40gb 5400rpm drive or 60gb 4200rpm drive? which would you choose for a notebook?

[theNEOone]

only two options, it's not a matter of price - the 60gb drive only comes in a 4200pm version. anybody know what the performance difference would be? windows load up times? program boot times, say for photoshop 7 and others?


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[MrPickins]

I don't need too much storage space on a laptop (40Gb is plenty), so I would go with the faster drive. I guess it depends on your needs, though.

 

[conjur]

I'd go for storage. Not like you're looking to be a mean gaming machine or server from a laptop.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

If you need the space, go 60GB, otherwise go 40GB. Personally, I'd go for more speed. It'll help considerably in terms of bootup time.

 

[BaboonGuy]

heck i only have 36gb on my MAIN desktop and its plenty

 

[theNEOone]

both good arguments - exactly why i'm conflicted. i'm hoping that the performance difference isn't noticeable, in which case i would just jump over to the 60gb version. unfortunately the choice might not be that simple - can anybody confirm whether or not the 5400rpm drive will offer a noticeable increase in overall system responsiveness?


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[NeoPTLD]

4200RPM.

better battery life

 

[bastula]

The smaller faster drive. The performance difference is somewhat surprising, due to the fact that the drive will probably be your bottleneck. If you need extra space, you could always buy a usb 2.0 or firewire external hard drive, or use a network server.

 

[theNEOone]

well i don't NEED the space. i have about 300gb (more than 50% available) on my desktop computer. it would just be nice to have that extra 20gb buffer. i suppose i could always upgrade the drive later.

NeoPTLD - i actually hadn't considered the effect on battery life, thanks for bringing that to my attention....damnit more conflicted now, i was actually starting to lean towards the faster drive.


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[Tetsuo]

I would take the faster drive

 

[Joony]

Get a 60gb 7200rpm

 

[bastula]

I would say that the drain on battery life isn't that bad. I can get about 2 hours on my Inspiron 8200 with 2 hard drives: a 5400 40gb as my main and a 4200 40gb in the modular bay. That is doing light work - obviously if you are going to game, it will decrease much more quickly - but that isn't the point here .

 

[fumbduck]

i vote for putting this in a different forum.

 

[Kelvrick]

Faster drive. Anything big can be transferred to your main rig.

EDIT: Are you gettin the 16mb cache one? Oh man those are sweet.

 

[Vette73]

One of the weakest parts of a laptop is the hard drive. So I would go speed.

 

[theNEOone]

i agree w/ the argument that the hard drive is the notebook's bottleneck in most cases. but if it's only going to decrease my boot times, then i'm not all that worried about it. however, if the computer is more responsive as a whole, i would probably go w/ the smaller drive. i just can't find any freaking benchmarks comparing 4200rpm and 5400rpm drives. DAMNIT!


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[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: MrPickins
I don't need too much storage space on a laptop (40Gb is plenty), so I would go with the faster drive. I guess it depends on your needs, though.

 

[dman]

~30% performance difference w/ the 5400 RPM Drive. Maybe more maybe less depending on cache and such. That's a fair difference.

I'd go with the faster drive. 40GB is enough for a lappy, can offload stuff to a desktop or someother media as needed.

And by the time it's a problem (storage wise) the 60+GB 5400 will be out and/or cheaper.

 

[Eli]

Go with the faster drive for sure.

The hdd is the slowest thing in the computer. Remember the huge performance increase our desktop systems saw with the introduction of 7200rpm drives?

 

[dnuggett]

The faster drive is the one you want. There is a considerable perfomance boost from a 4200 to a 5400 as long as you keep it defragmented. There is hardly any additonal use of a battery. In most cases there is actually less. The hard drive does less searching and uses less wattage. Go with the faster one.

 

[dighn]

speed

40gb should be plenty for a notebook. it's not like you are gonna play a lot of games/movies on it.

 

[hdeck]

i would never need 60gb on a laptop

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
4200RPM.

better battery life

good point. I'd probably take the 60GB cause I like lots of space, but that's just me.

 

[Walleye]

Originally posted by: BaboonGuy
heck i only have 36gb on my MAIN desktop and its plenty

wouldnt be for me.

my main desktop has 160 gig.

i use 35. currently. but i just turned on my tv card, too.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: conjur
I'd go for storage. Not like you're looking to be a mean gaming machine or server from a laptop.

i was playing raven shield multiplayer just fine on my notebook. went to a lan party and everyone but me had a shuttle box.

"thats only a radeon 9000? piece of crap!"
"it's a notebook, tommy"

"only a 5400 rpm drive? that's slow!"
"it's a notebook, jeff"