Upcoming 10K RPM Notebook HD?

When will we see the first 10k RPM 2.5" harddrive for a notebook? I currently have Seagate 5400 RPM and upgrading to 7200 RPM doesn't seem to have that much of improvement.

 

5400rpm to 7200rpm is significant (for certain situations), about 25-30% faster load times for games and large applications.

there will be no 10k RPM 2.5" HDD (for notebooks), there are 2.5" 10k RPM and 15k RPM drives available, but they are for slimline (1U) servers using SCSI interface.

the heat and power for such a drive will make it impossible to place be used within the interiors of a notebook... maybe you can get a 10k RPM external HDD.

 

Seagate 5400rpm drives are I think some of the faster ones. 7200rpm drives don't end up being much faster than their 5400rpm ones.

 

Not compared to the Hitachi 7k100 and Seagate 7200, both are much quicker than the 5400 drives. Check out that link I posted in your other thread.

 

10kRPM 2.5 HD are already available...for servers =/

 

Thanks for you review. I also read the review at storagereview.com. Looks good but the capacity is only 100 GB. I would lost 60 GB from my current harddrive .

 

True, but you now have a 160 gb external HD to store files. I sincerely doubt most people need more than 100 gb for their notebooks, although I have no idea of course of your need. You can bet that any 10K mobile HDD would be even smaller than the 7200 rpm.

 

For alot of notebooks, 7200 makes the wristrest hot enough, think of a 10000's heat generation!



Sunny Side up anyone?

 

I will be honest, dont bother upgrading your hard drive. I have a 100GB 4,200 RPM. It is fast enough. I have a exturnal 7200RPM 320GB hard drive (USB).

Together, i have enough space for all my files. I am currently using 60GB on my laptop and 120GB on the exturnal. 180GB is a lot of files, but i am the guy who sits 5hrs/night on here.

Rob

Edit: Isn't 49c too cold? That is how hot my hard drive CAN and WILL become according to Notebook hardware control.

 

The next upgrade in speed with be solid state drives. They are incredibly fast compared to current disks, and they are cool, use less power, and silent. Thats what you should wait for (once prices come down). Also, if your laptop has an ExpressCard, get a card for it. That will make it faster for multiple reasons, first because you have a very fast link, and second because as you split work between multiple disks you are able to access more data simultaneously.

Finally, some 5400 RPM drives are able to reach speeds near that of 7200 RPM drives. If you have a 160 GB 5400 RPM drive with 2 platters and an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive with 2 platters, the data on the 5400 RPM is so much more dense, that the distance required to read success chunks of data, or even for random access is so much smaller that times become nearly equal. Think of the 7200 RPM drive being like this: |1 0 1 0 1|0 1 1 1 0|...etc... and the 5400 RPM being like this: |10101|01110|. The idea is that the 5400RPM is so much more compact that as the disk moves, it might move a little slower, but the data is so much closer that you are able to read about as much in the same amount of time.

 

You mean I could cook some eggs on my laptop! Sounds like a good idea!

A 4,200 RPM hard drive might be fast enough for you but it could be too slow for someone who plays games. The performance increase from hard drive speed is really noticable for load times in a game. So the speed someone likes depends on that person and what they do.

And 49C too cold? 49 degrees C isn't really cold for the hard drive no. Mine will usually be between 40 and 45C.

 

The heat dissapation and power consuumption make a 10,000 RPM HDD un practcial. In my opinion, the next improvement would be 1.5" 7200rpm drives. As the disk platter is smaller, the read/write head has to travel a shorter distance to access data, making it faster than a 2.5" HDD running at the same speed.

And that is quite possible, with the Perpendicular Magnetic Storage technology.

 

The next gen HD will be Solid State Disk (SSD) which will kill even the fastest 10k rpm raptor HD...

 

Oh ya, the 300 gb 4200 rpm fujitsu drive will blow the 160 gb 7200 rpm drive out of the water. The speed is the data concentration more than the rpm.

