Mini: 5400rpm vs. 7200rpm

[tefleming]

Can anyone point me towards some benchmark comparisons between a 5400 rpm and a 7200 rpm hard drive?

Anyone got some anecdotal/practical observations?

 

[MyMac8MyPC]

Night and day difference performance wise. Highly recommended

 

[Leon Kowalski]

Can anyone point me towards some benchmark comparisons between a 5400 rpm and a 7200 rpm hard drive?

Since the subject line says "Mini", I presume you're talking about
2.5" notebook-size drives. Don't be fooled by drive rpms -- there's
a whole lot more to drive performance than that:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html

LK

 

[AlexisV]

On the other hand, the 133 IDE drive in the G4 Power Mac we have in the office doesn't seem slow at all.

It just seems to be games that suffer from the obvious effects of slow hard drive access, leading to stuttering and long load times. With apps it just takes a little longer for them to start up in the first place and I suppose if you're low on memory, using the hard drive as virtual memory would be slower on a 5400 drive.

 

[jhkingsr]

I'm running a WD Scorpio 250gb at 5,400 rpm and couldn't be happier.

Notebook drive comparison

 

[tefleming]

I was speaking of 2.5" drives in a mac mini.

Right now I'm running a 7200rpm 100gb drive. In looking at my options for upgrades, I could go as high as either a 320GB@5400 or 200GB@7200.

 

[ascender]

I recently swapped a 5400rpm drive for a 7200rpm drive in one of our Macbooks. I upgraded to get more storage space primarily and I can't say I've noticed any difference in performance tbh.

 

[ziwi]

Question is: Is it better to replace the internl or just plug in an external and use it thatway with minimal on the internal. For what you could get for the 2.5" money in and external may make the decision for you...