Hard Drives: 5400rpm vs 7200rpm

Hello, i am considering my hard drive options and i am curious is the 5400rpm and 7200 rpm models will have a noticible performance difference, and what type of applications will i notice the performance?

 

There are so many threads created about this

 

Only about 142..or 143 I forget.
To answer your question, get the 7200 if you play games or always copy many files. Or if you copy to the HDD often. Otherwise the 5400 will be just fine, the performance increase with a 7200 isnt too noticable.

 

A high density 5400rpm harddrive, aka a 250Gb or 320Gb 5400rpm drive, will perform identical to a 7200 rpm harddrive.

The fastest harddrives a of now, are th Hitachi 7K200 (200Gb 7200rpm) and the Samsung/WD 320Gb 5400rpm drive

The 320Gb drives are identical in speed, becaue they have a greater data density. There is more data per square inch in the 320Gb drive than the 200Gb drive, so the heads of the harddrive do not have to move as far to access the same amount of data.

I would look at a 250Gb or 320Gb 5400rpm drive. The Hitachi 7K200 is too expensive, since it performs the same as the Wd and Samsung 320Gb 5400rpm drives

K-TRON

 

Which would you choose, the WD or the Samsung 320gb 5400rpm?

 

I would personally choose the Samsung, because its made in Korea, and has an edge over the Western digital in power usage.
I have had many bad run-ins with western digital and seagate, which is why I usually use Hitachi and Samsung harddrives.

K-TRON

 

Newegg users prefer the WD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000150380+1309733643&name=320GB

 

I did not say that Western Digital is bad, I have had bad runins with them in the past, and I have never went other than Hitachi in the past year or so.

The WD 320 does have good reviews, but so does the Samsung. The Samsung has less reviews because it was more expensive than the Western Digital until about two weeks ago when the Samsung dropped about $30 in price.

Either of the drives are good, it is up to your feeling as to which to get.

I would read the reviews and see if either drive has any issues in the laptop you have.

K-TRON

 

We really need a sticky on hard drives, who wants to make it?

 

Or if you load programs a lot. Or if you boot up your system a lot. Or... or...

ok, just get the 7200 rpm.

Hard drives are the weakest link in laptop performance (well, for gaming, it's graphics cards, but for most other things, hard drives), so you may as well get one that's as fast as you can get.

But if you need lots of storage space, go for the large-capacity 5400 rpm drives... they cost about the same as moderate-capacity 7200 rpm drives, and they're almost as fast.

 

Plus...7200rpm drain more battery life too...I still love my 7200 rpm 7k100.

As mentioned, large capacity 5400rpms will have similar read and write times as the 7200rpm, but 7200 still have an edge in terms of seek time, although thats quite a small difference.

 

Currently, whats the largest capacity or best performing IDE hard drive?

 

The fastest ATA harddrive is the Hitachi 7K100 100Gb harddrive. Good luck finding it anywhere I have looked and I have not found any legitimate site which sells it.
Since the 100Gb 7200 is out of the picture, I would get the Western Digital 250Gb 5400rpm drive.
It is about the same speed as the 100gb 7200rpm drive.
When I mean same speed, its about 2-3 mb/sec slower.
The 250gb 5400rpm drive is faster than the 80Gb 7200rpm hitachi

In short the 250gb 5400rpm wd is the fastest ata harddrive for notebooks.

K-TRON

 

Thanks K-Tron

 

if you record anything on your computer, like virtual dub recording, i think it would be better to use a 7k, because lower speeds arent always able to keep up with the read/writing of the program since its raw, which causes dropped frames. so if your into multimedia stuffzolas. go 7k. but just for the fact of more memory and a cheaper price, go 5k

 

You need to understand what has been said. The 320GB 5400 does more than keeps up it beats @7200! Consider?

 

Hi, did anyone notice the 250 gb 7200 rpm drive from samsung? Or the 320 7200 rpm drive from fujitsu? wake up. The samsung drive ships in april, the fujitsu in june

 

The main issue is that the WD gets about 85% excellent, while the Samsung gets about 55% excellent (although many of the people with problems are mac users).

 

The question is, would you rather trust the reviewers from newegg or
would you rather take advice from people you actually interact with here?

I wouldnt put too much trust on newegg reviewers

 

mobytoby,
you have to understand that those harddrives have not been released yet, and nobody has reviewed them.
Never buy a new piece of hardware before it has been reviewed and tested.
When samsung released their 250gb 5400rpm drive, they must have forgot something, which caused the drive to act weird.
They quickly fixed it after some complaints.

The 320gb 5400rpm drives are at the moment as fast as the fastest 200gb 7200rpm harddrive.

When the new 7200rpm drives come out we will see how they do.

As LAZY mentioned, you are better off reading the harddrive reviews here, since we know what we are talking about. There are reviews here on many harddrives accompanied by hdtune charts and performance benchmarks.

K-TRON

 

Don't overlook the Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD charts. X-bit labs have also done some tests.

