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5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm for Laptops

DarkRogue

DarkRogue

Golden Member
Hello,

We all know that most laptops comes generally equipped with a 5400rpm hard drive standard. We also know that a 7200rpm drive normally beats it out in performance. My question is, if your laptop already has a 5400rpm drive, is it worth it to buy a 7200rpm drive to swap it with? I looked at the prices and it seems pretty expensive for what might be not too huge of a performance boost, unless I'm wrong there.

While we're on the subject of performance boosts, how is 1GB of RAM vs 2GB? For desktops at least, more is definitely better, but I'm not so sure about laptops. 2 1GB modules will run me about $110 on Newegg, vs just keeping the 2 512MB modules I have right now in there.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
 
I think you won`t notice the diff...maybe could notice more noise from 7200rpm drive...
Well for Vista, and confortable and easy multitasking in XP it would be advisable to have 2gigs.
 
Whatever's bundled in the laptop currently..
Though I'm looking at buying Crucial for the upgrade.

I was thinking I wouldn't notice too much of a difference with the 7200rpm drive either, but I wanted to get some confirmation. More RAM would probably be better, but another hundred bucks for 1 extra GB is a bit much...unless the gains are truly worth it.
 
I always swapped for a 7200 drive and used the 5400s in external cases.

Always seemed worth it to me, but I love the Raptors and think those are worth it.

I see you do too.......😉
 
Originally posted by: DarkRogue
We all know that most laptops comes generally equipped with a 5400rpm hard drive standard.
Click to expand...


I thought most laptops came with 4500 rpm hard drives.

I guess you laptop uses DDR? Those price sound about right for DDR, DDR2 is much cheaper

As for noticing a performance difference, it depends on how much you use the hard drive. If you are transferring lots of files over a network (gigabit network) on a regular basis, yes you would notice it
 
Originally posted by: solog
Originally posted by: DarkRogue
We all know that most laptops comes generally equipped with a 5400rpm hard drive standard.
Click to expand...


I thought most laptops came with 4500 rpm hard drives. Guess we all don't know the same things.
Click to expand...

You mean 4200? :laugh:
 
4200rpm?

I was checking most of IBM and Dell's models and pretty much all of them come with 5400rpm hard drives standard. I only found one case (IBM U series I think) that had 4200rpm drives standard.

Yes, I believe it is DDR. I'm looking at an IBM Thinkpad T60.

As far as the Raptors go, I'm not sure there are any in laptop form lol. The new Velociraptor is 2.5" but much too thick for a standard laptop bay.

I'm not entirely sure what exactly I'd be doing on it just yet, as I don't have it - a deal is still pending with a seller.
I'm pretty sure it will be for working on photos, a web site, mobile blogging, and anything else I can think of doing while away from the desktop, sans hardcore gaming.
 
Swapping the hard drive: No probably not worth it.

More memory: yes, probably is worth it depending on the OS. For XP - perhaps depending on what you do with it. for Vista - definitely.
 
Ahh, I see.
I only recently began looking for a replacement laptop, though even my T42 came with a 5400rpm drive.
 
I had a PQI Turbo 1GB memory 4 sticks I lose T1 command...fairly fast performance with Windows XP then got a Kingston Hyper X 2GB memory (2 sticks) got T1 command I see slight boost performance by like 5%.

Now it is up to you to make a decision based on performance.
 
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