Although different situations come up to make each one faster. But the fastest drive in reality is the largest one. I think consumers are confused about this.

If you look at the 2 drives for sale for laptops right now that are mainstream, the 160 gb 5400 and the 100 gb 7200, the 160 gb one will be faster and larger.

 

But the 7200 rpm will still rule in access time

 

Schmenge is right...I would not buy anything faster then 7200 RPM because within the next year or two the solid state drives will take over the market. It's possible the SSD's will actually fuel the next wave of laptop sales as I doubt they will make them pin compatable with existing SATA/IDE systems. But it sure would be GREAT is they do make them pin compatable with at least SATA connections and controllers.

 

I have no idea how people are coming up with these conclusions regarding the 5400 rpm drives, but it is misinforming. I don't doubt that the new drives have improved performance, but show one example of 5400 rpm drives outperforming the 100 gb Hitachi and Seagate 7200 rpm ones, because I have only seen the opposite. If you're content with your 5400 rpm drive, so be it, and recent 5400 drives are definitely much faster than previous ones, but not nearly as quick as the more recent 7200 drives period. FOr the average user who does not game or use memory intensive software, the lower rpm drives function just fine, but I can assure you through first hand experience that the 7200 rpm drives improve performance significantly.

Okay, here is a comparison from Tom's Hardware. it seems the 5400 drives are definitely doing a bit better, but still slower than the 7200s for certain. Some of the newer SATA 5400 drives have even better bandwidth, but that is irrelevant considering the actual read and write speeds.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/28/hard_drives_by_toshiba_and_western_digital_rev_up/page5.html

 

Ok that benchmark shows a 100 gb 7200 read and write speed is marginally better than a 160 gb 5400 rpm one.

But in reality in real life the 160 gb is going to be so much faster as it has more open space and higher data concentration.

However they are close and they are also similar in price. I think the 160 gb 5400 is a much smarter buy.

If you are even a basic novice computer user you will see the speed difference when your hd is 50% full compared to 70% full. Thats the real life difference youre going to see. 160 gb is going to be so much faster its ridiculous when holding the same amount of data.

Size is always the best.

I dont want to argue with anyone. More rpms makes a small difference in all things. Larger size makes a huge difference in some things. I cant tell you what speed you are pursuing in what to make your opinion, but I can say for almost everyone that 160 gb hd is faster than 100 gb hd



Try and follow this:

The rpm is SOLELY how fast it spins.

However, seeing as the platter of the 160 gb hd is the exact same size, you have to realize that for every rpm, the head is reading more data!
The rpm of the hd is not really even the key factor of the speed. It cannot hurt, it always can help....

If you are trying to follow a benchmark that accentuates the speed the drive is spinning around, like access time.... you are wasting your time. You do not care how fast the thing spins around, unless you can attach wheels to it. You are letting the marketing benchmarks confuse you.

 

Do you realize that drive performance consists of two aspects: latency and throughput? Higher platter density gives you better throughput. I'm okay with that. But higher rpm gives you better latency. There's no way a 5400RPM drive can have a comparable latency to a 7200RPM drive, no matter how dense its platters are.

 

look as much as I love confrontational talk about computer hardware I have to cut this short

I used to work at seagate. I hung out with hard drive engineers.

Not that it takes more than basic math to figure out the entire winchester technology.

My biggest insight into it is that its marketed in ways to confuse computer geeks. And they sure are confused by it let me tell you lol.

I mean look, use that toms hardware bench as a bible. If you buy a 100 gb 7200 rpm hd over a 160 gb 5400 rpm hd you are a bad consumer. You will gain no speed, you will likely lose speed and you will also have 60 gb less....... If you dont agree with this we are on different planets and cant possibly be communicating well enough to continue.

 

Which one is better depends on your usage pattern.

If you work on multimedia, and need to transfer huge files back and forth all the time, you need high transfer rate. In that case, 5K160 makes more sense with the 160GB size and dense platters.

