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5400 vs 7200

A

antsct

Senior member
Hi everyone,

I'm really confused and need your help on choosing a new laptop hard drive.

I don't know whether to get a Seagate Momentus 2.5" 5400 120Gb for AU$125 or a Seagate Momentus 2.5" 100Gb for AU$160. Is it worth the extra $45-50 for the 7200 speed?

I do some gaming and other basic things like music, internet and email. I'd also like to record some video from my capture card (not very often) at 720x576 (but I don't need to have the video running, just recording).

I don't know if it's worth the extra $ for the 7200.

I can also get a Samsung 160Gb 5400 for $137...but I don't know much about Samsung.

I also know that 7200rpms generally run hotter and use more battery.

Any input would be great!! Thanks 🙂 🙂
 
the 7200RPM drives aren't that bad for battery or heat and are only slightly faster than a 5400RPM. I'd get the cheaper and bigger 5400RPM drive if I were you. WD is supposedly releasing a 5400RPM 250GB HD soon. You should probably wait for that to come out and buy someone's used drive as they upgrade. I may be one of them 🙂
 
I'd go for a 5400RPM drive since you can get them with more disk space. The higher density 5400RPM drives are pretty fast to begin with. The only reason I'd get a 7200RPM drive is if I was working with larger files and needed the extra writing/reading bandwidth offered by the 7200RPM drive, but these days, you can always get an E-SATA card and an E-SATA hard drive that could potentially read/write faster than the internal hard drive because you could use a desktop drive. And for the record, 7200RPM drives cut battery life at most by a few minutes and produce little to no more heat than a 5400RPM drive.
 
I like the 7200rpm drives, I have one myself. But at that price and capcity difference, I wouldnt bother getting it. Stay with the 5400rpm.
 
Another thing to consider is buffer size. Getting a 5400rpm drive with a 8mb+ buffer will be quite fast. I had a Toshiba MK6022GAX 5400rpm 16MB buffer laptop drive and it was very very fast, on par with 7200 rpm desktop drives according to a few reviews I read. Definitely check the buffer size before buying.
 
Thanks for the input everyone. By the way, both drives have an 8mb buffer. I'll check out the 16mb ones.

Lastly, does anyone have any info on Samsung hard drives. A 160Gb 5400rpm 8mb Samsung drive is only $10 more than the 120Gb Seagate 5400rpm 8mb.
 
Seagate, Samsung - I really see no difference. Maybe if the warranty is longer on one over the other, but a 3 year warranty on a notebook hard drive should be more than enough for most people.
 
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