5400rpm vs. 7200rpm

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eric

I am configuring a new notebook running Vista Business with 1 GB Ram
with 8 cell batttery. What type of increased performance should I
expect running a 7200rpm drive over a 5400rpm drive. Is there going
to be additional battery drain with the faster drive?
 
I am configuring a new notebook running Vista Business with 1 GB Ram
with 8 cell batttery. What type of increased performance should I
expect running a 7200rpm drive over a 5400rpm drive. Is there going
to be additional battery drain with the faster drive?
Click to expand...

Rotation speed alone doesn't tell the true story of a drive's
performance. Check out the throughput and burst speed. Battery drain
may be a bit higher with a drive that spins faster. Again, depends and
make and model.
 
It is specifically because of increased battery drain that most laptops use
5400 RPM drives.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User
 
7200 will drain the battery a bit more... and the only speed increase you
will BARELY notice is that when you access your hard drive, you get the info
a bit quicker...

BETTER to use that money on MORE RAM... or having a faster FSB.

since laptops are REALLY hard to replace the proc on, I'd suggest going with
an increase in RAM... especially with VISTA... 2 gigs is the recommended...
we are long past the days where 512 will get it done...
 
It is specifically because of increased battery drain that most laptops
use 5400 RPM drives.
Click to expand...

That's not the reason VistaBoy!!!

I say that (like most things you say, for example that vista is a good OS)
this is BOGUS and misinformation!
You are full of URBAN MYTHS!

http://www.barefeats.com/hard56.html

WILL A 7200RPM NOTEBOOK DRIVE DRAIN MY BATTERY FASTER?
The short answer is, "Probably not." You see, the 7200rpm drives are as much
as 28% faster doing random reads and writes compared to the 5400rpm drives.
They are as much as 80% faster than 4200rpm drives. Yet the Hitachi
Travelstar 7K100 uses the same amount of power as the Travelstar 5K100. The
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 uses only 10% more power than the Momentus 4200.2.
The Momentus 5400.3 uses less power than the Momentus 4200.2. My theory is
that the "speed to power" ratio is so good with the 7200rpm drives that the
net effect on the battery is negligible.
-----

http://groups.google.com/group/comp...200+rpm+battery+drain&rnum=3#2c15dffdb21160d1
Will a higher rpm (eg 7200 vs 5400) hard drive consume a noticeable amount
of battery power?
Click to expand...


Only marginally. We're talking about 1 minute in every sixty according to a
recent comparison at
http://www20.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031031/notebook_hard_drives-03...


The advanced power saving features of the Hitachi 7k60 drives compensate for
the expected increased power drain to the point that the difference is
negligible. The same cannot be said for the performance gains of the 7200
drive, which is considerable and more than offsets any minimal battery drain
according to my own limited experiences and just about every review I've
read which did a comparison.


So go with your gut, and get the faster drive - you'll not regret it.

------------


The newer the drive and higher technology it uses the LESS power it will
need, even the CPU cycles needed are less. The turning of the disks need
VERY LITTLE additional energy once the disks are rotating.. but I guess you
dont know physics either Mr. Urban.

To the OP:

I would suggest at leat 2 gigs of ram if you plan to install the dreaded
VISTA horror on the laptop.... and also disable all services that make the
HDD thrash

like search indexing for example.
 
I would think you would see at least a small increase in speed, however, if
your worried about where to spend your money RAM is more important. Vista
uses technology (such as Superfetch) to analyze what programs you use and
when you use them to preload parts of them from the disk into memory thus
helping ease some of the load on the HD's and more importantly having the
programs ready to go in ram to make your experience much faster. If you can
afford both you will not be dissappointed as Vista does have advanced power
saving features to help with what extra power drain you might see from a
faster drive.

Hope this helps.

Jeff
 
superfetch is superdumb, because it does not have AI (artificial
intelligence)
Superfetch is as stupid as the vista speech recognition is

What happens is you end up loading (hard disk thrashing) things you might
not use in a session,
and filling up the ram, that means data transfer and pipeline filling.. it
also means that
when you try to load huge files for example on Photoshop vista must decide
(stupidly)
what of those superfetch things it must flush out to make room for your
work.

