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    Which HDD to stick in optical drive? 7200 vs 5400 rpm

    Discussion in 'Alienware 14 and M14x' started by moze, Nov 19, 2011.

  1. moze

    moze Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi all,

    I received my Alienware M14x yesterday and have already swapped out the 7200rpm HDD for an OCZ Vertex 3.

    I'll be receiving the optical bay caddy today or Monday and am trying to decide which hard drive to put in there...

    Will SATA 1 fully utilize a 7200 rpm HDD? I know SSDs will experience a bottleneck, though I'm not clear on whether a 7200 rpm drive would... I have a 5400 rpm 2.5" drive I could use instead, though would prefer to go with the original one that came with the laptop.

    Thanks in advance.
     
    moze, Nov 19, 2011
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  2. niko2021

    niko2021 Notebook Evangelist

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    I'd just go with the 7200 rpm. It might still be somewhat faster, even if it's still under sata 1. You probably won't notice the difference much since it's just for storage.
     
    niko2021, Nov 19, 2011
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  3. moze

    moze Notebook Enthusiast

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    7200rpm is working just fine. In fact, hwinfo64 is showing that the main SSD is running at 6Gbps (verified with speed test) and the 7200rpm in the optical drive's place is SATA 2 (3Gbps).

    I'd be curious to stick one of my SATA 2 SSDs in there and run a speed test to verify. Currently, the 7200rpm drive is performing at about 100Mbps seq read speeds. Not too shabby.

    I've installed my games on the HDD and they're running great.
     
    moze, Nov 22, 2011
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