Laptop HD's...4200? 5400? does it make a diff?

[Drakkon]

So onsidering a HD upgrade for my laptop and seeing the RPM going from 4200,to 5400 and even 7200...
Now i really never noticed much of a diff between 5400 and 7200 on my desktop since i dont really do much more than running the usual progs and not much video/audio encoding or anything that uses the hd for anything more than storage...
so therefor wondering if the 4200 to 5400 jump in laptop HD's is that signifigant? or does it really matter since they are so small?

 

[GnomeCop]

if you don't run very demanding programs, why are you wanting to upgrade your drive? Running out of space?
If thats the case then capacity should be your #1 concern.

 

[CKDragon]

I personally notice a huge jump going from a 5400 rpm to a 7200 rpm drive. I've always heard that Hard Drives are one of the most-often encountered bottlenecks during general computer usage so I don't think I'd ever go slower than a 7200 again.

Just my opinion, of course.

 

[dnuggett]

Hard Drives are the biggest bottleneck in computing. They are the only "mechanical" part in your computer. You will notice a significant increase in speed (even in general) going from a 4200 to a 5400 to a 7200.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Besides the speed difference, the faster drives will suck more power. I chose 4200 for that very reason. I, personally, can't tell the difference in speeds.

(I also can't tell the difference between 3fps, like some fanboys

 

[bbq1023]

Actully, the speed of the drive doesn't suck more power but performance do gains with higher speed drive. Price should be your concern because 7200rpm would cost much more than a 4200rpm. Read this review on HD performance and battery drain from here:
http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031031/index.html

 

[dnuggett]

Besides the speed difference, the faster drives will suck more power. I chose 4200 for that very reason

This is a common fallacy. The faster drives actualy use less power given a set amount of storage space and buffer. A hard drive loses efficiency when it must search for data that is not in it's "logical" location. As you continue to use your drive there will be less and less that exists in it's logical loaction. The faster the seek time the better the efficiency. The 40 GB 5400RPM drives have a seek time of typically 30-40 % higher than a 4200RPM drive. They however only consume 5-10% more power. In the end they use less battery power.

Below is a link to an article that describes this.. though in the end they test it out as battery life being a few minutes less for a faster drive.

Link

 

[IncredibleHutch]

If mass storage is a big deal then definitely go with a bigger drive regardless of the speed. If your machine is accessed by many people... an example: lot's of shared files, then a faster drive might be a priority. If all you do is simple word docs or spread sheets then a 4200 or 5400 RPM drive will be fine. If you deal with video recording or video games a faster drive will be in need. You can always consider external drives too. They are cheaper and you can get big storage with a fast RPM speed. Remember this: The bigger the storage the faster the drive is just because of the fact that more information fits into a smaller space and therefore as the hard drive spins at its designated speed the head will pass by more information. Size and speed play a big role in the performance of the drive.

 

[Drakkon]

so all in all i need more space...20gb just no longer guts it these days...thinking might go up as far as 60gb just cause i like to keep music on my laptop too...occasionally i hook into itunes and share my files but not too often...mostly its just for programming and typing and presentations...
and i like my battery life long...spend 2-3 hrs at the coffee house or library so longer the better...so im thinking 4200 would be fine for me...but if i can find a 5400 for not too much more might just go that route...
Thanks for the input guys...any info as to which drives would last the longest (consume the least power)? looked at the articles posted and it looks like the hitachi gives a couple extra mins...any info on the toshibas?

 

[GnomeCop]

I'd say buying a 5400rpm drive is the worst choice for power consumption, the 7200 rpm drives use only a little bit more power than the 5400 drives yet yield I nice performance boost. The power consumption of the new 7200 rpm drives is quite impressive.

 

[alexruiz]

Just a simple 5400 is a huge imnprovement over the stock 4200.

Going form the 40GN to a 40GNX made the laptop feel on steroids.....

 

[IncredibleHutch]

Originally posted by: GnomeCop
I'd say buying a 5400rpm drive is the worst choice for power consumption, the 7200 rpm drives use only a little bit more power than the 5400 drives yet yield I nice performance boost. The power consumption of the new 7200 rpm drives is quite impressive.

As true as this may be... The prices aren't quite as marginal between the two.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Tom's wasn't a fair test. First of all, the aureal density was much higher on the faster drives, that alone will decrease seek times and save power. Also, the 4200 rpm drive had a 2mb buffer, while the others had an 8mb buffer. That also will decrease power consumption.

What Tom proved is that a top of the line 7200 drive beates a middle of the road 5400 rpm drive and a middle of the road 4200 rpm drive from a year ago.

 

[UltraWide]

I agree with the above poster.
A more up to date comparison would be:
Hitachi 7K60, 80GN and 5k80.

Those are the current top of the line fastest drives for their respective rpm's. But then what did you expect from Tom's Hardwired Reviews??? LOL

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Tom's wasn't a fair test. First of all, the aureal density was much higher on the faster drives, that alone will decrease seek times and save power. Also, the 4200 rpm drive had a 2mb buffer, while the others had an 8mb buffer. That also will decrease power consumption.

