# Laptop Hard drive **URL:** \ **Category:** NYSpeed Off Topic\ **Created:** [November 29, 2008, 2:36pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945 "2008-11-29T14:36:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![suzukiriderman](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/suzukiriderman/32/7421_2.png) [@suzukiriderman](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/suzukiriderman)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 2:36pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/1 "2008-11-29T14:36:48Z")
I am wondering how much of a difference I would see between a 5400rpm drive and a 7200rpm drive. I want to get a 500gb drive but the biggest laptop drive that is 7200rpm is 320gb. I don’t do any gaming pretty much just internet, music, videos,and I would like to do some very light image editing and maybe some video editing. ---
**Author:** ![jabbu](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/jabbu/32/7446_2.png) [@jabbu](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/jabbu)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 2:52pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/2 "2008-11-29T14:52:30Z")
7200 is worth it ---
**Author:** ![ZOMGVTEK](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/zomgvtek/32/5063_2.png) [@ZOMGVTEK](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/ZOMGVTEK)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 5:01pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/3 "2008-11-29T17:01:34Z")
If its a newer laptop, its going to feel very slow compared to a desktop basically due to its hard drive. The 5400rpm ones are slow as hell, and even the 7200 rpm ones are kinda slow, but the difference is massive. And at the prices of the drives these days, its the best bet to get a 320gb 7200rpm drive, unless you REALLY need the 500gb. Its a massive speed improvement over any drive, even a 200gb 7200rpm drive. Get this one… [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336&nm\_mc=TEMC-Function-PriceAlert&cm\_mmc=TEMC-Function-PriceAlert-](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336&nm_mc=TEMC-Function-PriceAlert&cm_mmc=TEMC-Function-PriceAlert-)_-Content-_-text-\_-N82E16822148336 The hitachi is a close second for speed. They just dropped the price on the seagate $10, and have free shipping,its a great price. ---
**Author:** ![BillysRevenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@BillysRevenge](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/BillysRevenge)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/4 "2008-11-29T17:49:56Z")
Seagate FTW…there will be a very noticeable difference between 5400 and 7200. ---
**Author:** ![suzukiriderman](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/suzukiriderman/32/7421_2.png) [@suzukiriderman](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/suzukiriderman)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/5 "2008-11-29T20:41:24Z")
> [@ZOMGVTEK](#): > > If its a newer laptop, its going to feel very slow compared to a desktop basically due to its hard drive. The 5400rpm ones are slow as hell, and even the 7200 rpm ones are kinda slow, but the difference is massive. And at the prices of the drives these days, its the best bet to get a 320gb 7200rpm drive, unless you REALLY need the 500gb. Its a massive speed improvement over any drive, even a 200gb 7200rpm drive. Get this one… > > [Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.com](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336&nm_mc=TEMC-Function-PriceAlert&cm_mmc=TEMC-Function-PriceAlert-_-Content-_-text-_-N82E16822148336) > > The hitachi is a close second for speed. They just dropped the price on the seagate $10, and have free shipping,its a great price. I’m thinking I’ll get the Hitachi 320gb drive it’s actually 68.99 after rebate ---
**Author:** ![skylinez07](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/skylinez07/32/4993_2.png) [@skylinez07](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/skylinez07)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:02pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/6 "2008-11-29T21:02:06Z")
Wait so whats the difference between the speeds, besides the Size of the Hd also? ---
**Author:** ![BillysRevenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@BillysRevenge](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/BillysRevenge)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:11pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/7 "2008-11-29T21:11:17Z")
> [@skylinez07](#): > > Wait so whats the difference between the speeds, besides the Size of the Hd also? Yes there is. 5400 and 7200 refer to the RPMs that the disk makes determining how fast data is written and read. The faster the RPM the faster data is read and the faster applications will load. Hitachi however has been known for failures, I would spend the extra cash. Also seagate has a industry leading 5 year warranty on the drives…seems worth it to me. ---
