Help 750GB@5400 or 500GB@7200

[gradcarrera]

750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm

or

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm

which one should I get better cos they both have a same price!!!

 

[TheUndertow]

750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm

or

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm

which one should I get better cos they both have a same price!!!

500GB...it will be much faster.

 

[osofast240sx]

750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm

or

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm

which one should I get better cos they both have a same price!!!

7200rpm

 

[jayhawk11]

750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm

or

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm

which one should I get better cos they both have a same price!!!

Why not both?

Western Digital Scorpio Black

 

[jmd91]

Definitely 500 GB @ 7200. It makes a huge difference.

 

[Naimfan]

If you need the space, get the 750 GB drive. If you don't, the 7200 RPM drive will be a bit faster but not a night and day difference.

 

[ranviper]

Agreed, scorpio black 750gb @7200rpm. Double win.

 

[Sieben]

For those of you who have/had both, do you experience a noticeable decrease in battery life with the 7200 ?

 

[Macsavvytech]

You notice an even bigger difference with a SSD.
Just sayin, now you should go buy this!
http://www.neowin.net/news/first-1tb-ssd-drive-hits-market-wallets
Now only when they make that drive in 2.5" ...
Its only $4k

 

[legreve]

Get the 750gb 5400 rpm, buy an Icybox from Amazon, remove the 750gb drive from your mbp, buy a 750gb 7200 rpm (like the WD Scorpio Black) and put it in instead. Put the 5400 rpm in the Icybox and you have the fast drive with an equal sized external backup HDD. Works for me

 

[Black.Infinity]

The little speed for 7200 is not notiable
but you will notice extra vibration and noise and lose of battery and 7200 age faster than 5400
Go with 5400

 

[bigjobby]

I don't have any noise/vibration issues on my 2010 MBP with a 7200 rpm 500 GB HDD. The impact on battery life would be hardly noticeable and is negligible. An extra notch on the display brightness or viewing flash content would probably suck up more juice.

A lot of people tend to put their MBPs on sleep rather than power up/down so if you don't mind the extra 10 seconds (or whatever it is) on the initial bootup and extra few ticks on apps launch then take the slower drive. The decision between the drives would all depend on how you would use your MBP.

Also, and generally speaking, the more data one hoards, the less likely they're going to use a lot of it. So whichever drive you choose, the importance is to have a good backup/archive strategy as all HDD can unpredictably die anytime.