Do you think it's worth it to upgrade a 5400 rpm laptop hdd to a 7200 rpm?

[MuffD]

I've got a 5400 rpm 40gb hd for my T43 and am thinking of upgrading to a 7200 rpm drive. Just not sure if it's really worth it. What do you guys think? The only thing I really do is surf the net, use Illustrator and Photoshop plus your usual MS office apps.

Thanks

 

[acole1]

no not really. ram will do you more good than a faster HD with those apps.

7200rpm drive will suck your power and create more heat too. those are the main reasons why they put 5400rpm drives in there in the first place.

 

[BladeVenom]

Unless your doing some really large photos, or lots of them at a time, I doubt it will be worth it. If you ever decide to do video editing on your laptop, get a faster drive.

 

[MuffD]

Thanks guys. I am adding a gig of ram instead of purchasing a larger hard drive.

 

[Ionizer86]

Adding ram only helps you to a point. I upgraded from 768 to 1GB and there is no performance difference. My computer runs very well for the most part, though processes such as booting are still very slow since I haven't gotten around to upgrading the 4200RPM disk yet.

 

[mb]

My first Toshiba laptop came with a 40b 4200rpm HDD. I notced quite a change when I upgraded to an 80gb 5400rpm drive. Then I thought I would give a 60gb 7200rpm drive a try, but I couldn't really tell much of a change. That is why I just went with a 5400rpm hdd on my Dell.

 

[SokaMoka]

Currently I have the 40 GB Toshiba 5400rpm 16 MB cache drive I sold my stock 4200rpm drive in my R50e and for almost the same price got this one, it's been half a year now, but with the dual Fedora Core & Windows XP boot add to that my videos and media, I am pushing my available drive space to the max and I ATM have like 8 GB of free harddrive space, so as you can see I am looking forward for an 80 Gb harddrive as that will serve my needs for a while.

And since I am going to upgrade for size I might as well take the dive and go for an 80 Gb 7200 rpm drive as opposed to a 5400rpm drive the boot speed would be better and I would be at an advantage if I decided to do things like photo-editing or more intensive video-editing in the fututre, I know I would love to have a 7200rpm drive in my laptop, but if it wasn't the size upgrade I wouldn't have allowed myself to considre that upgrade.

 

[pyrotek81]

i just upgraded my HP zt3000 laptop from 512MB (2x 256) to 1.25GB (1x1GB and 1x256). And i really haven't noticed a difference at all. Not in startup, shutdown, or applications.... what gives? I do have 4200rpm 40 gig HD though which is half full.

Is this a case for HD upgrade?

How can i measure the difference that my RAM upgrade effected?

 

[MuffD]

pyrotek81, I think for the startup and shutdown process, you will notice a bigger difference with the 7200 rpm drive. My first T40 had a 4200 rpm drive that I upgraded to a 7200 rpm so for that, I could notice a big difference. For this 40gb 5400, I don't know if 1800 rpm's will really make that much of a difference. Now, I'm just trying to figure out if I should stick with just getting a larger 5400 rpm drive for around 110.00 or if I should fork out the extra 60 bucks and get the 80gb 7200 rpm drive. Most likely, my wallet will suggest that I just get the 80gb 5400 until I can really justify that I need the 7200 rpm one.

 

[robcrawford]

Originally posted by: acole1
no not really. ram will do you more good than a faster HD with those apps.

7200rpm drive will suck your power and create more heat too. those are the main reasons why they put 5400rpm drives in there in the first place.

That's been my experience. If you had a 4200 rpm drive, than I'd suggest upgrading, but I don't think that you'll see much of a difference.

 

[BladeVenom]

pyrotek81, if you weren't typically using more than 512mb before upgrading, then there you won't notice a difference in performance. It depends on what programs you run and how many you run at the same time. If all you ran was an internet browser and office apps, then there probably wasn't a difference. If you run games, video editing, 3d modeling, etc. there will be a huge performance difference.