7200 rpm or 5400 rpm? is there a difference?

[bigben334]

im getting a macbook pro and i want to know if i should upgrade the hard drive to a bigger 120 gb hard drive that is only at 5400 rpm....or should i keep the hard drive at 100gb but get the 7200 rpm? will i notice a difference in speed with the 7200 rpm??? wat exactly does raising the rpm actually do? i know if i get the 120gb instead i just get more memory to save stuff but wat does the rpm do?

 

[Spies]

Raising RPM reduces seek times and increases transfer rate.

 

[mrfrosty]

Id go with the faster disk personally. Generally speaking the disk is the slowest part of the machine as it's mechanical so it's always the place that can show the most improvement.

 

[Spies]

But will eat battery a bit faster I believe.

 

[Chrispy]

I put a 7,200 RPM drive in an iBook I had a little while back and I did not see much of a drop in battery life at all. I would say that should be the least of your concerns. I would worry more about the heat or sound than anything else. I had no problems when I put mine in the iBook.

 

[airkarol]

definatly the speed increase, you can always but another external drive if you need more space

 

[Spies]

So is there a significant heat or noise increase?

Also, in putting a 7200rpm HDD in a MacBook does it essentially become a portable iMac?

 

[sk1985]

Go with the faster drive if you do music mixing/recording or video editing. If you simply need a drive for basic stuff like web surfing, MP3 encoding, ect... then get the slower drive with more space. I'd personally look for a drive with a ton of volume over speed (I have a lot of music and I'd love to take it everywhere with me rather than having a separate external drive). But if you need volume and speed then I'd back things up on an external and use your MBP's internal drive to do more taxing speed needing operations.

 

[eXan]

So is there a significant heat or noise increase?

Also, in putting a 7200rpm HDD in a MacBook does it essentially become a portable iMac?

No, iMac has larger screen and is 2x thicker

 

[Abstract]

definatly the speed increase, you can always but another external drive if you need more space

I'd say that's the biggest reason to get the larger sized HD rather than the faster one. You can always get an external FireWire drive if you need a fast drive, but since you don't most of the time, maybe the ability to store all your photos and such in your built in HD is more valuable. I only have 40GB in my PB, but I want to have all my photos in one place and easily accessible, and NOT on an external.

 

[aamiic]

There's a lot of threads on this subject (of which I searched for before I ordered myself, have a look). There's also a lot of misinformation, like the quote below.

But will eat battery a bit faster I believe.

 

[plinkoman]

i'd recommend the faster drive, after all, the difference is only 20GB, and you can always get external drives. hell, look at my setup(in sig), i have two external drives, and i turned my old pc into a glorified fileserver, coming in at just shy of a terabyte. suffice to say, i don't miss those 20GB

 

[netb0y]

I briefly had one of the last G4 Powerbooks and it had a 7200rpm drive. The first thing I noticed when I got home was that the 7200rpm drive in that Powerbook was noisy! I went right back to the store and the geniuses agreed and let me swap it for another one, but it had the same noise level. It made noticable sounds whenever reading from the disk. I ended up returning it any because the horizontal line problem was very irritating. I ordered my new MacBook Pro with the 5400rpm drive because I want it to be quite

 

[plinkoman]

I briefly had one of the last G4 Powerbooks and had it BTO with the 7200rpm drive. The first thing I noticed when I got home was that the 7200rpm drive in that Powerbook was noisy! I went right back to the store and the geniuses agreed and let me swap it for another one, but it had the same noise level. It made noticable sounds whenever reading from the disk. I ended up returning it any because the horizontal line problem was very irritating. I ordered my new MacBook Pro with the 5400rpm drive because I want it to be quite

wow, that sucks, but i can attest to the fact that not all of them are like that. mine is the quietest hd i've ever used.

 

[powerbook911]

I also think the 7200 RPM drive is nice.

With the Mac Book Pro for example, the HD is the only thing that really keeps you from having desktop performance. The 7200 RPM drive solves that.

Nevertheless, the 5400 isn't terrible by any means.

 

[grapes911]

I put a 7,200 RPM drive in an iBook I had a little while back and I did not see much of a drop in battery life at all. I would say that should be the least of your concerns.

About a year ago, a magazine did a study on the loss of battery due to upgrading a laptop to 7200 RPMs. (I think it was PC Magazine, but I'm not sure) The tests were on various PCs, but that shouldn't matter much. They concluded that the average laptop lost 10 to 15 minutes when upgrading to 7200 RPMs. Most people won't notice this difference. The only time I'd say not to get a 7200 RPM drive is if you are someone who needs a lot of battery life and squeezes every minute out of the battery.