4200 RPM HD really that slow?

3dMark score has NOTHING to do with drive speed
it is true though that a 100gb 4200rpm will be faster than a 40gb 4200rpm because data is more compressed (more data on same space, thus more data read with same movement = faster). but I can assure you that the difference between say a 60gb 4200rpm and a 60gb 7200rpm is VERY VERY BIG. the only comparison that's more or less valid is a 100gb 5400rpm vs 60gb 7200rpm, again due to higher data density, the 100gb is about as fast.

The 60GB hitachi has 8MB of cache, not 2MB.

There are some benchmark results at AMDZone, comparing a Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200RPM, 8Mb cache, with a Toshiba 4200 RPM drive, 2Mb cache.
http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?o...tid=106&page=1

There is a review of a Toshiba 80GB 16MB Cache 2.5in HDD, and some comparisons with a Hitachi 30Gb 2Mb?? cache 4200 RPM
http://www.mikhailtech.com/modules.p...content&id=117

Review of the Seagate Momentus 5400.2 100Gb drive
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...tus-54002.html
(which tells us that manufacturer and model can be more important than areal density )

I would be interested to hear recommendations for a high performance 80Gb-100Gb notebook hdd replacement.

here is what i get on my fujitsu drive on linux

bash-2.05b# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 3540 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1769.39 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 116 MB in 3.03 seconds = 38.34 MB/sec

bash-2.05b# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: ATA Model: FUJITSU MHV2100A Rev: 0000
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05

Arachnotron,
I tend to agree with you that the harddrive issue is overblown. I got the Hitachi Travelstar 80GN drive (Model#IC25N080ATMR04-0: they really need to rethink the model numbering scheme ). It's an 80 gb 4200 rpm drive with 8 mb cache. It was tested against a bunch of 7200 rpm drives in an Xbit Labs test from last year.

While it's true it doesn't quite achieve the same speeds as the 7200 rpm drives, it wasn't any slouch either. Real life performance is what I'm interested in anyhow. Right now I'm still waiting on my 2 gigs of RAM to arrive. I only have 256 mb in there and other than games, Windows actually runs quite satisfactorily to me even though load times are a TAD slower than my desktop (which has 512 mb ram and a Samsung 160 gb 7200 rpm harddrive). When I get my 2gb of RAM, I'm expecting performance to improve quite dramatically. I don't really care if it takes an extra second or minute to transfer a large file. As long as the videos I'm watching don't stutter (they don't), and the games I play are smooth (I expect them to be when I get my RAM upgraded). Business applications? Meh. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint all run perfectly fine. I wouldn't notice another half second load time of a file. If I ever need to upgrade, it's an easy thing to do, and then I can plunk the 80gb drive into an external case and have a small external storage drive.

I had some real life experience with a 100Gb 4,200rpm.

I owned a Sony A290 notebook with a 4,200rpm 100Gb drive. Can't recall the manufacturer but install times were noticeably slower than with the 5,400rpm 80Gb drive on my Dell 9300.....really noticeable with huge games and the like.

yea what the heck

when i had first recieved a 4200rpm 80 gig when the order status page on dell's website said 5400 rpm 80 gig. So i called and got it changed. I did notice a BIG difference in doom 3 and half-life 2, particularly when i went through doors in doom 3. Even though people say that the hard drive isnt accessed much (i have a gig ram) it still lags a lot when it is accessed on the 4200 rpm and none with the 5400 rpm on in doom 3 when going through doors into another area.

i think the way it goes is that their is a big difference between 4200 rpm and 5400 rpm but their isn't much of a difference between the 80 gig 5400rpm and the 60 gig 7200 rpm that dell gives as options. I think the 7200 rpm mentioned has a slightly faster seek time but i dont think its really noticable.

All depends on the built of the HDD, a 4200rpm drive with enough cache and good technology can put up a struggle with the 5400rpm drives. Same goes to the 5400rpm drives, it can put up a struggle with the 7200rpm drive with a good combination of cache and technology built into it.

the 4200 is painfully slow by itself.
it is unbearably slow if you have ever tasted of the 5400 or 7200 goodness.
I found the jump from 4200 to 5400 greater than the jump from 5400 to 7200

Quite true, most user experience more real world performance increase from 4200 to 5400 over 5400 to 7200. But the noise of the 7200 is something that some users can't get use to it...

So the difference between performance on a 100GB 4200 to a 60 GB 7200 is not significant? I might as well cancel my order on the 7200 if I am going to have to deal with noise and not much extra performance!

I have a 60gb 4200rpm drive sitting here, 60gb 7200rpm drive (coming in 9300 tomorrow YAY!), and a 100gb 5400rpm drive that should be here sometime next week (ordered and shipped still waiting for it). If someone wants I can do some benchmarks on them all in the next week or two (sorry I have Constitutional Law, Torts, and Civil Procedures exams within the next 11 days so I can't get them done too fast but on study breaks I'm there).

The question is, what kind of benchmarks would people want to see if I did this? My somewhat educated guess is that the real differences are going to be seen 60gb 7200rpm v 4200rpm in transfer tests/ load times. Doing gaming the big hits will depend on the amount of ram in the system. The reason for this is that 256-512mb of ram will see a LOT of pagefile swaps versus 1-2gb. My other guess is that the 60gb 7200rpm will be fairly similar to the 100gb 5400rpm drive because as stated before, you have a 66.66% increase in areal density versus a 25% decrease in rpm's. The 4200rpm 60gb drive will have no ariel density advantage vs the 60gb 7200rpm (and 40% lower than the 100gb drive) and a 22% disadvantage in rpm vs the 5400 and 41% disadvantage vs the 7200rpm drive.

Of course the level of defragmentation will hurt the 4200rpm 60gb drive the worst, the 5400rpm drive the second most and the 60gb 7200rpm drive the least as the arieal density advantage of the 100gb drive helps MOSTLY for sequential reads/ writes while the 7200rpm drive will have faster random access speeds.

The above paragraphs basically explain why XBIT got the numbers they did except for the funky ones where the drive did poorly for some reason. Since they said it was pre-production, I'm guessing that killed the drive in those tests.

If you all really want me to do some tests, I'm in just let me know what you want to see and I'll work on them over these next 2 weeks.

Thanks for that info dude, if you don't mind me asking where did you get the 100GB 5400?

I bought it off ebay. I would do newegg if you couldn't buy one for under $160 though.