5400 rpm -> 7200 rpm? Noticeable difference?

[pyroza]

I'm thinking about upgrading my 5400 rpm hard drive. Is there a big difference in performance/battery life between 5400 and 7200 rpm?

 

[alust2013]

Performance difference is appreciable. Not amazing, but not at all bad either. Battery life difference is fortunately very small.

 

[S.B.G]

I upgraded my MBP to a 7200RPM and I do notice a nice speed boost and I do not notice any negative battery difference from before.

 

[coochiekuta]

depends on the brand, depends on the file.

western digital blue (5400) vs black (7200)label, the performance is about the same.

the black runs a lil warmer and has a bigger cache of course.

 

[Mac-key]

definitely saw a little bit of a jump in performance when I went to a faster drive. Luckily, battery life stayed the same.

So I'd say a pretty good trade-off.

 

[fel10]

U will see some difference, but nothing that will make u go "WOW". If u want a big change in speed, get an SSD

 

[vhp3]

I saw difference enough that I would never go back to 5400.

 

[GLS]

Yep. I ordered my 15" with a 7200, and put one in my 13" as well. I've since upgraded both to a Seagate Momentus ST9750420AS (750 GB, 7200 rpm) and battery life is fine.

They do not compare to the SSD in my Air, but the combination of storage + performance is not too shabby.

For the record, I paid $108 each for the drives.

 

[itsxtian]

I saw difference enough that I would never go back to 5400.

I agree with this. When I sold my old MacBook I took out my 250gb 7200rpm and put my old 5400rpm hard drive in there and once you do that, you'll notice quite a change.

 

[miata]

The first thing I do when I get a new Apple laptop is to max out the RAM replace the HDD with 7200 RPM aftermarket components. I've had great luck with the Travelstar brand 7200 HDDs -- relatively quite, fast and reliable.

 

[toxic]

part of the speed difference people perceive when installing a new hard drive is simply because the disk is unfragmented. the other part will be from the actual hard drive performance, whether it be from having more space or a faster rotation.

in any case, go for space first, speed second, unless you don't have store much data in your computer. a half-full 7200RPM drive will be slower than a larger 5400RPM drive with the same amount of data.

 

[miata]

part of the speed difference people perceive when installing a new hard drive is simply because the disk is unfragmented. the other part will be from the actual hard drive performance, whether it be from having more space or a faster rotation.

in any case, go for space first, speed second, unless you don't have store much data in your computer. a half-full 7200RPM drive will be slower than a larger 5400RPM drive with the same amount of data.

Good advice, and if you can keep large amounts of data on external drives to off-load the internal disks you can get the best of both worlds.

 

[agmaster]

I upgraded from a 160 GB Fujitsu 5400 to a 360 GB WD Black 7200 and the performance increase was pretty good. I saw a difference mostly while playing games in Bootcamp. I also notice that when using FCP that things run more smoothly as well as any other video editing program. The only downside to upgrading was how much of a pain it was to upgrade my MBP.

 

[Fortun]

I installed in my MBP 15" the Momentus XT: Seagate, and this is wonderfull, this is an hybrid between a normal HD and a SSD, the MBP is so fast now, the difference are big.

Take a look and search about this HD, for me, now its the best option for notebooks

This HD is 7200rpm but how its an hybrid the battery duration is almost the same that with the original HD of 5400 rpm