320gb 7200 hd vs. 500gb 5400?

I have two hd's sitting in front of me. One is the stock T500 320gb 7200rpm and the other is a Seagate Momentus 500gb 5400rpm. I'm trying to figure out which I should keep.

I do some gaming and web development. Obviously the bigger the hd the better but for dev I've read it's important to have a faster drive. However, this machine is loaded with 4 gigs of ram and is expandable to 8 so it's no slouch as far as speed is concerned.

Do you think the speed difference between the two drives is a big difference or negligible? If it's not a big difference than I'm leaning towards the 500gb drive.

What do you think?

 

Go for the 500GB if you need the space.

 

(1) Send back the 500GB/5400rpm
(2) Get a 500GB/7200RPM Seagate from Newegg
(3) Enjoy the best of both worlds

 

A Seagate drive gets you a free download of DiscWizard from Seagate's website. It's a limited version of True Image, a very good image tool. I use it myself in place for R & R, which can be farty and bloated. It's why all my drives, desktop and laptop, are Seagates.

 

Depends on which 320GB drive you have. If it's the WD Black, don't do it because real world tests have shown it faster in several cases than even the Seagate 500 GB 7200RPM drive. Both the WD and Hitachi 5400rpm 500GB perform better than the same rpm and size Seagate drive. If you are performance minded, the Seagate is really not the way to go.

 

Care to point to one?

 

I'm also curious. I tend to lean towards WD drives over Seagate anyway, but your post is intriguing.

Also, by what margin are the WD Black drives faster? We talking a few percentage points or something actually noticeable in real-world usage?

 

You make a good case with this. I wasn't aware of the free software, thanks. I will check this out and most likely go with the 500gb.

 

Hey Zaz and all,
There is a great deal going on right now for Acronis True Image Home 2009 at Newegg. It is going for $4 and free shipping(after rebate and promo). I just posted it in the deal section here.

 

There are a number of people here for whom dollars speak louder than peformance. Very often, the two are diametrically opposed.

Renee

 

Even if the WD is faster in the benches, I doubt it makes any difference in real world usage.

Perhaps True Image is better, but DiscWizard does everything I need it to do and doesn't cost anything. There's no rebate forms to fill out with the potential to be denied. Thanks for the link.

 

When I tested between a Hitachi 7200rpm HDD and a WD 5400rpm HDD the biggest difference was in the pitch of the sound emitted. This was more important to me than the 10% or so difference in speed (in favour of the 7200rpm). reviews seem to ignore the pitch of a drive. Of course in the end I went for a SSD, which is silent...

 

Sorry I overplayed the differences. I'd say go with the what balances performance, power use, heat, and noise best since they are all very close in performance. Note I have the Hitachi 5k500.B in my Ultrabay and it's cool and quiet (quiet to me, I maybe used to Hitachi's trademark "woosh" sound).

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-2.5-mobile-hard-drive-charts/PCMark-Vantage,1119.html The Big charts from Tom's.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010 Comparison of 500 GB drives, where the performance isnt much but the 7200.4 essentially proves it was no great leap forward, which it was heralded to be (there are a few disappointed people in that incredibly large thread in the Hardware thread and others who are confused why the 7200.4 never had the major power). Likewise, the Seagate 5400rpm doesn't stand out. As atested by others, the Seagates seem to be more optimized for benchmarks but then falter in real world stuff.

Zaz, I suspect you've owned a lot more computers and hard drives than me so I'll take what you say

 

I decided to stick with the 7200 for internal use and I bought an enclosure for the 500/5400 to use as an external.

Zaz - do you know if I can still use that backup software with only one of the drives being a seagate (external in my case via usb)? If not, I'll find out when I get my enclosure delivered.

 

I just installed a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB 5400.

So far so good.

 

I don't know. Maybe you want to post over in the Seagate forums.