80GB 5400RPM or 4200RPM drive - performance vs. heat/battery life

[Porshuh944turbo]

Extra cost for the 5400RPM drive on the 15" 1.25Ghz powerbook is like $120 give or take....

Is it worth it? what kind of performance difference is it between the 5400 and the 4200 rpm drives? (both hitachi I am asuming)

What about heat and battery life? Is the 5400rpm drive hotter and more power consumptuous?


I placed my order for the 5400 rpm drive in a 15" 1.25ghz/superdrive, but am having second thoughts.. I think I'd rather have longer battery life and cooler operation than unnoticable performace gains... but just how much performance comes from the faster spinning disks?

[cbonz]

I was wondering the same thing. It's a pricy upgrade...

Someone help us!

[revenuee]

Is it worth upgrading from 4200 to 5400 rpm.

depends on your needs.

if your doing video editing, your better off getting the slower harddrive and getting a lacie external drive that operates at 7200 rpm and blazing transfer speeds.

if your doing (print) graphics work and your not planning on getting an external drive, get the faster upgrade, you'll be glad you did when your opening those 15 or more MB files...

for primaraly web work, the slower drive is fine - your not generally working with huge file sizes so fast access isn't an issue

hope that helps you guys

[Porshuh944turbo]

i went ahead and ordered the 4200rpm drive to allow better battery life and cooler running... not sure i'd notice the speed difference. (someone posted the specs of the two drives in another forum)

I may wait for the 7k60 drive from hitachi to go to 80gb and upgrade then (7200rpm but only 60gb so far) as it's the fastest sustained read drive there is (40MB/Sec) according to bare feats)

anyway... should be here next week i guess. it's shipping as we speak from taiwan and i was too cheap to pay $15 for expedited shipping.. doh!

[iPC]

5400 is not worth the cash. Talking 20-40% more power to run the drive, for 5% performance increase.

As previous poster said, go FW external enclosure if you really need something speedy (or just get a PM).

[FuzzyBallz]

If apple is using Hitachi/IBM HD on the PB like they did w/ G4 MDD, I wonder if the 5400rpm version has the 8MB cache.