If you compile a lot of software on your laptop and need to access many small files all the time, you need low latency. In that case, 7K100 makes sense because the higher RPM gives you lower latency.

 

If you can create a real life demo to try to make a smaller faster spinning drive outperform a larger slower spinning drive....

Which you can absolutely do...

You are not the average user. Its my opinion most people wont ever use their computers in a way that takes advantage of a faster spinning hd over a larger platter hd.
I think more people dont understand this than do as well so I bother to explain it sometimes.

 

How about ripping a DVD?

How about ripping a DVD in the background, playing some mp3 songs in the background, while browsing the web in the foreground?

These are pretty bandwidth intensive usage scenarios, and not uncommon for "the average user" I would think.

 

True, up to a point. The access speed certainly matters for many everyday tasks, and that is determined by the RPM. You're right though, higher data density obviously improves the transfer bandwidth quite a lot. So in cases where that is the limiting factor, the bigger disk may be just as fast. In cases where access time is king? Go with the 7200RPM disk.

 

I'm not disagreeing with your logic, and did not mean to come off as terribly confrontational. I'm simply looking at actual numbers and seeing no advantage in terms of speed. Yes these numbers are hardly all encompassing, and increased density of data certainly seems to lend itself to improved speed, but I'm certainly not convinced. I only consider most of the online tests to be generalised at best, certainly not by highly qualified experts, but it is hard to argue with reduced latencies and improved transfer rates. Perhaps the rates may be marginal, but it adds up, depending on your usage. For my usage, the lower latency drive makes more sense. However I'm certainly not an expert on these matters, nor am I an engineer capable of assessing the performance of these devices. Just a regular guy who is very impressed with the performance of his new 7K100.

 

Math minded people have a few things in common.

They like to apply algebra to everything. And they like to feel smart about it lol.

The math here on hd speed is very simple. this is the speed it can go once its found the file and gone through the cache

7200 /5400 = 1.33 160 /100= 1.6

that means the head on the 5400 rpm 160 gb drive is reading data faster. You will have to tailor a test to make the SLOWER but faster spinning drive look good and point out its advantages

160 gb hd will be faster. for ripping a dvd, it will definitely be faster. absolutely, positively no question. 4.5 gb file will load faster with the 160 gb hd the BANDWIDTH on the 5400 160 gb hd is much higher, its only the speed the 100 gb 7200 rpm drive is spinning around thats faster. once u go through the cache on the file, the greater SPEED of the 160 gb 5400 rpm hd will overtake it

There are several factors there is also the cache fragmentation the amount of the hd full.

Also think about this simple thing. 100 gb with 80gb data on it is 80% full. 160 gb is 50% full. At that point the 160 gb hd is faster.

Why it frustrates me is that its not like a close race at all, the consumer wants the largest hd almost always. For a laptop absolutely get the largest unless you have a 2 hd laptop in which case you can have one just for the os that youre never going to fill up.

 

Well then, I wish I had heard this about a week ago. Oh well, I'm quite satisfied with my purchase. Besides, most of the files I load are not that large, and would load more quickly with the 7200 drive. This would probably be the case for most people too I imagine - perhaps for large multimedia etc the 5400 would have a distinct advantage. As for burning, I'm pretty certain the main holdup is the rate at which it is able to burn, not the rate the HD can send it to the burner.

 

Cheffy,

Don't worry about your purchase... if you purchased for all-round performance, you definitely made the right choice. Stamar, despite his experience 'working with Seagate engineers', seems to have grossly oversimplified performance into an equation pitting RPM against platter density, and his equations only work within a limited range... In reality, it is actually the opposite of Stamar's conclusions; you must tailor a test to make the 5400RPM drive look good. Since I disagree with him, I must be on a different planet than he is and therefore it is probably tough for us to communicate. I suspect, however, he's not the one on planet Earth. 'Most consumers' of hard drives appreciate booting faster and having applications load faster. 'Most consumers' aren't downloading 100GB/month onto their hard drives and archiving away. 'Most consumers' probably have < 40GB of applications and games on their hard drive - e.g. the stuff that is going to get accessed the most often - compared to the videos, etc. which aren't always being read from and for which transfer rate only matters when copying from drive to drive...

