware Control. Just set it to quiet 128 and never spin down or 254 maximum performance and the Hitachi 7k100 will stop clicking. Comparing temp. I would say Hitachi is cooler than the fujitsu and out perform it by a wide margin. I hope this help

So the general consensus is to go with the Hitachi 7k100? I was going to put my 100GB Seagate Momentus 5400RPM drive into my new MSI 1029, but I was toying with going for the gusto and putting in a 7200RPM drive.
The Fujitsu 100GB 4200RPM drive that I have in my HP laptop seems to give the Seagate a good run for the money. Not a serious speed increase when I swapped to the 5400. I think startup and shut down were marginally faster and that was all I could tell without running benchmarks.