5400 vs 7200rpm

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leetskeet

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 23, 2007
Messages
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i'm thinking of upgrading the hdd in my eeepc and was wondering if there is any noticeable performance increase in going to a faster rpm drive and how much it would affect battery life as one my favorite aspects of the netbook is the long battery life i get. also if anyone can recommend a drive that they like or refer me to reviews.
 
You will notice it almost immediately as soon as you start opening applications or data files, etc, guaranteed. For Netbooks most folks grab an SSD and throw it in there, but if you've got one that supports a full size 2.5" drive, and you find a great price on a large capacity 7200 rpm drive, go for it. You won't regret it...
 
ok so i guess i'm asking is there an oversized or under-sized 2.5" drive that i should avoid. and the drive i linked to...would it fit in a 10" eeepc?
 
leetskeet said:
ok so i guess i'm asking is there an oversized or under-sized 2.5" drive that i should avoid. and the drive i linked to...would it fit in a 10" eeepc?
Click to expand...

A 2.5" hard drive is a 2.5"...they are all standard size. If it can fit into your netbook, you're good.
 
You will see a very very small drop in battery life. Depending on the size for 320GB I had the WD Scorpio black drive, and for a 5400rpm drive I had the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB drive which was nearly as the smaller 7200rpm drive.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1624/5/western_digital_scorpio_black_320gb_2_5_7200_rpm_hard_disk/index.html


http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=307430

After having used both I would go for the 500GB drive,

I"ve also heard that there is a 500GB seagate 7200.4 drive but havn't read anything on it yet.
 
i did some digging around google and found lots of stuff about replacing the hdd in eees. thanks for the help and the link to the hitachi.
 
Most all of the 2.5" hard drives you look at will work, these are generally referred to as 'laptop' drives and are 9.5mm in height. The Hitachi and WD Scorpio are both examples of 9.5mm tall drives.

There are a couple of exceptions, and you'd probably have to go out of your way to run into one. If you were to buy a WD Velociraptor (VR) and unscrew it from it's 3.5" adapter/heatsink sled (the drive itself is 2.5") it wouldn't fit in your laptop as it is 15mm tall. (I think there is one Alienware chassis that is built with taller 15mm bay(s) specifically to accomodate the VR drives.)

SAS enterprise class drives could also be an exception at up to 15mm. 12.5mm is the other common size.
 
It will bring about 20-30% better performance in real life situations.
I remember this cause I did a lot of file copy, app load time benching when I upgraded my 160GB 5400 drive to 200GB 7200 2.5" Seagate in my HP notebook.

Best upgrade you can do to a Notebook, aside from SSD... :)
 
SILVR 6 said:
I"ve also heard that there is a 500GB seagate 7200.4 drive but havn't read anything on it yet.
Click to expand...

I've actually been looking at replacing my current MacBook Pro's Hitachi 250GB 5400 to the Seagate 500GB 7200, but I have yet to come across any benchmarks, specifically ones that show the performance advantage over 5400 and noise level, power consumption, heat. I use my machine for basic/semi-intermediate daily tasks (OS X Leopard) and gaming (Win7 64).
 
Jon55 said:
I've actually been looking at replacing my current MacBook Pro's Hitachi 250GB 5400 to the Seagate 500GB 7200, but I have yet to come across any benchmarks, specifically ones that show the performance advantage over 5400 and noise level, power consumption, heat. I use my machine for basic/semi-intermediate daily tasks (OS X Leopard) and gaming (Win7 64).
Click to expand...

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2.5-hard-drive-charts/benchmarks,25.html

About everything you could ask for in hard drive benchmarking and testing.
 
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