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5400 RPM HD vs. 7200 RPM HD

post #1 of 11
1/5/05 at 1:59am
Thread Starter 
Is there a noticeable difference between a 5400 RPM hard drive and a 7200 RPM hard drive? If so, where is this diffference noticeable? Right now, I have a 5400 RPM, 80 gig hard drive in my Inspiron 9100. Would an update be worthwile? Incidentally, I use my laptop for graphics and web design.

Thanks!
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post #2 of 11
1/5/05 at 2:02am
In short, yes. My 60GB@7200rpm benchmarked almost 3x faster on reads than my 60GB@5400rpm. And it "feels" much faster too.
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post #3 of 11
1/5/05 at 3:13am
If you want a simple answer the 7200 RPM drive should give at least a 30% speed increase for common HDD access (random access). Thought the effect on whole system performance is harder to quantify (do you mostly web browse, rip lots of MP3's, run a database off of your machine, etc).

Take a look at this article for help: 9 Notebook Hard Drives Make Their Debuts
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post #4 of 11
1/5/05 at 3:39am
i dont know how fast a 5400 rpm average data transfer rate is but my 7200 hitachi 60 gb when properly defragged can sustain 31 mb/s
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post #5 of 11
1/6/05 at 8:23pm
There was a talk about this in the Notebook General Section...but a short anwser is yes.....But many folk say that there is no dramatic increase....But I believe that an 80gig 5200 versus a 60gig 7200 there won't be a big change....but I think performance wise a 60gig 5200 versus a 60gig 7200 there will be a big difference. You will notice defenitely!!!
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post #6 of 11
1/6/05 at 9:57pm
Here's not yet old article http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/2...ook_hd-14.html on THG. Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 - the one that Dell is offering with XPS/9100 - is the fastest. This HDD is also has 8MB of cache - other Dell's HDDs have only 2 MB. How it's notisable in real life... I would say it's notisable and could take annoyingly long time to load somethig if you downgrade from 7200 to 5400. I haven't seen yet an article which shows how HDD affects real applications - games, compilers, designer tools. If you find one, please give a reference.
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post #7 of 11
1/6/05 at 11:15pm
get the 7200 RPM, it's night and day compared to a 5400 RPM. The HDD is the main system bottleneck, there is no point in having a wicked fast CPU, RAM, etc, if when you load a program it takes 500 years because you're on a 5400 RPM hard drive. It's just about the equivalent of going from a desktop 7200 RPM 2MB Cache to a 7200 RPM 8 MB cache (which is a huge difference if you have not yet experienced it). It is well worth it.
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post #8 of 11
1/7/05 at 1:07am
Yeah my hdd is exactly as fast as my bros desktop 60 gb 7200 rpm 2 mb cache. And you also have to consider the fact that because his hdd is of a 3.5" factor, so the outer sides of the disk should be rotating a lot more faster than the laptop hdd which is of a 2.5" factor can. It is pretty amazing my hdd in every aspect is just as fast as his hdd. Try out a software called hdtune. IT has some good hdd tests.
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post #9 of 11
1/7/05 at 1:39am
get the 7200RPM
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post #10 of 11
1/7/05 at 6:42am
Thread Starter 
Thanks a great deal for the replies, all.

After some consideration, I think I'd do well to go to a 60 gig, 7200 RPM hard drive, and simply use an external hard drive for added storage. My laptop is still under warranty with Dell for another two or so years. I realise that were I to install the hard drive myself would be to violate the terms of the warranty. But, were Dell to install the hard drive, would the warranty still be valid?

Thanks again!
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post #11 of 11
1/7/05 at 2:15pm
^^^

You can pull you hard drive before sending your laptop back to Dell for *security* reasons so what they don't know won't hurt them!

Martian
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