In order for Stamar's argument to win:

1. The 5400RPM hard drive must be larger and must have a much larger platter density than the 7200RPM hard drive. If they're the same size and platter density, the 7200RPM wins out, no question.
2. The 7200RPM hard drive has to be mostly full, and the 5400RPM hard drive should be less full % wise. If you get to the point where the 5400RPM drive is near full and writing to the end of the disk (say, < 10% capacity left), it will actually be quite a lot slower than the 7200RPM drive because its data transfer rate (what Stamar calls 'bandwidth') is always going to be slower than the 7200RPM drive. Also, as the files start to fragment and the operating system tries to fit the files into open gaps in the drive the 7200RPM will maintain a much larger advantage.
3. You have to be writing to large, contiguous files. Large, fragmented files and small files are faster on 7200RPM drives.
4. You must be writing and reading from areas close to the end of the 7200RPM drive - this is typically the area that gets filled the last, but not always. If you are accessing areas in the first half of the drive, the 7200RPM drive will win.

Note the arguments above that mention 'first half' or 'mostly full' are generalizations which don't necessarily apply to all drives... To show you why this works and to be specific, I'll refer to a few graphs, and to help Stamar out a bit, I'll make the comparison lopsided towards his argument by comparing a 5400RPM drive which has much, much higher platter density than the 7200RPM drive. The Seagate Momentus 5400.3 is a perpendicular recording drive, and so its platter density is a lot higher than the Hitachi Travelstar... of course, this will change once the Travelstar also gets perpendicular recording, evening it out.

7200RPM Hard Drive - Click on the data-transfer graph for the 7K100 100GB drive.

5400 160GB Perpendicular Recording HD - Graph is displayed on the page - click to expand.

Note that from the 65GB mark the transfer rate on the 7200RPM drive starts to fall below the 5400RPM drive. This is what Stamar is talking about in terms of 'faster speed from a 5400RPM drive'. If you write large, contiguous files only from this mark onwards - and you aren't doing any multitasking or anything requiring random access, the 5400RPM drive will be faster. Once you reach the 140GB mark on the 5400RPM drive, its transfer rate falls below the minimum of the 7200RPM drive, and its performance in those areas of the disk will never match a 7200RPM drive.

To simplify this a bit, we can talk about percentages. In this case the 7200 RPM drive will pretty much always be faster for 80% of the 7200's disk capacity - the first 65% and the last 15%. The 5400RPM drive will be faster in transfer rate, in this case, for the 20% in between, and only for large contiguous files that aren't limited by some other factor (e.g. network transfer rate, burning rate, random access, etc.). In terms of absolute space, there's a 75GB block of space on the 5400RPM drive which may sometimes be faster than the last 35GB on the 7200RPM drive, and this is what Stamar bases his whole argument on.

 

Oh yes,
I worked at seagate in scotts valley. I knew engineers. You can doubt it but its on the tax returns. Different time than today however the technology hasnt changed. I didnt say I was a hard drive engineer. But I did say it doesnt actually take a lot to be one either seagate is not an elite employer

I chose the 160 gb one because its so much larger. It is much larger than the 7200 rpm one is spinning faster.

If the hd is larger its faster. I looked at your two articles and they pretty much said the 160 gb was faster, but it explained different ways it can be faster. Thats what every computer magazine would say. If they write it out for you in a clearer way, ignore what i tried to write out about it and read the article. If you read the articles you linked and you think the 7200 rpm 100 gb one is faster, youre right youre on a different planet. Theres something going on here with comprehension.