**Author:** ![skylinez07](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/skylinez07/32/4993_2.png) [@skylinez07](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/skylinez07)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:12pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/8 "2008-11-29T21:12:37Z")
ahh ok i understand now. ---
**Author:** ![BillysRevenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@BillysRevenge](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/BillysRevenge)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:23pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/9 "2008-11-29T21:23:49Z")
> [@skylinez07](#): > > ahh ok i understand now. When playing battlefield 2 with my 7200 RPM drive I was usually one of the last to load into the maps. Now with my 10,000 RPM drive (which aren’t available in the 2.5" drives) I actually have to wait for the server to load the map and I spawn first in the game. ---
**Author:** ![suzukiriderman](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/suzukiriderman/32/7421_2.png) [@suzukiriderman](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/suzukiriderman)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/10 "2008-11-29T21:40:50Z")
> [@BillysRevenge](#): > > Yes there is. 5400 and 7200 refer to the RPMs that the disk makes determining how fast data is written and read. The faster the RPM the faster data is read and the faster applications will load. Hitachi however has been known for failures, I would spend the extra cash. Also seagate has a industry leading 5 year warranty on the drives…seems worth it to me. I was actually getting the Hitachi because I was reading better reviews on those. I have a Sony desktop that has a Seagate drive and it has died 2 times already so I kind of wanted to stay away from them. The longer warranty is great but I dont want to have to use it. ---
**Author:** ![Drexial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Drexial](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Drexial)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:41pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/11 "2008-11-29T21:41:19Z")
the one thing that hasn’t been mentioned is battery life. The 7200 drives will shorten your battery life. If you need long life don’t go with a 7200. If its pretty much plugged in all the time, it will be good for the video editing tasks. But not much else you listed. If you need lots of storage you dont need with you all the time, then might I suggest an external drive. There are soem drives that run off USB power and others that do require to be plugged in. ---
**Author:** ![BillysRevenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@BillysRevenge](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/BillysRevenge)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:47pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/12 "2008-11-29T21:47:13Z")
Keep in mind a hard drives life expectancy is only about 3-4 yrs. Laptops do become relatively hot which is not great for HDDs. I’d also want to invest in a laptop cooler. ---
**Author:** ![skylinez07](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/skylinez07/32/4993_2.png) [@skylinez07](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/skylinez07)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 9:56pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/13 "2008-11-29T21:56:44Z")
> [@BillysRevenge](#): > > Keep in mind a hard drives life expectancy is only about 3-4 yrs. Laptops do become relatively hot which is not great for HDDs. I’d also want to invest in a laptop cooler. my laptop is an hp and my hd took a shit 6 months after i got it. ---
**Author:** ![ZOMGVTEK](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/zomgvtek/32/5063_2.png) [@ZOMGVTEK](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/ZOMGVTEK)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 11:27pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/14 "2008-11-29T23:27:02Z")
> [@suzukiriderman](#): > > I was actually getting the Hitachi because I was reading better reviews on those. I have a Sony desktop that has a Seagate drive and it has died 2 times already so I kind of wanted to stay away from them. The longer warranty is great but I dont want to have to use it. Seagate drives have very good reliability, but i have always ran hitachi’s in my laptops and they have yet to fail on me. Warrantys are useless. If it fails within a year newegg replaces it somewhat rapidly, beyond that its a year old and very outdated anyways. If a laptop drive failed on me, i wouldnt want the same one again. ---