I believe the highest capacity in 2.5" PATA is the WD2500BEVE (not be be confused with the WD2500BEVS, which is SATA). The Samsung HM160HC probably has the fastest transfer rates in 2.5" PATA because the 160GB are on one platter (so speed will be the same as the 320GB HDDs), but a 7200rpm HDD will have slightly shorter access times.

John

 

The only post I can find on the WD is http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=205899, but the HDTune image is not longer available. Most of the posts I've found are thoughts on 320/5400 compared to 200/7200. One poster thought the drives were much the same, with the WD having higher performance and the Samsung a bit better energy efficiency.

Please point me towards posts that would help me decide which to get

 

Here is a thread on the Samsung 320Gb 5400rpm drive:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=193601

Here is a thread on the Western digital 320gb 5400rpm drive:
http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?print=1&article_id=87296&cat_id=632

Here is a thread on all hdtune results:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=138761

The pics in thread on the WD 320 on nbr has been removed, so I linked you to a site which tested it.

I hope this helps

K-TRON

 

K-Tron, do you know when the new drives will be coming out?

 

The Samsung Harddrive wil most likely be out in the market in the next two to three months, but the Fujitsu I think is coming out around June.

K-TRON

 

@K-TRON - thank you

I'm leaning a bit towards the WD, as a few have said the Samsung makes occasional clicking noises. They seem very close

 

Either is a good choice, you will defintely notice a nice speed boost with one of these drives.

I am glad I could help

K-TRON

 

I've purchased 2 x Western Digital 250Gb 5400rpm drives. I was lucky enough to find them at my local computer store. It seems like decent PATA drives are getting harder to find so I thought I might as well stock up now, since my W3J can support 2 HDs.

 

True, I always check tom's storage charts before buying. But what I realy like to know before I buy is the real world experience from people who actually use drives, not in some test setup.

But let me give my experience with some drives;

I did test and use the Samsung 250 HMJI with the latest firmware in my notebook and the only thing I noticed is a click/clunk noise every once in a while and a bit higher vibration levels than for example the seagate 5400.4 250 GB I am using now in the same notebook.
The seagate performs about the same in my notebook, is a little more audible as the samsung , but has no vibration whatsover. The access times are in favour of the seagate too and the hd tune results are in favour of the seagate as well. It does gets a few degrees warmer which hints a higher power usage.
But I'm expecting a lot from the 7200 rpm 250 GB Samsung drives.
Right now I fairly happy with the seagate 5400.4 but the samsung performed well too.

 

so I have read all the posts, but still need advice:
which HDD is best for a laptop that balances speed vs energy consumption?? 160 GB 7200rpm (w/ free fall sensor) or 320 gb 5400rpm? Both are offered at approx same price. I do not need more than 160gb really....so which one is best that quiet, low energy consumption and speed? thanks

 

The 320Gb 5400rpm drive is more power efficient and it is faster.

If you do not need all of that space, I recommend getting a 250Gb 5400rpm laptop drive. I hope its offered.
It should save you money, be as fast as the 160gb 7200rpm drive, and yet use less power.

K-TRON

 

Hi K-Tron, do u know how performs the Fujitsu 400G 4200rpm drivers? Since i will use it only as daten storage, not for system.

 

thanks k-tron

but do you think the free fall sensor provides protection for the 7200 rpm hdd? It is not offered on the 5400 rpm models

 

@cityblader:
Free fall sensors do not do a wink of benefit to the system. The reasoning behind this is that when a laptop harddrive falls, the heads will scrape against the head of the disk, which causes the heads in any drive to move to the inside of the drive.
The free fall sensor, will shut the drive in a few milliseconds, but in even that short time, damage is done to the drive. The drive spins at over 5000rpm, which mean that at any part of the disk, an instantaneous shock, with great enough force, will destroy an entire sector of the drive in less than the time the free fall sensor can act.
The sensor does basically nothing to save the drive data. You can simply take the extra minute and keep an extra lookout on your laptop, and make sure that the laptop is secure seated on a table.

@kaltmond:
I highly recommend buying a 4200rpm harddrive. The drive does have a high data density, but the slower rpm really affects the speed of the drive. A high density 4200rpm drive is about the same speed as a standard 80gb 5400rpm drive. Since most of the 5400rpm drives have a high data density, they are closer to the speed of a 7200rpm drive.
The MHZ2400BT (400Gb 4200rpm drive), is based on the same harddrive as the MHZ2500BT (500gb 4200rpm drive), which means that the heads on the standard 500gb drive are limited to only show 400Gb. When the heads are limited, the drive cannot read/write at its full capablility. As a result, the drive will run slower than the 500gb 4200rpm drive.
I recommend spending the money and getting the 320Gb 5400rpm drive. It is currently the fastest harddrive on the market.

I hope this helps

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the reply, if the MHZ2500BT is out i´ll consider to buy one, but until now i only find the 400G´s, and costs ~110€. For me the Capacity is the most important factor. The 5400rpm 500G from Hitachi will cost approximately 220€, it´s too much for me.