7200RPM or 5400RPM for E1705?

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DaveX

[H]ard|Gawd
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I am getting a Dell laptop soon (because the nice coupons make it a good deal) and I was wondering if it was worth getting a 100GB 7200RPM HD over a 120GB 5400RPM HD. The upgrade for the 100GB 7200RPM drive is $84 more than the 120GB 5400RPM drive. I know that in the past the 5400RPM notebook drives were really inferior in performance to the 7200RPM drives but I heard that the performance gap is much closer now. Is this the case? Is the upgrade to 7200RPM worth $84 and losing 20GB of storage?
 
get the 7200rpm drive. you don't notice the difference going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm, but you can really feel it going from 7200rpm to 5400rpm.
 
If you can get away with 20 less Gb's of storage go for the 7200rpm drives, they are quite a bit faster overall than the 5400rpm drives. The hdd in a notebook is the slowest part, so in my opinion go for the 7200. I've used 7200rpm drives in all the notebooks i've had, i is a difference you'll notice
 
I'd go for the 7200rpm drive. I had a Pentium M laptop that by all means should have been faster than my Pentium 4 2.4 desktop, but the desktop always felt faster. The big difference was the desktop has 7200 rpm drives while the laptop only had a 5400. You will get much faster program load times and file access times with the faster drive.
 
Get the 7200RPM. If you're going to need more storage you'll probably end up gettting a server or external drive anyway, beyond 80 or even 60GB in a Laptop you're moving into the territory of random data storage, instead of things you actually need. Unless of course you have a gigantic uncompressed music collection.
 
Ok well I've heard that the new perpendicular 5400RPM notebook drives are really close in performance to the 7200RPM notebook drives. Does anybody know if Dell uses perpendicular 5400RPM drives in the E1705?
 
Go with the 7200 RPM. Got a Inspiron 6000 with a 5400 RPM and it takes its sweet time loading XP. Ultimately the question boils down to, do you need more storage or want a faster HDD.
 
The seagate 5400.3 160gb drive has perpendicular recording and IIRC it is the fastest 5400 drive available, having said that the 7200's are quicker.

5400.3 160gb vs 7200rpm

Starting on the above page is some benchmarks comparing the 5400.3 to 7200rpm drives, it is slower, but also keep in mind the 160gb drive is alot more money than a 100gb 7200rpm drive as well.
 
When I upgraded my 600m with a Hitachi 7200 RPM drive, I notice the difference. Definitely if you can afford it, its worth the upgrade. You will boot faster, and open programs faster.
 
Boot time is a little quicker with the 7200 rpm drive, programs open a little quicker.

If that's important to you, get it. If not, get the extra 20GB.
 
You can get an external drive if you need the extra 20 gigs so bad. I went from 4200 to 7200 and noticed a tremendous increase. Granted it wouldn't be as much from 5400. However, in the long run it'll be a great long lasting investment. One that will also help keep the value of the notebook up. 'Cuz far as I know no ones talking about 10k laptop HDD's so why upgrade later when it starts to annoy you? Do it now and enjoy!
 
Even though I have a 5400 in my E1705 and have no plans on upgrading it....definitely go for the faster drive. I definitely notice the difference between my T43 which has 2 7200rpm drives, and my E1705 which only has a 5400rpm.

Adding space is easy and cheap to deal with via external hdds.

Speed, however, can't be added after the fact.

That said, my suggestion here would be, if you can swing it, to get the cheaper (or cheapest) hdd, and buy the faster drive aftermarket. Then, you'd have a 100gb 7200rpm drive internally, and the original drive as an external.
 
DaveX said:
Is the upgrade to 7200RPM worth $84 and losing 20GB of storage?
Click to expand...
It depends on what you'll use the system for.
 
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