Boot time test would be one of the most useful tests.
Im just about positive the 160 gb 5400 rpm hd would have a faster boot time.

as far as the percentages full and the speed I didnt see that in the articles you posted at all Ill read it again someday and look for it.
Never seen a real life comparison like that actually its always an estimate.
If you could choose an amount of data and say you think your hd has this amount full usually, say 70 gb, and then theres a test for you to look up and compare the size vs rpm for 70 gb used.
so the 100 gb one is 70% full and the 160 gb on is 43% full that would be data youd want.
But I dont see that anywhere I cant imagine how it would be formatted.

 

heh
I have to repeat something I wrote about confrontational hardware arguments.

I dont really have time for it. I didnt really get a whole lot from what you wrote.

But I did get that you were interested enough to try to look it up and figure it out.

If you want to spend time figuring out how each factor affects the speed and how that applies to your purpose for your pc by all means.

I want to repeat though I made a simple statement that the two hds for laptops that are on the market atm the 160 gb 5400 and the 100 gb 7200, the 160 gb is a much better deal and for more purposes faster.
Im not even sure anyone contradicted me.
But thats all I wanted to try and share with you. If theres someone here arguing with that, I dont want to waste time reading why. I recomend you do your own research always for everything.

 

Ha why are you all arguing about old technology? Either 7200 or perpendicular 5400 are dead meat when SSD hits main stream (and gets cheaper)

 

I wasn't doubting you were working with Seagate. That part is fine. However, you implied that because you knew the engineers, you knew correctly about the technology you speak of. I, however, have a background in engineering and despite not being in hard drive engineering, I have read and researched enough to get what I think is a fairly decent understanding of the technology. Even then, it's not my background that's important - you only have to read my analysis in order to see whether the conclusions I reach are logical.

If you read the articles, you'd have realized that comparing the 7200RPM vs the 5400RPM drives would show you that the 5400 drive doesn't win. Not in boot time, application performance, or anything else - except in the specific area which you talked about which I tried to illustrate, relating to data transfer. I'm not sure how you came to the opposite conclusion. You didn't bother reading the graphs and interpreting what was on it. Heck, especially boot time, since the files loaded at that time are likely to be written at the beginning of the drive, which is guaranteed to be read much faster on the 7200RPM hard drive.

The percentages full and the speed were derived by myself, exactly from the graphs I linked to - which you somehow managed to see as supporting your own conclusion despite it showing the opposite. I don't know how many people have a drive that's 'usually' full between a very restricted range of percentages like you want to imply, but I've explained that even if we do follow that idea, your conclusion is still far from concrete. If you need a lot of space, buy a bigger hard drive, and that will be a better value for you... but performance wise, not so likely.

No kidding. I think, though, if you really look at the data and see the results you'll see what I'm trying to say. Even at this stage, my analysis is still pretty basic and there's a lot more factors to be taken into account including caching algorithms and access patterns that can have a significant effect on the end result. For a forum like this, though, it might be going a bit too far and it would be too speculative since those kinds of things are usually proprietary and time consuming.

As far as solid-state disk drives go, Bender, I think we're still a little far off to be considering them right now. Waiting for them to cheapen and mature... well, go ahead and wait if you'd like, but I think you'll be waiting quite some time... given that perpendicular recording has only just hit mainstream, I think it is really more important to be talking about them today than SSD.

 

right what BENDER said...

 

Mystic Image -

Thanks for the links, exactly the information I was looking for. My confidence in my choice is completely restored (not that it is a big deal). As I mentioned previously, I am very happy with the drive which is much more appropriate for my notebook usage than the old clunker it came with.

Stamar -

I appreciate your explanations, but especially after examining the links I have to agree with Mystic Image. I am not an engineer, and have never associated with engineers specialising in hard drives, but the information seems to speak for itself. If you're truly interested in this topic, I'd recommend going through those links listed above.

 

It's not "old technology", I cannot see hard drives being replaced in any significant amount as a laptop storage device for at least 3-5 years. Current performance figures for SSDs were disappointing and did not offer the improvements promised. Hard drives are a mature technology, which gives them the edge in the short term. Anyway, not to go too off topic but does anyone know when 7200RPM drives larger than 120GB are coming out?