What Tom proved is that a top of the line 7200 drive beates a middle of the road 5400 rpm drive and a middle of the road 4200 rpm drive from a year ago.

So you have confirmed my opinion. The faster drives are the obvious choice. The 80GN is a 2MB buffer @ 40GB. The only time you get an 8mb buffer is if you step up to 80GB, and even then you are not increasing seektime track to track or full stroke.

Folk's really... it's ok to admit when you are wrong. You went with a 4200RPM drive. Good for you. Let the original poster upgrade and make a better decision than you did. Unless that is that precious few minutes of battery life is that big of a deal. It really shouldn't be becasue that few minutes is spent staring at an hourglass while your 4200RPM is looking for a program.

And besides the power discussion is pointless to the OP's question. He has not asked about power consumption, some people decided to throw that out there. But now that it is out there we see just how pointless it is.

 

[RonS]

I upgraded my Inspiron 8600 from an 80 Gig/4200 drive to a 60 Gig/7200 drive and noticed a huge speed increase, especially working with Visual Studio 2003.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Tom's wasn't a fair test. First of all, the aureal density was much higher on the faster drives, that alone will decrease seek times and save power. Also, the 4200 rpm drive had a 2mb buffer, while the others had an 8mb buffer. That also will decrease power consumption.

What Tom proved is that a top of the line 7200 drive beates a middle of the road 5400 rpm drive and a middle of the road 4200 rpm drive from a year ago.

Oh really? How is it that the 80GN with a higher density has the same seek time as the 40GN is Tom's test? I'll give you a clue... it aint buffer size as you stated. You are wrong on both counts.

 

[UltraWide]

80GB - 80GN
60GB - 7K60
80GB - 5K80

That would have been my test. I think all those drives are more current with higer areal densities which might offset the slower rpm. What the other poster was trying to say is that the 40GN is indeed an outdated hdd wich there is no denying.

 

[sciencewhiz]

I went to Hitachi's site to get some hard facts. Now, I don't have enough money to buy each of these drives to run some real performance and efficiency numbers, so bear with my calculated numbers.

7K60 uses 5.5 Watts startup, 2.6 W Seek, 2.5 Read and Write, and 2.0 Performance Idle.
5K80 uses 5.0 Watts startup, with the rest of the specs the same as 7K60
4K80 uses 4.5 Watts startup, 2.25 W Seek, 2.0 Read and Write, and 1.65 Performance Idle (I beleive Hitachi reversed the numbers for Low Power Idle and Performance Idle, because i have a hard time believing that Performance Idle is 0.65 watts)
80GN uses 4.7 Watts startup, 2.3 W seek, 2.1 Read, 2.2 Write, and 1.85 Performance idle
40GN are very similar to 80GN

So, across the board, the 4K80 is .35 Watts lower power consumption, and .5 for read and write.

Now, the extended battery for my T40 gives me about 6 hours, and it's 6.6 ah and 10.8 V. That gives 71 wh. That gives that my laptop is using 11.9 watts. Now if I were to put in a drive that uses .35 watts more, then I'm using 12.25 watts. Now, my battery lasts 5 hours 49 minutes (3% less)

Now Tom saw a difference of 4 minutes (2.25%) in his test. However, the drive he used, only has a power savings in the range of .2 watts. (42% less then the power savings of using a better drive), thus we can expect a real life (if you call mobile mark real life) savings of 3.9% for going to the better drive. So in my example on my T40, I'd get 5 hours, 45 minutes, or lose 15 minutes by going to the faster drive.

Whether that is worth it to you, is up to you.

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: UltraWide
80GB - 80GN
60GB - 7K60
80GB - 5K80

That would have been my test. I think all those drives are more current with higer areal densities which might offset the slower rpm. What the other poster was trying to say is that the 40GN is indeed an outdated hdd wich there is no denying.

I absolutely agree.... in fact, I proposed a review of 2.5" hard drives to Evan Lieb a while ago...... it never happened

Given the fact that the 5K80 has a higher density that the 7K60, I wouldn't expect the difference to be as big as it was comparing the 7K60 vs the momentus.....

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: UltraWide
80GB - 80GN
60GB - 7K60
80GB - 5K80

That would have been my test. I think all those drives are more current with higer areal densities which might offset the slower rpm. What the other poster was trying to say is that the 40GN is indeed an outdated hdd wich there is no denying.

Older and comes up to the same performance as the 80GN. If you are looking for a seek time performance increase from the 80GN to the 40GN you aren't going to find it. I've already said that in a post before you put this out. Go look at the #'s.....

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: alexruiz

Originally posted by: UltraWide
80GB - 80GN
60GB - 7K60
80GB - 5K80

That would have been my test. I think all those drives are more current with higer areal densities which might offset the slower rpm. What the other poster was trying to say is that the 40GN is indeed an outdated hdd wich there is no denying.