Its a stupid idea and its implemented badly.. any geek who knows whats he's
doing
will turn this off, along with search indexing..
 
Actually Superfetch DOES have a type of AI. Like I said in my original post
it analyses how you use your system and improves system speed the longer you
use it by preloading applications before you open them. Having a system
with a bunch of RAM that you aren't using is what is stupid. Will it fill
up all your RAM? Of course not!
I have 1.5 GB of RAM on my system and it doesn't fill it up and it HAS
increased performance. You want to turn it off and slow down your computer
that is your business.

Search indexing thrashing your HD? Maybe when it first builds the index but
after that it accesses your HD only when you add documents in the areas it
is indexing. I find it very useful as we scan and store all documents
online. This utility makes it very fast to find emails, documents, etc...

Speech recognition is really designed for people with disabilities. It
doesn't come enabled either. Would the normal user use it? Probably not.
It is useful for dictating documents but if your a fast typer you will
probably not use it.

Seeing as how you're not even using Vista I don't understand how you could
know whether these features are badly implemented or not. Every post you
have written sounds more like you are just trying to make stuff up to
complain about.

Jeff
 
WILL A 7200RPM NOTEBOOK DRIVE DRAIN MY BATTERY FASTER?
The short answer is, "Probably not." You see, the 7200rpm drives are as much
as 28% faster doing random reads and writes compared to the 5400rpm drives.
They are as much as 80% faster than 4200rpm drives. Yet the Hitachi
Travelstar 7K100 uses the same amount of power as the Travelstar 5K100. The
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 uses only 10% more power than the Momentus 4200.2.
The Momentus 5400.3 uses less power than the Momentus 4200.2. My theory is
that the "speed to power" ratio is so good with the 7200rpm drives that the
net effect on the battery is negligible.
Click to expand...

It all depends on the drive -- My battery life dropped from 110 minutes
to 75 minutes on my Gateway 17" notebook when I put in a 7200rpm drive.

Is it worth it? Definitely. Performance is far more important then
battery life though.
 
Seeing as how you're not even using Vista I don't understand how you could
know whether these features are badly implemented or not.
Click to expand...

If I was using it as my main OS you would then say.. WELL IF YOU DONT LIKE
IT DONT USE IT!...

Well Im not USING it.. I am studying it on machines and virtual machines.
Playing around, testing... you really cant do much on vista yet ya know!
its frustrating if you
use computers like I do.

I can assure you that I have been testing vista since it was called
longhorn...
I dont know every little thing about it yet, but it seems that microsoft
itself doesnt either! lol
Search indexing thrashing your HD? Maybe when it first builds the index
but after that it accesses your HD only when you add documents in the
areas it is indexing.
Click to expand...

Tell me what will happen if you have 50.000 ebooks in PDF (which I have by
the way),
and they are indexed by an indexer (it takes more than a week to do it if
you work on the computer),
and then you decide to MOVE or RENAME the frikin folder with the PDFs?
What will happen with the index? lol.....

It will be all wrong! What if you decide to write this info in on DVDs after
the week has gone by?
The CPU would have worked to index all that information and then you would
have removed it...
Indexing hard disk thrashing for nothing! This is not an imaginary
scenario.. this is what happens!

People are starting to report erroneous results of searches with Vista,
because things are changed too fast
and the search index is old.... its a mess I tell you!

People like me that have too many things going on, on their computers cant
use indexing!
I have files coming in and out, changing names, my computer is in a constant
flux. And what will happen is
that with faster internet connections this will become very common. Indexing
will not be able to keep up with the changes,
and the result will be erroneous searches and thrashing of disks just to try
to keep up....

I am really trying to tame Google desktop search into working for me.. but I
see its limitations...

Indexing is for grannies that dont know how to organize their files, forget
where they placed them,
and have things that never change, except emails....

I download more than 5 Gb of information each day... and I can promise you
that I will increase that amount
as soon as I can get a faster internet connection. We are talking about 100
mbps internet connections in a few years....
In Canada they have already started offering 100mb connections.
I am sure people will be swapping files of a 100GB magnitude DAILY in a few
years...

No indexing can possibly keep track of all that.... INDEXING IS STUPID, and
an OBSOLETE technology.
 
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