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difference between the 5400rpm and 7200rpm

post #1 of 16
9/17/04 at 2:17pm
Thread Starter 
I was looking through newegg today and noticed that I can get an 80GB 5400rpm hd for less than the 7200rpm hitachi.

Those of you who luckily got the 5400 rpm hd...have any of you swapped it out for the 7200 hitachi? How significant is the performance gain?
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post #2 of 16
9/17/04 at 10:22pm
I can't speak from first hand experience. All the benchmarks I have seen show very little performance difference between 5400 and 7200RPM drives. That being said, since you are going from a 4200RPM (as I did), I personally was happy to sacrifice the extra 20GB for the increased speed, even though I was paying a little more. I don't know what the price difference is right now, but when I bought mine, there was like an $8 difference in price. I expect the 7200RPM prices to drop soon though, with new manufacturers to be offering them soon in larger sizes. ALso remember, even though the difference isn't that great (as far as benchmarks show), you are altering the speed of your biggest system bottleneck, which will also improve (greatly) swap file performance.
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post #3 of 16
9/18/04 at 12:52am
I think the Seagate Momentus is one of the highest performing 5400RPM notebook drives, it makes the 7200RPM seem much too over priced.

It's only available in 40GB though.
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post #4 of 16
9/18/04 at 10:22am
Momentus definately holds the "bang-for-the-buck" crown.
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post #5 of 16
9/20/04 at 12:59pm
Seagate is coming out with 7200RPM 40,60,80, and 100GB Momentus drives. I talked to Seagate and they said they are currently fulfilling contracts with the current production run, but will hopefully be selling them retail by December or January.
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post #6 of 16
9/20/04 at 1:41pm
oh my
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post #7 of 16
9/21/04 at 12:23pm

7200RPM made a big difference in my lappy

When you run any sort of benchmark that combines all factors of pc performance the HD is only one part of that score. As others have mentioned it is big bottleneck. My personal experience is that the HD upgrade and bumping the RAM up by a Gig was the biggest bang for the buck to date.

I can't tell you how much snappier my lappy is now. I upgraded the HD to 7200 RPM and now my bootups in XP Pro are 17 seconds until I get my login screen on my corporate network and then only 18 seconds to login after that. That is excellent performance compared to my 45 seconds before just on the first phase of the bootup process.

My images take much less time to load in Photoshop and even editing them is faster due to the HD and of course more RAM. People now stop by my office and drool over my lappy!

I took my old HD and slapped it into an external USB 2.0 enclosure and now I have 120GB always at the ready. I use it mostly as a backup drive image so I can immediately recover my work if I have an issue.

Once the 100GB drives are available in 7200rpm I will upgrade and my current HD will become my backup and my other lappy will get the bigger drive. Trickledown upgrades at work!
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post #8 of 16
9/21/04 at 1:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wavshrdr
I took my old HD and slapped it into an external USB 2.0 enclosure and now I have 120GB always at the ready. I use it mostly as a backup drive image so I can immediately recover my work if I have an issue.
What imaging program did you use to copy your old drive to new? Any problems worth mentioning? Thanks
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post #9 of 16
9/22/04 at 12:22pm
Thread Starter 
What usb enclosure are you using, and where did you get it?
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post #10 of 16
9/22/04 at 10:03pm
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=A0398344

you guys see this? god i love dealsea
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post #11 of 16
9/22/04 at 11:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by austeros
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=A0398344

you guys see this? god i love dealsea
Whoohoo! Thanks for the headsup. Got one on the way!
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post #12 of 16
9/23/04 at 2:10am
There are so many of these 4200 vs 5400 vs 7200 threads. We should make a sticky, or a guide, or SOMETHING.
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post #13 of 16
9/23/04 at 11:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by austeros
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...9&sku=A0398344

you guys see this? god i love dealsea
Thanks,definitely getting one of these...good bye 4200rpm
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post #14 of 16
9/24/04 at 12:15am
I keep forgetting to check out the deals from Dell.com I only check newegg.com, but not always good deal.
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post #15 of 16
9/25/04 at 1:05pm
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...4&sku=A0398344

HITACHI
60GB 7200RPM Travelstar 7K60 Internal ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive
$126.36

until 09/29 hurry
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post #16 of 16
9/25/04 at 1:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dogi
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...4&sku=A0398344

HITACHI
60GB 7200RPM Travelstar 7K60 Internal ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive
$126.36

until 09/29 hurry
A couple of notes:

I ordered one last Wednesday @ $142.16. The 5-7 days to ship is no joke. Mine won't ship until Monday. :-(

This latest link is slightly different than the first one. It seems to be for "Small Business Owners" only. I tried to place an order for this one and the site wouldn't accept my password... even after I had them email me my password just to be sure. I'm going to assume you have to have a small business account (the other offer was for "Home Accounts"). Not sure what it takes to open a SBA too, didn't try.
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