40GB 7200 or 80GB 5400 upgrade for mini?

[zen.state]

I recently got a mac mini and upgraded the ram to 512. the one thing I still want to do is upgrade the internal hd to a faster drive but I would also like to gain some space.

the original drive is only 40GB and 4200rpm. I would like some opinions on whether to buy a samsung 80GB 5400 with 8mb buffer or an ibm/hitachi 40GB 7200rpm with 8mb buffer. I have narrowed it down to these 2 as they both come closest to my needs and are also in my budget.

I have to admit that the extra space would be nice on the 5400 but the speed of the 7200 would be nice also. with the 7200 I gain no space though

ideas?

 

[After G]

From a quick search online (just use Google) I don't think an average of ~$30 is too huge a jump in spending to get the best of both worlds - speed and capacity. I am not you, however, so I don't know if you need that $20 for something else.

No offense intended; I am a college student, so I know how it is to be short on money, but I am sure you can scrounge up a small amount like that pretty quickly.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Faster internal drive, cheapie rebated external with FireWire case. Externals are easy to make, cheap to make, and can be upgraded later.

 

[jalagl]

I would go with the fastest internal drive possible, and, if you're running out of space, eventually use a large firewire HD to store other things.

There's also a 60GB 7200 from Hitachi/IBM, the 7K60. It seems to be out of stock everywhere I've looked, though.

 

[macminilover]

I went with an external firewire drive for my Mini. Put a Maxtor DiamondMax 250GB (16MB cache) into a OWC firewire case and now boot off the firewire drive and use the Mini's 80GB for a "backup" drive. Works great and a lot less hassle than ripping out the Mini's drive...and it IS noticably faster running off the firewire drive (and I even have 1GB memory).

 

[zen.state]

I just found some interesting news. it turns out the 1.25 mini uses a 40gb 5400rpm drive and the 1.42 uses a 80gb 4200rpm.

found this in a mac mini article on macworld.
http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/reviews/macminireview/index.php

the info is just under the benchmark results