5400rpm vs. 7200rpm - Am I being overly weird on this?

[Bending Pixels]

I have an spring 2010 15" MBP. I swapped out the original 320gig 5400rpm drive for a 500gig 7200 rpm drive. Partially for the added disk space, and also to help remove the bottleneck of a slower rpm drive. Obviously, having the faster drive is a definite benefit - almost all app's load and run faster (Photoshop plug-ins really run better with the faster drive).

The one downside (and perhaps I'm just focusing on this too much) is the decrease in battery life. With the slower drive, I'd average 4 1/2 -5 hours of real usage (running Photoshop, Aperture, iTunes, etc.). The 7200rpm drive seems to reduce that to about 4 hours or so (sometimes more, sometimes less, if I haven't "exercised" the battery on a regular basis).

I'm actually thinking about switching back to the slower drive to regain the added battery life. The one thing that needs to be said is...thus far, I really haven't had a need to use the MBP for the full 4-5 hours. It's just that little annoyance knowing that the slower drive will give me a 1/2 hour to 45 minutes additional time.

Am I being too much of a 'noid on this?

 

[Mac-key]

I guess it just depends on how much you need the performance over battery life.

30 minute loss of battery life really isn't that bad. I upgraded to a 7200 drive several months back and maybe noticed a loss of 15 minutes or so. But for me the performance upgrade was worth it.

 

[SandboxGeneral]

I would say you're being too paranoid. It's a trade off and you need to decide which you want more: faster speed with more capacity or slower speed with more battery life.

 

[raep]

I wouldn't mind the lost on battery life. You're not being paranoid cause it depends how you use your laptop but for my use i would actually upgrade. Out of curiosity does the 7200 drive ad a noticeable noise increase? Thats one of the fears I have had on upgrading.

 

[joehahn]

I plan to update my MBpro to a 7200rpm drive as well and I know that the performance of the drive is way more important than battery life for me.

 

[drummingcraig]

I'm actually thinking about switching back to the slower drive to regain the added battery life. The one thing that needs to be said is...thus far, I really haven't had a need to use the MBP for the full 4-5 hours. It's just that little annoyance knowing that the slower drive will give me a 1/2 hour to 45 minutes additional time.

Am I being too much of a 'noid on this?

I think you're being a little more 'nal' about this rather than 'noid' if you catch my drift. If you're happy with the performance and aren't even pinging the bottom of your battery well so-to-speak, why bother with the downgrade?

 

[gnasher729]

I have an spring 2010 15" MBP. I swapped out the original 320gig 5400rpm drive for a 500gig 7200 rpm drive. Partially for the added disk space, and also to help remove the bottleneck of a slower rpm drive. Obviously, having the faster drive is a definite benefit - almost all app's load and run faster (Photoshop plug-ins really run better with the faster drive).

The one downside (and perhaps I'm just focusing on this too much) is the decrease in battery life. With the slower drive, I'd average 4 1/2 -5 hours of real usage (running Photoshop, Aperture, iTunes, etc.). The 7200rpm drive seems to reduce that to about 4 hours or so (sometimes more, sometimes less, if I haven't "exercised" the battery on a regular basis).

I'm actually thinking about switching back to the slower drive to regain the added battery life. The one thing that needs to be said is...thus far, I really haven't had a need to use the MBP for the full 4-5 hours. It's just that little annoyance knowing that the slower drive will give me a 1/2 hour to 45 minutes additional time.

Am I being too much of a 'noid on this?

You may have increased the brightness on your MBP. You might be watching more Flash adverts than you used to. The battery might just be a bit older than it used to be. You might be doing more in the same time because your hard drive is faster. There are all kinds of reasons why the battery life could have gone down that have nothing to do with the hard drive.

It _might_ be that the new drive doesn't spin down as quickly as the old one, or not at all. Could you tell us exactly which drive it is?

 

[Bending Pixels]

Thanks for all of the replies. The drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 500gig 7200rpm (16meg cache). It replaced the stock Hitachi Travelstar 320gig 5400rpm (8meg cache).

As to the noise factor, no additional noise or heat.

Not sure what 'nal refers to, but....you're right. I'm being a twit over this.

 

[drummingcraig]

Not sure what 'nal refers to, but....you're right. I'm being a twit over this.

I'll give you a hint...I only dropped one b̶o̶w̶e̶l̶ vowel from the front of the word.

 

[Bending Pixels]

I'll give you a hint...I only dropped one b̶o̶w̶e̶l̶ vowel from the front of the word.

Time to up my caffeine intake....

 

[drummingcraig]

Time to up my caffeine intake....

Which is funny because it was a bad joke I made while lacking caffeine.

Getting back on topic, I don't think you'll miss that extra charge time. I installed a 7200 rpm Momentus XT in my MBP and honestly haven't noticed any difference in battery life.