HDD question

[Spikes]

Hi all,
About to buy a laptop...
Default 320gb 5400RPM hard drive or 24 dollars more for a 250GB 7200RPM hard drive.
Which one is the better choice?
Right now I'm on a 40GB so 250gb is a big jump for me. I'll be using programs just as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, basic web design stuff.

[BaldEagl]

I'd go with the faster drive.

[Spikes]

Does it really get that much hotter than a 5400RPM?

[BaldEagl]

The biggest advantage will be loading Windows and programs faster and frankly, 250 Gb is a pretty big drive for most people.

[Ghastly]

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/5

A lot can depend upon how much cache is on the drive itself and what it's access speed is, but for comparison, look at the review posted.  (I don't know a lot about the site, but the comparison seems spot on).

So the real question is one only you can answer - is a (roughly) 3 to 5 % difference in how long things will take - for example, a comparison of 44.1 seconds to load Windows versus 41.8 -  worth spending the extra 24 bucks on a drive and getting one that's 21% smaller?

<S>

[Spikes]

The biggest advantage will be loading Windows and programs faster and frankly, 250 Gb is a pretty big drive for most people.

Considering I'm coming off of a 40gb drive, yes.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/5

A lot can depend upon how much cache is on the drive itself and what it's access speed is, but for comparison, look at the review posted.  (I don't know a lot about the site, but the comparison seems spot on).

So the real question is one only you can answer - is a (roughly) 3 to 5 % difference in how long things will take - for example, a comparison of 44.1 seconds to load Windows versus 41.8 -  worth spending the extra 24 bucks on a drive and getting one that's 21% smaller?

<S>

Yeah the difference sure isn't great. I guess I may aswell stick with the 5400 RPM...25 bucks less, I don't need some super uber fast loading time...anything better than this pos laptop...unless I find reason within the next 25 minutes to upgrade to the faster one...haha

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I would never get a computer with less than 7200rpm HDD if I had the choice. Just recently upgraded my macbook to WD black 300gb 7200rpm drive and the performance difference is clear. File copy / database work is so much faster now.

[Ghastly]

I just want to stress again what I alluded to earlier, which is namely that 7200 vs 5400 rpm is not the only factor in drive throughput.  I'd be inclined to assume that an older drive had 1) less cache, 2) very likely greater seek times and 3) was probably significantly smaller -  all of which would tend to decrease performance in comparison to a newer drive for an identical workload.  (Not to mention the fact that if you transferred data from one drive to another, that often tends to do a better job of defragmentation than most defrag tools, often resulting in an immediate performance gain even on identical hardware.)

However, assuming the same amount of cache, the same interface, and roughly the same seek times and size, a 3-5% average performance difference is likely to be in the ballpark for general use.

I use the faster drives as well - but since he seemed to be struggling to make the decision, I felt that numbers might help.

<S>

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I just want to stress again what I alluded to earlier, which is namely that 7200 vs 5400 rpm is not the only factor in drive throughput.  I'd be inclined to assume that an older drive had 1) less cache, 2) very likely greater seek times and 3) was probably significantly smaller -  all of which would tend to decrease performance in comparison to a newer drive for an identical workload.  (Not to mention the fact that if you transferred data from one drive to another, that often tends to do a better job of defragmentation than most defrag tools, often resulting in an immediate performance gain even on identical hardware.)

However, assuming the same amount of cache, the same interface, and roughly the same seek times and size, a 3-5% average performance difference is likely to be in the ballpark for general use.

I use the faster drives as well - but since he seemed to be struggling to make the decision, I felt that numbers might help.

<S>

If you compare the performance through application benchmarks of course the difference won't be large as the I/O is only a part of the benchmark. The speed difference is higher than 3-5% and it feels when you do large file transfers (or do simple stuff such as resume a virtual OS from image).

For games however there is no kind of benefit if you count out slightly faster load times. But who loads the game 10x per day anyway?