4200 or 5400rpm??

[swiss switcher]

I want to order a 17" pb as soon as possible, but there is one more thing I'm not sure about. How much faster is the 5400rpm harddisk? and more important, does it use much more energy? how long is the expected battery autonomy?
thanx for your advice! :rolleyes:

[reaper]

If money isn't an option, I would definitely go with the 5400. Hard drives are usually one of the bottlenecks in a system, and the faster you can get the better. Trust me, it will make your computer faster and it will respond more quickly.

- reaper

[thehuncamunca]

it shouldn't impact battery life very much cause you'll have to access the HD less since it's spinning faster


I want to order a 17" pb as soon as possible, but there is one more thing I'm not sure about. How much faster is the 5400rpm harddisk? and more important, does it use much more energy? how long is the expected battery autonomy?
thanx for your advice! :rolleyes:

[filmmaker2002]

It's a $50 difference, no question go with it. It'll also make your PB hold it's value more down the road. Upgrade it, no question.

[simply258]

This page compares start-up, application launching, and random writing speeds for 4200, 5400, and 7200 hard drives:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard39.html

[RubberChicken]

Go the whole way I reckon. Read a thread here a while back showing 7200 gave a 15% min performance increase with negligble battery impact. The king of the heap was Hitachi 60GB 7200. Review was on Tom's Hardware... link anybody, I'm feeling lazy.

[locopano]

Hey i asked the same question before i upgraded my 17" 1.5GHZ. Alot ofpeople told me it doesnt affect the battery consumption very much at all. Not even noticably. Apparently it takes a fraction more power to start it up (get the drive spining) but then it uses less when in moiton.

Also it cost penuts to upgrade.

I got mine cos i asked in a forum if it(4200rpm) would be fast enough for video capture... they said yes but 5400 is minimum speed they would recommend for flawless performance. So i got the upgrade... also it was costing me around $35US (im in australia) to upgrade both the VRAM 128 and the HD 5400 BTO.. thats after my edu discounts and tax deductions...

[ftf]

I want to order a 17" pb as soon as possible, but there is one more thing I'm not sure about. How much faster is the 5400rpm harddisk? and more important, does it use much more energy? how long is the expected battery autonomy?
thanx for your advice! :rolleyes:

As has been mentioned in several other threads (I can't recall which ones specifically), it doesn't really give you that much of speed increase to the computer. The seek times are still the same between 4200/5400, it's just the chunks of data returned are going to be bigger.

Although if it's only $50 USD then you might as well. Here in Australia, the upgrade is more like $200 AUD so it's hardly worth it (for like a 5% increase, ha!)

[mikeyredk]

that depends on the drive

the stock toshiba drive in my 12" powerbook out-benches a top-of-the-line seagate momentus drive

[hsilver]

If you are thinking of doing video editing or anything with intensive flow of information like motion you'd best to get a 7200 drive. Even that is just enough for DV on FCP 4