I absolutely agree.... in fact, I proposed a review of 2.5" hard drives to Evan Lieb a while ago...... it never happened

Given the fact that the 5K80 has a higher density that the 7K60, I wouldn't expect the difference to be as big as it was comparing the 7K60 vs the momentus.....

Ditto to my above post.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
I went to Hitachi's site to get some hard facts. Now, I don't have enough money to buy each of these drives to run some real performance and efficiency numbers, so bear with my calculated numbers.

7K60 uses 5.5 Watts startup, 2.6 W Seek, 2.5 Read and Write, and 2.0 Performance Idle.
5K80 uses 5.0 Watts startup, with the rest of the specs the same as 7K60
4K80 uses 4.5 Watts startup, 2.25 W Seek, 2.0 Read and Write, and 1.65 Performance Idle (I beleive Hitachi reversed the numbers for Low Power Idle and Performance Idle, because i have a hard time believing that Performance Idle is 0.65 watts)
80GN uses 4.7 Watts startup, 2.3 W seek, 2.1 Read, 2.2 Write, and 1.85 Performance idle
40GN are very similar to 80GN

So, across the board, the 4K80 is .35 Watts lower power consumption, and .5 for read and write.

Now, the extended battery for my T40 gives me about 6 hours, and it's 6.6 ah and 10.8 V. That gives 71 wh. That gives that my laptop is using 11.9 watts. Now if I were to put in a drive that uses .35 watts more, then I'm using 12.25 watts. Now, my battery lasts 5 hours 49 minutes (3% less)

Now Tom saw a difference of 4 minutes (2.25%) in his test. However, the drive he used, only has a power savings in the range of .2 watts. (42% less then the power savings of using a better drive), thus we can expect a real life (if you call mobile mark real life) savings of 3.9% for going to the better drive. So in my example on my T40, I'd get 5 hours, 45 minutes, or lose 15 minutes by going to the faster drive.

Whether that is worth it to you, is up to you.

And you called Tom's testing unfair? You didn't use any drive and created your own theoretical test.

In your post all you considered was the battery use and put no consideration into posting the productivity increase in a faster drive. Why is that? That after all is the main contention in going with a faster drive.

You have now stated that you would lose 4.1% of your battery length by going to a faster drive. (15 min loss/ 360 total minutes). But you need to look at performance increases to make any real determination at all, otherwise you are just babbling about power consumption. To do this you would use the sum of seek time and avg. latency. I won't even include media transfer rates, but that would make the 4200 RPM drives look even worse.

I'll use the drives that others have posted are fair to compare so I don't hear any more grumbling and have to read more babble. All time are in ms. The higher the # the worse it performs ( I didn't think I'd have to say that but after reading some of these posts I better)

For the 80GN series (4200RPM) the latency is 7.1 with a seek time of 12 . Overall performance of 19
For the 4k80 (4200 RPM) the seek time is 13 and the latencey is 7.1. Overall 20.1
For the 5k80 (5400 RPM) the seek time is 12 and the latency is 5.5. Overall 17.5
For the 7k60 (7200 RPM) the seek tome is 10 and the latency is 4.2 Overall 14.2

Now that we have these numbers we can make an educated decision, which you are about to see I have been doing all along.

Starting with the worst 4200 RPM (80GN) drive you get performance gains of 12.9 % for the 5400 RPM (5k80) and 29.3% for the 7200 RPM (7k60).
With the best 4200 RPM drive (4k80) you get perfromance gains of 7.8% for the 5400 RPM (5k80) and 25% for the 7200 RPM (7k60)

So finally to rap this up... you will lose 4.1% of your battery to gain an increase of performance of at least 7.8% all the way up to a whopping 29.3%. In case you don't know the significance of this, turn off your computer right now and go stick your head in the toilet.

It just makes sense folks....

 

[sciencewhiz]

Your post makes the assumption that the hard drive is constantly in use. Even most benchmarks, which are much heavier usage then normal use don't use the harddrive 100%. I don't know about you, but my hard drive is hardly used, especially when I'm on battery power.

Yes I created a theoretical test, but I stated that.

If you go back to our initial posts, I said that a faster drive uses more power. Both Tom and I proved that. May I remind you about the last line of my last post.

Whether that is worth it to you, is up to you.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Your post makes the assumption that the hard drive is constantly in use. Even most benchmarks, which are much heavier usage then normal use don't use the harddrive 100%. I don't know about you, but my hard drive is hardly used, especially when I'm on battery power.

Yes I created a theoretical test, but I stated that.

If you go back to our initial posts, I said that a faster drive uses more power. Both Tom and I proved that. May I remind you about the last line of my last post.

Whether that is worth it to you, is up to you.

And your test assumed the same. You used seek, read and write to show .35 watts lower power usage didn't you? Guess what, in all of those test's the hard drive is moving 100%. They use a bit more power yes... but may I remind you tha the faster drives complete work in a more efficient manner than the amount of battery usage required to do that work, versus a slower drive. It's really not a difficult concept.