ATA 100 and/or 7200 drives iin Dell notebook?

[Gepost]

Dell now has ATA 100 hard drives available for notebooks. Does anyone know how these compare to the regular 4200 rpm drives? Are they faster than 4200 and are they worth the extra money (about $150 for a 10gig)

 

[Gunbuster]

Seems like marketing BS, Notebook drives are slow, ATA100 is not a magic cure

 

[pdo]

IBM has a 5200 RPM notebook drives but don't fall for ATA66 or ATA100 when it comes to laptop HD.

 

[ElFenix]

desktop harddrives are barely faster than ATA-33, and they spin at 7200 RPM. so somehow i don't think it really matters in notebooks.

 

[Gepost]

For $150 more, maybe it is a higher RPM speed or something. I think I will call them.

 

[Lvsheng]

Consider buying some higher RPM drive rather than ATA100, as the internal transfer rate of current desktop drive can't reach even 33MB/s. So the ATA100 isn't going to speed the notebook up much if the RPM remain pokey slow.

 

[Gepost]

Okay, I talked to Dell tech support. He had to go check. He came back and said that the drives are on a ATA 100 controller and are listed as either 5400 or 7200 rpm drives. I asked how could I know which one I was getting and he said they could probably tell be through sales. Apparently, this is a new setup and they don't know much about it. Does anyone know if there are any 7200 rpm laptop drives available? That would be great to have one in a laptop with ATA 100. By the way, these are in the Inspiron 8000's.

 

[bacillus]

hmm. would have thought that a 7200 rpm drive would cause cooling headaches for the whole laptop package!

 

[Gepost]

Last chance for anyone's ideas about this.

 

[Gunther]

Wouldn't that produce more heat, which would be bad for your notebook.

 

[Gepost]

You would think it would creat some heat. I can't find any 7200 drives for notebooks on any of the standard manufacturers sites (IBM, Fujitsu, Toshiba) I don't think there are any 7200 drives. Maybe this option is a 5400 drive on a ATA 100 controller. But I can't find any 5400 10 or 20 gig hard drives for notebooks on the manufacturers sites either. Maybe Dell is just putting a 4200 drive on an ata 100 controller and charging an extra $150-200.

 

[Feisters]

Dell Notebook Hard Drives (from Dell's site):

5GB - 4200 rpm, ATA-5 (ata-66)
10GB - 4200 rpm, ATA-4 (ata-33)
20GB - 4200 rpm, ATA-4 (ata-33)
32GB - 5400 rpm, ATA-6 (ata-100)

At first glance, it looks like the 32GB HDD would be the fastest, with the 5GB being the second fastest, and the 10GB and 20GB bringing up the rear. However, Dell specs. all these drives with the same seek and latency times! (17ms latency, 13ms seek.)

 

[Boonesmi]

i agree with gunbuster

 

[Gepost]

Here is what I found on the Dell site:

5 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
10GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive [add $49.50]
20GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive [add $198.00]
32GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive [add $396.00]
10GB ATA 100 Hard Drive [add $198.00]
20GB ATA 100 Hard Drive [add $396.00]
(This is from the state and local government options)

Why is a 20 gig ata 100 the same price as the 32 gig, which is 5400?

Here is a list of the drive specs, except the ATA 100 drives:

Formatted Capacity 5000e MB 10,000 MB 20,000 MB 32,000 MB 48,000 MB

Rotational Speed 4200rpm 4200rpm 4200rpm 5400rpm 5400rpm

Average Latency 7.11 ms 7.1 ms 7.1 ms 7.1 ms 7.1 ms

Average Seek Time 13 ms (r/w)13 ms(rw) 13ms(r/w) 13ms(w)12ms(r)13ms(w)12ms(r)

Interface ATA-5 ATA-4 ATA-4 ATA-5 ATA-6

 

[Gepost]

I was reading some posts on the Dell forum. Apparently, the listing of an ATA 100 hard drive for a notebook is an error. I don't think any ATA 100's are made for notebooks and no 7200 rpm drives are available for notebooks. Unfortunately, some people purchased ATA 100 drives for their Inspiron 8000. Boy, would I be pissed and I would be getting some significant upgrades from Dell. Anyway, does anyone think it is worth it to the the faster (5400 rpm)32gig drive instead of the 4200 rpm, 20 or 10 gig?

 

[Gunbuster]

I would expect the higher capacity drives to give better transfer rates since the areal density must be higher.

30+ gig laptop drives just blows my mind