**Author:** ![ZOMGVTEK](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/zomgvtek/32/5063_2.png) [@ZOMGVTEK](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/ZOMGVTEK)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/15 "2008-11-29T23:35:36Z")
> [@BillysRevenge](#): > > Yes there is. 5400 and 7200 refer to the RPMs that the disk makes determining how fast data is written and read. The faster the RPM the faster data is read and the faster applications will load. Hitachi however has been known for failures, I would spend the extra cash. Also seagate has a industry leading 5 year warranty on the drives…seems worth it to me. Spindle speed does not indicate performance. In general, a 7200 rpm drive is faster than a 5400rpm drive. But there exists 7200 rpm drives that are slower than 5400rpm ones. And app load time is generally limited by the IOPS of the media. And this is not measured by the spindle speed. Hitachi ‘deskstar’ drives that were manufactured by IBM were known for a very high failure rate. This is not the case any longer. ---
**Author:** ![Hortanica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Hortanica](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Hortanica)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2008, 2:07am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/16 "2008-11-30T02:07:08Z")
You guys are seriously over-hyping the 7200rpm drive… The average gains from a 5400 to a 7200 rpm drive are **not that noticable!**. Yes, you might a few seconds (if that) in games loading but you will not notice a difference in how well a program runs if your editing images or video. Buy a larger hdd and increase the ram in the computer. You will notice a larger difference with a ram upgrade than a 7200 rpm drive purchase. I went from a segate 250gb 5400rpm drive to the WD black 320gb drive and other than losing a half hour of battery life, the increased heat, and gaining the 50 gigs i havent noticed a difference w/ vista and 3 gigs, and i do cad and programing on it (plus the music/word/excel/photoshop/etc). Lucky for me i didnt have to pay for the larger hdd though… > had the hitachi travelstar 7200 at home form my old notebook - so decided to find out how much the performance difference would be. i mirrored the hdd image from my 8104 to the hitachi drive using norton ghost 9. i use the original installation with the stock driver. > i also wanted to find out if undervolting using rmclock would cause a performance loss - so i did tests with and without undervolting. > i used sisoft sandra, pcmark04 and hd tune to get comparable results - so here they are: > Hitachi Travelstar 7200 Rpm > SiSoftware Sandra (undervolted, max. performance) > CPU Arithmetic Benchmark > Combined Index : 10819 (total) > CPU Multi-Media Benchmark > Combined Index : 39645 (total) > Memory Bandwidth Benchmark > Combined Index : 5662 (total) > File System Benchmark > Combined Index : 30722 (total) > SiSoftware Sandra (max. performance) > CPU Arithmetic Benchmark > Combined Index : 10891 (total) > CPU Multi-Media Benchmark > Combined Index : 39786 (total) > Memory Bandwidth Benchmark. > Combined Index : 5565 (total) > File System Benchmark > Combined Index : 30101 (total) > * * * > PCMark 2004 > max. performance undervolted > PCMark: 3852 > CPU: 3757 > Memory: 3178 > Graphics: 3241 > HDD: 3507 > max. performance: > PCMark: 3943 > CPU: 3839 > Memory: 3205 > Graphics: 3285 > HDD: 3491 > * * * > HD tune 2.10 > Minimum: 16.4 MB/sec > Maximum: 38,2 MB/sec > Average: 29,3 MB/sec > Access Time: 14,2 ms > Burst Rate: 80,0 MB/sec > CPU Usage: 100% (??) > * * * > Travelmate 8104 native configuration > SiSoftware Sandra > CPU Arithmetic Benchmark > Combined Index : 10885 (total) > CPU Multi-Media Benchmark > Combined Index : 39912 (total) > Memory Bandwidth Benchmark > Combined Index : 5700 (total) > File System Benchmark > Combined Index : 33081 (total) > * * * > PCMark04: > PCMark: 3846 > CPU: 3719 > Memory: 3119 > Graphics: 3296 > HDD: 3042 > * * * > HD tune 2.10 > Minimum: 19,4 MB/sec > Maximum: 38,3 MB/sec > Average: 30,7 MB/sec > Access Time: 16,9 ms > Burst Rate: 75,7 MB/sec > CPU Usage: 4,4% > * * * > after all those tests i seams clear that the harddrive is no bottleneck in the system. it nearly works as fast as the 7200 rpm drive, is cooler and quieter aswell. my decission is made - i stick to the original 100gb hdd. > other than that is seems like that undervolting the cpu does cause a reduction in speed of the cpu und memory bandwith - it’s not very big but it exists. i’m still sticking to undervolt my notebook vor it runs an average of about 10c° cooler under full cup load - that’s worth it for me. > hope this answers some questions > greetings > gernot ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Omerta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Joe\_Omerta](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Joe_Omerta)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2008, 6:46am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/17 "2008-11-30T06:46:32Z")
also, a larger 5400rpm drive = a smaller 7200rpm drive. ie. 160GB@7200rpm is just as fast as a 250GB@5400rpm. platter density will net the largest improvement in read speed. ---
**Author:** ![travisn](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forums.speedlife.net/travisn/32/5046_2.png) [@travisn](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/travisn)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2008, 8:00am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/laptop-hard-drive/58945/18 "2008-11-30T08:00:39Z")
edit: moved