7200 vs. 5400RPM HDD

Are there big differences between 7200 and 5400RPM hard drives.
Is it worth paying $100 for the upgrade?
Thanks for your input!

 

I hear the 160gb 5400 rpm drive is about as fast as the 7200 100gb drive. Though, the more they fill up, the more the 5400 falls behind.
I don't have any stats to show this, just what I've heard.
It mainly has to due with denser platters.
Keep an eye out for the 7200 160gb drives.

BTW, what are you planning on doing? Most apps you don't need the additional speed.

 

That hasn't been my experience. A 7200RPM drive offers a bit better overall system performance. It boots faster and apps don't lag as much as when you click on them. As noted, it will depend on what you are doing. Things like Office or Internet, once you get them open, will seem the same. One option would be to upgrade it yourself and sell the old drive as a way to offset the cost. That's usually the cheapest route.

 

There is a difference in that the 7200 RPM drive will allow a computer to boot faster. The same applies for games, but generally, most tasks won't benefit from a faster hard disk like hollownail said. It also depends on what capacity hard disk yu are comparing. A 160 GB 5400 RPM drive can compete quite close to a 100 GB 7200 RPM drive, because the 5400 RPM has a more compressed platter density.

 

This question has been answered a million times in this forum. Might be easier if we used the search button more often.

 

I have some questions too

If I buy a 7200RPM harddrive from a retailer such as Newegg, will my WinXP OEM serial that is linked to my T60 work?

Also, people seem to be saying that you can do a clean install with Vista Upgrade DVD. Does that mean that I can boot Vista Upgrade DVD and install it on this brand new Harddrive--even without the presence of WinXP?

 

If you are referring to the recovery discs, they are not an OEM Windows disc. They put the drive back to its factory state. An OEM Windows XP CD lacks the SATA drivers necessary to install it. You can use nLite to slipstream them in. Vista has the SATA drivers, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

I actually meant to ask, will the serial number underneath my laptop work with any WinXP OEM disc (not dell or hp brand, but regular OEM disc), even it's one that is not given by Lenovo?

 

Most likely it will not.

 

Just to chime in here...

Samsung just released a 200 GB 7200 RPM notebook hard drive. Knowing Samsung HDDs in the past, it probably will be just as quiet/quieter than Seagate. Seagate/Hitachi I believe have both launched 160 GB 7200 RPM notebook HDDs, but Samsung right now holds the crown to having the highest capacity 2.5" notebook HDD (which still uses only 2 platters).

Another thing to note is about the 5400 RPM HDDs is which one. Most importantly is the perpendicular recording technology. In real tests, I believe Anandtech or Tom's Hardware did run a comparison between the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 with the Perpendicular Recording vs the 7K100 in identical capacities. They found that the differences between both of them were very marginal.

Of course a 7200 RPM HDD will definately boot faster and will overall result in more 'responsiveness', but I believe that you probably will only notice/appreciate that kind of response times if you heavily use your computer. If you are using it for simple things like internet and email I dont think you would really benefit from that.

 

My current Seagate drive is the quietest I have used.

 

You will see a difference with internet and emailing. The access time is smaller and internet browsing using all this file caching will benefit from the faster 7200 drives.

 

Yes, thats correct. But Windows only page files if there isn't enough RAM, so if someone has a small amount of RAM, or too little RAM for the tasks that are being performed, then a hard disk upgrade to a faster speed, may make a little bit of difference. But for those, who have enough RAM, there may not be any increase in responsiveness. The only increase there would be when new programs are opened and started up.

 

Well there are always backgound tasks that require access to the disk.
Think of virus scans, indexing, defragmenting, downloading etc.

 

I'd upgrade to a 7200 RPM HDD if I didn't have to buy another Windows OEM key.

 

I don't think you will need another OEM key at all. If you have one, then the only time you will need a new key is when you change your motherboard. Upgrades, such as RAM, hard disks, don't count as massive system changes, so you should be okay to upgrade to a 7200 RPM drive.

 

Only problem is that in order to use the serial under my laptop, I need Lenovo's own OEM disc. (Not positive but I think so)

I called up Lenovo and they said they can't and won't send me a WinXP installation disc unless
a) there was a HDD failure and they need to replace it for me, in which case, they send me the replacement and disc separately
b) I'm buying a new HDD directly from them

I explained that I want to upgrade to a 7200RPM HDD and will need the WinXP disc and they said that if I buy the HDD from a third-party, there is nothing they can do for me.

 

Why don't you just create an image of your harddrive?

 

FWIW..I just upgraded my HDD and I didn't need any of this stuff.

I intalled what I could afford (5400 160 WD Scorpio) and everything, so far, works fine.

Search on my earlier posts for details of how I accomplished the upgrade.