Dell Inspiron 1720: 500GB S-ATA 5400RPM or 400GB (IDE??) 7200RPM?

Next year I'm going to college and for my field of study (applied informatics) a notebook is required.
The Dell Inspiron 1720 is certainly going to be a possibility, but I have a question regarding the hard disks.
In the "Build your Dell" menu you can choose between 2 hard disk setups: (see attachment)

• 500GB S-ATA 5400RPM (2x250GB)
• 400GB (probably IDE I guess) 7200RPM (2x200GB) (with FreeFall-sensor)

What would give the best performance? Does S-ATA balance out the fact it's only 5400RPM? Or should I go for the slower IDE, but with faster read/write cycles?

Thanks!

And if anyone has any recommendations for certain notebooks, please, let me know Choosing the right laptop is damn difficult
I'd just like to have the best performance for the right price (my budget is 2200$ or 1400 EUR, I live in Belgium btw)

 

Question one I would ask is this: Do you really need 400-500GB of space on your laptop? I'm not sure what you will be using it for that is why I ask. More space on your internal drives means slower defrags and more time searching for information (with the dual HDD though you could possibly run a Raid-0 setup to increase search times and performance). As far as the other 400GB 7200 RPM HDD, I am sure is also a SATA HDD. I was looking on Newegg yesterday for a different HDD for my laptop and found several SATA 7200 RPM HDD's (none with a reasonable storage capacity for the price). If not listed on Dell's website wether it is or isn't, you can contact a rep by calling or using the IM link on their site to ask about that. Hope that helps some, if you have more questions please ask, I'll answer to the best of my knowledge.

As far as finding a laptop. Anytime I go to buy something over $100 I spend a few days researching products online, reading reviews and finding any info I can on it. Make sure you know what you are getting before you spend the money on it. Choosing the right laptop comes down to you, and everyone is different, ask yourself a few things here...

1. Do I want it to be portable, sizewise? (all laptops are portable per say, but I do not consider a 17" laptop a portrait of portabilty)

2. What kind of battery life do I need/want? - Bigger laptop, faster this and that usually = more power consumption

3. Am I going to be playing games on it or just typing mom and dad emails? I.E. What are you mainly using this computer for. Processor speeds and dedicated video cards are something you should look at for gaming, stay away from integrated graphics. On the flip side, if all you are doing is typing papers, putting together powerpoints, and checking your email a slower processor and integrated graphics will save you money without hurting your tasks at hand.

4. Memory. Vista likes memory and needs a bare minimum of 2GB to begin to run appropriately (microsoft states 1GB...yeah right). Memory can be upgraded by replacing it yourself (don't get scared its a 5 min process a 4 year old can do) for fairly cheap (4GB PC-5300 DDR2 = about $75, not the $150 upgrade option dell offers). I recommend 4 GB on any new system with Vista.

5. How much do I have to spend? Always a factor there, decide what you need then what you want and compare prices to your budget.

Bout all I can think of. I am an IT for the Navy, been doing computer/server work and building desktop systems for 4 years now. That's just what I would ask someone looking for a laptop. As for me I am content with my Inspiron 1420 that runs games my friends laptops won't, scores higher on my expirence index in windows, costed half the price, and is half the size with 3x the battery life of their comptuers. Makes me smile hehe. Stay away from stores also, prebuilt comptuers are for impatient people in my eyes. Figure out what is right for you, configure/order it, and wait the 3 weeks to get what you want, you'll thank me in the end.

 

I would go with the 7200 rpm drive it is much faster and if you play games that is a must. Not to mention if you do any work with any type of editing or rendering programs 7200 is a must.

 

A few things to consider. A 7200 RPM drive spins faster therefore produces more heat which could possibly lead to a shorter life expectancy than a 5400 RPM drive, but is it worth it at the cost of performance? Also I have no numbers to show facts here, but is the 7200 that much faster than the 5400? If we are talking a few miliseconds or seconds are you really going to notice drastic performance changes in load times between the two to the human eye? And what is the price difference between the two options? I game just fine on my 120GB 5400 RPM SATA drive in my 1420. I actually think it does quite well with my Windows Experience Index score at a 5.1 for my HDD and have no problems at all with CoD4, Resident Evil 4, Diablo II, Warcraft, and Starcraft.

