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4200RPM Hard drive? How bad is it?

post #1 of 26
9/1/03 at 7:45pm
Thread Starter 
Does anyone have a link comparing 4200 vs. other speeds?

I am ready to buy the dell 8600 (over the sager 5650), just this one thing holding me back!
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post #2 of 26
9/1/03 at 7:56pm
All I know is my internal 4200rpm HDD is much slower than my external USB 2.0 7200rpm HDD.
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post #3 of 26
9/1/03 at 9:02pm
what do you really notice between the 4200 and 7200.I know it is slower but what is notiable.
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post #4 of 26
9/1/03 at 9:52pm
I can't stand not having the p4-M chip, so unfortunately anything Sager is out of the question.

I should be purchasing the 8600 within days, along with the smallest, slowest harddrive -- and mininum amount of RAM.

Both a new hardrive and RAM will be purchased separately, with the cheap Dell drive being either kept as a backup, or sold for whatever I can get.

(RAM question goes here -- what exact RAM does the 8600 use? I know it's 333mhz DDR -- anything more to know about it?)

Anyhow, if you order right now, there's an instant saving of somewhere around $200-$250 on the Inspiron machines, this covers the price of either new ram or a new HD, and keeps the price very comparable to the Sagers.. with a nicer processor.
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post #5 of 26
9/1/03 at 9:54pm
u buy me the 5680 ill trade you my dell
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post #6 of 26
9/1/03 at 9:56pm
you can get 512mb 333mhz pc2700 from newegg for 107 a chip
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post #7 of 26
9/1/03 at 10:01pm
I'll take your trade post as serious enough to at least consider...

Could you give me the stats to your Dell either here, or in a private message?

(I hope it's an 8600.. (or m60))
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post #8 of 26
9/1/03 at 10:08pm
I upgraded my Sony Vaio from a 20GB 4200RPM drive to a 30GB 5400RPM drive and the difference was amazing, completely night and day.
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post #9 of 26
9/1/03 at 10:14pm
Dell inspiron 8200
p4 2ghz M
1 gb Ram
64mb radeon 9000
40gb 5400 rpm drive
30gb 4200 modular drive
8x DVD/16x10x24 CDRW
2 batteries
15" UXGA
Truemobile 1300
2+ years complete care mail in
2 floppies


i like it cause it allows dual batteries and the fixed drive and it uses the p4m plus you get easy upgrades

but i know to me its worth more than what some people think
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post #10 of 26
9/2/03 at 12:25am
Thread Starter 
doesn't swapping a 5400rpm hd into ur dell 8600 void the warranty? is it a complicated process anyway? how much for a 40gb 5400 rpm hd?
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post #11 of 26
9/2/03 at 12:44am
no since its a upgradeable part

shouldnt matter
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post #12 of 26
9/2/03 at 1:19am
Thread Starter 
is it a simple pcmia-like take out and swap lol



or are there screws involved etc.
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post #13 of 26
9/2/03 at 2:39am
Why stop at 5400? Go 7200..
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post #14 of 26
9/2/03 at 3:17am
Thread Starter 
i hear that the higher u go, the more battery use it takes


i am going to get the inspiron 8600...it says it can do up to 4.5 hrs...dunno about the validity of that but i would like as much as possible

if a 7200 rpm hd vs a 4200 rpm hd reduces my battery time by 1/2, then i will not do it

can you give me a rough idea of the power consumption difference between the three different speeds?

dunno if heat generation is an issue either....but cost definetely is!
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post #15 of 26
9/2/03 at 3:51am
Belive it or not from what i've read there is very little difference in battery usage between the 5400RPM and 7200RPM. My guess would be that while it may require more juice to spin faster, it's getting the data quicker and thus doesn't need to be spining as long. Kind of makes sence, right?
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post #16 of 26
9/3/03 at 4:20am
the battery drain between the 4200 and the 7200 is dramatic but its a huge difference is performance! believe me even the 4200 to 5400 was a huge jump those drives are for quiet and cool running laptops with little regard for performance. my advice is to pick up a toshiba gax drive (5400 rpm 16mb cache) or the new toshiba 7k series drives (7200 rpm 8mb cache)
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post #17 of 26
9/5/03 at 4:19pm
Thread Starter 
can you comment on how much differenc ein battery life?
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post #18 of 26
9/15/03 at 6:20am
It really depends on the system its in. So its going to be different for everyone. I don't think it would change the life more than 10 minutes or so.

Go with 7200rpm. In many cases the hard drive speed is the bottleneck of your system.
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post #19 of 26
9/17/03 at 11:40pm
Remember #'s can be decieving ...some 4200 run as fast (and faster than the 5400's ...it's all about seek time ..compressed data = faster access ...if you can..... find the seek time on the drives and compare.
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post #20 of 26
9/18/03 at 12:22am
Seek time has little to do with the actual throughput but it is there.

BTW, I saw this in Maximum PC (this months issue):



The 7200RPM drive uses almost twice the power of the 4900RPM drive but has more than 4 times the throughput.
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