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MacBook Pro 5400 rpm vs. 7200 rpm HDD??

bayol05

bayol05

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 4, 2005
171
0
Los Angeles, CA
Hey everyone. As a lot of people on these forums are, I am waiting for the next updated MacBook Pro. I want to get the fastest hard drive I can, but I want to ask the people who use the 7200 RPM HDDs if they can notice a difference, and if so how beneficial is it? Its really not a problem to pay the 250 for the 200GB 7200 option (and I do want to do that thru Apple because I want my hard drive under warranty) but I do recall hearing complaints that the 7200 RPM is louder, etc. So here is the basic question. How much faster is the 7200 and is it worth the upgrade? For background, I do Visual Effects/3D Animation. I use the Mac Pro for most of that and will sometimes use the MBP for that kind of work. Thanks in advance!
 
For an everyday user it probably makes little difference, but for someone that deals with the stuff you do, it would probably be worth it to get the faster drive.
 
well

for speed, it;s obvious 7200 is faster at writing

but seriously, you can barely notice the difference

as for the noise, yes, 7200 is a loottttttttt more noisier

in conclusion, 5400 is a better option ( for me )

i dont know with other people's thought
 
The difference is minimal. Even if you're playing a game that constantly eats off your hard drive you'll barely notice the difference. 7200rpm is not worth the price difference imho.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

my MBP has the 7200 and my wife's has the 5400 but apart from that they are identical. Mine definitely seems faster by a noticable amount.
They're both core duo original ones so it may not make as much difference on the latest ones but personally I'd always go for speed over capacity. That's why I've gone for the SSD option on the Macbook Air that's about to replace my MBP
 
angelodmhl said:
A 7200rpm drive also generates more hear, and drains battery faster.
Click to expand...

very true, because im also using 7200 HD, and i totally regret it as it makes my MBP alot more heat faster than my friend's 5400 HD MBP

my suggestion is

stick with the default 160 gig 5400

and buy an external HD that runs 7200

that way, is better, you can store your files on the external HD without having to fear for an overheat for your MBP
 
a little off topic question

can we replace our current MBP HD with the SSD HD in the near future ( or even now? )
 
Again another vote here for the 5400 drive. I would go for the extra capacity on the internal drive. THe 7200 drive is only good for major tasks such as video editing.

Get yourself a NAT (Network Area Storage) drive.

I'm going to purchase a MBP if they release the new one this century and from the research i've done this is the best option for most people.
 
I'm glad I stumbled upon this thread b/c I'm gearing up to buy a MBP (when they're updated) and was originally going to get the 200GB 7200RPM drive...but I think I'll get the 250GB 5400RPM drive instead.

The MBP will be my desktop replacement (like my current Powerbook is) and I won't be doing any video editing or music recording, etc. I'll just need a lot of space for the digital pics, videos from my camera, etc.
 
Right there with ya Koolio, I was going to get the 7200 but all of this info has pretty much changed my mind. Now we wait for these damn updates!
 
Cloudsurfer said:
The difference is minimal. Even if you're playing a game that constantly eats off your hard drive you'll barely notice the difference. 7200rpm is not worth the price difference imho.
Click to expand...

If you don't know about something, please don't offer false opinions (plenty of that from windows users that never used macs). For facts, please see benchmarks at barefeat.com or other web sites.

7200rpm vs other drives
http://barefeats.com/hard96.html
http://barefeats.com/mbcd7.html

For example, 7200rpm 200gb drive is about 1.6 times the speed of 5400rpm 160gb drive! 60% faster is not barely noticeable.


angelodmhl said:
A 7200rpm drive also generates more heaT, and drains battery faster.
Click to expand...

No that's just speculation. Things are done faster on the 7200rpm drives, so heat dissipation and energy usage is about the SAME. Compare the specs and please read some reviews first.
 
Consultant said:
If you don't know about something, please don't offer false opinions (plenty of that from windows users that never used macs). For facts, please see benchmarks at barefeat.com or other web sites.

7200rpm vs other drives
http://barefeats.com/hard96.html
http://barefeats.com/mbcd7.html

For example, 7200rpm 200gb drive is about 1.6 times the speed of 5400rpm 160gb drive! 60% faster is not barely noticeable.




No that's just speculation. Things are done faster on the 7200rpm drives, so heat dissipation and energy usage is about the SAME. Compare the specs and please read some reviews first.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up. So do you think the 7200 upgrade is worth it? For me, I don't care about the battery life so much, two hours doing basic photo or internet browsing would be ideal for me. When I tried to open up final cut pro at the applestore it literally took like 30 seconds. I was kinda in shock since, it is a pro machine after all. I am assuming that laptop had a 5400rpm drive.

Would I notice a difference doing photoshop work, or light video editing with imovie/final cut express? I really wanted the faster drive because my current windows computer takes forever to boot up as well as opening programs, and more than anything, I just want stuff to open up faster :( hehe.
 
thinkband said:
Thanks for clearing that up. So do you think the 7200 upgrade is worth it? For me, I don't care about the battery life so much, two hours doing basic photo or internet browsing would be ideal for me. When I tried to open up final cut pro at the applestore it literally took like 30 seconds. I was kinda in shock since, it is a pro machine after all. I am assuming that laptop had a 5400rpm drive.

Would I notice a difference doing photoshop work, or light video editing with imovie/final cut express? I really wanted the faster drive because my current windows computer takes forever to boot up as well as opening programs, and more than anything, I just want stuff to open up faster :( hehe.
Click to expand...

7200rpm drives do not significantly impact battery life.There are tons of info on the web site I listed, just read up on the info there. Faster read = shorter time needed to open app / file.

The Apple Store demo laptops all comes with default drives, 5400rpm. If you want 7200rpm you can either get built to order or do it yourself (but if you are asking this question, then you probably want to get built to order).

If money is no issue, then get 1 or 2 external bus powered firewire 800 raid disk as file / scratch disk. (I use the Lacie Little Big Disk). If you have that, you would need to back up like anything sitting on raid arrays.
 
quick question... lets say i have a 5400rpm on my (future) MBP and an external FW400 7200rpm drive.... if i set up photoshop to use the FW drive as scratch disk, will i get better performance than using the internal drive?
 
El Phantasmo said:
quick question... lets say i have a 5400rpm on my (future) MBP and an external FW400 7200rpm drive.... if i set up photoshop to use the FW drive as scratch disk, will i get better performance than using the internal drive?
Click to expand...

In general, having a dedicated drive for scratch will improve performance.

However, Firewire 400 will limit your external drive speed to same speed if not slower than your internal. Firewire 800 will not have the issue. For a pro, a few hundred dollars on a faster drive is worth it.

You can go with eSATA too but those are not bus powered, so eSATA with desktop drive(s) would be a good desktop setup.
 
El Phantasmo said:
cool! thanks for the answer..

i had been wondering the speed difference between those two for a while...
Click to expand...

In theory,
Firewire 400 max speed is 49 MB/s
Firewire 800 max speed is twice as fast
In practice it's a little slower. So just look up your internal drive speed for comparison.


bayol05 said:
Ok ok. How about this: Bottom line, is the 7200 upgrade worth the price?
Click to expand...

Yes, if you are a specific type of user. Read the article!

No, if you are only web surfing, checking email, and doing basic things.
 
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