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How come Dell does not show their HDD speed when configuring your laptop?

overst33r

overst33r

Diamond Member
I am in the market for a laptop and with the coupons Dell seems to be the best choice...although i hate that they don't show their HDD speeds. From what i have heard they usually ship 4200RPM drives...although some people report getting 5400RPM. I want a 5400RPM drive...how can i tell them apart?

I can't believe they leave out such and important spec!
 
If its not labeled I would call them. Why chane it? Plus the sales guys will be more then glad to help you I'm sure 🙂! Have you ever noticed how when you call a sales line at one of the major OEMs everyoen is so nice and normally you get a US based call center? As soon as you call support you get shipped over seas to the rudest person they can find lol. At least with HP this seems to be the case. With Dell it is luck. I know they have some over seas call centers but I have also talked to people in Texas and Florida before.
 
Crap shoot unless you pay more for 7200RPM - if some marketdroid decides that notebook warrants such a "feature." My Latitude D800 had a 4200RPM Fujitsu. My Inspiron 6000 has a 5400RPM Toshiba. I think just whatever they can get cheapest to fill the size. BTW, I only ordered a 30GB for the Inspiron and it came with a 40GB. Bonus!
 
because they don't know what drive they'll put inside your order, until they build it.
for now, I think I guess all their 60GB & 80GB notebook drives are all 5400 RPM.
 
All I did was hit the "help me choose" link when you pick your hard drive side and it will tell you there. If you don't get what they list show them your screen shot you took🙂

The 9300 was listed at 5400RPM and thats what I got.
 
Originally posted by: *kjm
All I did was hit the "help me choose" link when you pick your hard drive side and it will tell you there. If you don't get what they list show them your screen shot you took🙂

The 9300 was listed at 5400RPM and thats what I got.
Click to expand...

looks like they dont have a 60GB HDD for the 6000...
 
When I click on "Help Me Choose" I get a list that shows the drives for ALL laptops to be at least 5400 rpm, 2MB cache with the exception of the 7200's which are 8MB cache

Correction... The 100GB 5400rpm appears to be 8MB as well
 
Imagine to my surprise when we were ordering an I6000 last month when a high speed HDD was offered to do video work. My students naturally picked the 60GB for their laptops.
 
This is one reason I like Apple: they make it patently clear what the speed is for a given drive (4200 RPM for any iBook, 5400 RPM for PowerBooks with 7200 RPM an option on 15" and 17"). It's no wonder AV editors like them.
 
I believe all the HDs on the 700m are 5400rpm. Mine is a 30GB 4200rpm but from what I've heard all the 40Gb and up were 5400rpm. Sort of regret not paying the extra money for the hd upgrade. Not sure if this applies to the other models, but it seems like 4200 rpm hds are generally reserved for those < 3 lb notebooks nowadays.
 
If it's not mentioned, then there's no guarantee of what speed you'll get. They probably do this to lower costs, as they can source drives from the cheapest supplier at any given moment. You might get lucky and get a fast drive, but you might not as well. At any rate, you can call their customer service and ask. Most of them have no clue and will tell you it's a faster drive and so if you order one and it doesn't have that, you can ask for compensation.
 
It's probably better just to buy the cheapest hd they have and then buy exactly the one you want from an online retailer. On my old Inspiron 600m, I just bought it with the 30gb hd they had, which was 4200rpm. Then after I just swapped it out for the 60gb 7200rpm hitachi travelstar 7K60 drive I bought for around $140 last year from ZipZoomFly. I'm still using the hitachi hd now in my asus z63a laptop.
 
Originally posted by: Smbu
It's probably better just to buy the cheapest hd they have and then buy exactly the one you want from an online retailer. On my old Inspiron 600m, I just bought it with the 30gb hd they had, which was 4200rpm. Then after I just swapped it out for the 60gb 7200rpm hitachi travelstar 7K60 drive I bought for around $140 last year from ZipZoomFly. I'm still using the hitachi hd now in my asus z63a laptop.
Click to expand...

i heard those are loud...
 
No, it's not really any noticeably louder than other hard drives. When I compared the sound of my 7k60 to the 80gb 5400rpm in my friends hp laptop, I thought his sounded louder actually. :-O Hitachi did release a newer version of their 7200rpm laptop hd's the 7K100 series, so I'm not quite sure how that one sounds.
 
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