 

There are 7200 rpm drives larger than 100 GB?

 

There aren't, but they'll almost certainly be developed in the near future. I was just wondering if anyone's seen them on any roadmaps or heard about any release dates.

 

Yea personally I'm wondering whats going to happen soon with hard drive capacities. I really need as much space as possible for storage but I refuse to go lower than 5400 rpm so I'm pretty much stuck at 160GB for now. Any new advances going to be released in time for my Santa Rosa dell notebook?

I mean, a 160 GB laptop is a big improvement over my filled up 50GB desktop, but then I need the laptop to last until I can get myself a desktop in a few years. I guess when I can finally get a job I might be able to save up for external drives but until then....

 

Benchmarks of large capacity 5400rpm drive versus 7200rpm drive posted at:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1802378#post1802378

 

You know, external drives are much more affordable and offer transfer rates nearly as good as internal 2.5" drives. If you believe HP Tach, then my firewire connection average transfer rates is the same as my 7200 internal drive! (I don't)

 

And the answer to your 7200RPM, high capacity question is coming... and soon... it might not be in time for the intro of Santa Rosa, but almost certainly it won't be much later than that.

200GB 7200RPM Travelstar

Actually, external 3.5" drives - even if they're 5400RPM - are generally much faster than their 2.5" counterparts. The limitation these days is USB 2.0 and/or Firewire 400 (not as bad as USB2, but still limited) in terms of transfer rate.

 

Have had the same conversation over and over again with many friends. My advice was for the same money either go for a high capacity 4200 rpm or a smaller but faster 7200rpm.
Have a look in the graphs bellow. The new 7200rpm 160GB drive is also included (only one disk tested though). Hope this answers lots of questions.
I did not bother including the access time chart as I don;t think anyone disagrees that 7200 have lower times.

Another thing to think about.

SSD. What makes them that much faster?

You guessed right. It's not the transfer rate. It is the access time.

 

I cannot wait for the day there is an affordable SSD. As BENDER said, it's all over when that happens. I could live with even ~60GB in the system itself and then a NAS, file server, or external hard drives for the vast majority of my storage needs.

SSDs (Solid State Drives, or something along those lines) are faster because they're solid flash memory chips rather than spinning platters. All data access occurs electronically rather than physically. The latencies are SIGNIFICANTLY lower and transfer rates higher.

 

Transfer rates are not higher.

 

Are you referring to them being on the same SATA interface as current hard drives? Current hard drives don't even come close in most occasions to saturating a SATA-150 connection (Raptors, for example, are still on SATA-150 rather than -300), there's bandwidth to spare for SSDs to not be bottlenecked. Even if they are...it's a cheap upgrade for future platforms to incorporate SATA-300 over 150.

 

There have been recent announcments of 2.5" 7200RPM HDD greater than 100GB. Does anyone know if any of these new HDD will support good ole PATA? (Think W3J)!

 

That 160GB 7200RPM drive is looking sweet. I've currently got a 5400rpm 80GB drive, which according to that graph has roughly half the transfer speed of the new drive. Twice the capacity, up to twice the transfer speed, sounds good to me!

 

Doubtful for PATA support.

 

The whole thing about large disks being faster is not always true. I am pretty sad to see seek times climbing back up with the advent of the larger 500gb and 750gb 3.5" drives. I do a lot of audio recording at 88.1/24bit and I NEED fast seek times. You would think that I would be dealing with a lot of large contiguos files so sustained transfer is more important right? Well I also need to be able to read large audio files the same time I am recording new ones. Which means I need a lively seek time, random access time etc. Funny that a new seagate at 500gb has slower specs in this category than my 80gb seagate from 2 years ago!

 

Actual SSD transfer rates are more like 30-40 mb/s. Some claim 60mb/s but we will need to see and test first.