 

Erm, the faster drive doesn't improve ingame performance. What will do is improve the loading times.

 

Both your choices are SATA disks. I'd recommend going with th 400 GB setup. The 1720 has enough space inside it for heat buildup not to be a problem. More than any other factor, the free fall sensor is important, imo. If you want your data to be safe from accidental drops, that is.

 

Yes, it is entirely up to your choices and what you are intending to store in your laptop. Anyone of them you choose will be good. I'd say I'm with the 400GB config.

However I would suggest buying a single 320GB HD config then later add another similar to your empty slot. A single 320GB 5400 unit is very much the same performance as with 200GB 7200 unit due to plater density vs rpm speed. Just a suggestion. My 1720 is originally configured with the 320GB 5400 and later added a 200GB 7200. No regrets.

 

The difference is 40 EUR, which is about 60$...

Yeah, I did a lot of research, but there's always something missing in the configs I find... Videocard not fast enough, memory too low, ... But I think that Dell is the way to go I'm pretty satisfied with that configuration.

"A 7200RPM HD can read and write 12% faster, and loads progs 14% faster than a 5400RPM HD.." (according to Dell) It's not that phenomenal
Either way, the best thing will be to use a RAID0 set-up I guess. Are 5400RPM HD's noticeably quieter than 7200 RPM HD's?
(I know i'm probably nitpicking here, but i just want it to be perfect hehe)

This is the config I chose:

• Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T9300 (2,50 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 6 MB L2-cache)
• Windows Vista™ Home Premium - Dutch
• 4.096 MB 667 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2 x 2.048]
• nVidia® GeForce™ Go 8600M GT 256 MB DDR2
• 400 GB 7.200 rpm with FreeFall-sensor (2 x 200 GB)
• Internal 8x DVD+/-RW-station with software
• Intel® Wireless-N-minicard
• 90 W adapter
• Dell™ Wireless 355 Bluetooth + Dell™ Bluetooth 2.0-stereo headset
• 6-cell lithium-ion battery (56 W/h)
• Espresso Brown with satin coating & 2,0 megapixel camera
• 17,0-inch UltraSharp™ WUXGA-widescreen (1.920 x 1.200) with TrueLife™

Total: € 1.467,94 (2,273.96 USD)
Incl. VAT & Transport

BTW, when I get the laptop, the first thing I'm going to do is format it And install XP. I have no need for the tons of bloatware and besides, performance will be much greater with XP... And more compatible with the software I'll be running.. (Visual Studio 2005 etc)

 

I posted somewhere else about the *performance* gain of a 7200 RPM drive. I don't have all the stats in front of me that I put in to that post but...

I bought a Hitchi 200GB 7200RPM 16 or 32MB cache super duper deluxe high performance drive from big box buy on sale for $175. /sarcasm off

I installed the drive in my 1720. Firstly I noticed that the drive bus speed was still running at 1.5GB instead of the 3GB that the new drive said it could do. I thought it was a software issue but no, it seems these boards can't do 3GB.

Next I used HDTune and it did show greater speeds with the newer drive.

Finally I did a "real world" evaluation. I still had my old drive with the same apps installed on it. In fact I just used symantec ghost to transfer my install to the new drive.

What I saw surprised me. Windows load times were virtually identical. But the new drive was 2 seconds slower consistently. Next I tried opening apps including games (orange box). Again the load times were withing a second of one another. I repeated these test a few times with both drives installed to verify my results were not a "fluke".

In the end I wiped the drive and returned it under the satisfaction guarantee because I was not satisfied. Probably more with the laptop performance than the drives though

I love my notebook and would most likely do it all over again if given the chance but I have found a few things to be dissapointed in.

 

Is it a known fact that they can't do the full 3GB or is it just what you found with your system? Do you think it is the hardware that is causing this or just a driver could solve the problem? I ask because I was looking at upgrading to a 320GB 3GB/s and I was thinking hey that should be faster as I only have a 1.5GB/s right now. Does anyone else have any insight on this?

Also as far as noise. I will guess that a 7200 RPM might make a little bit more noise than a 5400 RPM just because it is spinning faster. There are some drives such as the one that came in my 1420 (made by Western Digital, could be other companies too) that have built in "silent drive" technology. You can also go into your BIOS and change your HDD to run in silent mode...but this will cost you a small performance decrease by doing so.