5400rpm vs. 7200rpm day to day use

[Kristalghost]

1. would make much difference?
2. how much the battery consumption would be affected? (battery is handy in class)
3. would I notice the difference in noise?

thanks for you're patience with another post with this question on this forum and btw the link for the benchmark wont work for me

whell the benchmark is back up and I've looked it over.
as far as I can say, as I am inexperienced in this, is that the 7200 rpm doesn't preform beter at all except for a couple of things, further that it makes more noise and consumes half more power while idle and while seeking a quarter more.
is that about right?
and if this is true why do they even bother with the 7200 rpm as the 5400 is almost as fast and cheaper, quieter and less power consuming?

 

[Kristalghost]

3.) Apple won't let you return the machine if you "customize" it. That includes changing the config on their site.

is this true?

 

[Anuba]

and if this is true why do they even bother with the 7200 rpm as the 5400 is almost as fast and cheaper, quieter and less power consuming?

Because there is a demand for 7200 RPM due to the rampant misconception that it's much faster in all circumstances. If they didn't offer 7200 as an option people would be saying "Hah, Apple selling outdated technology as usual".

 

[BinfordsTool]

So instead of getting the 7200 I should just get a 5400? Is this the consensus I'm feeling from the boards?


Edit: If so, I'm gonna spend the 45 extra on the matte screen, a better choice?

 

[Anuba]

So instead of getting the 7200 I should just get a 5400? Is this the consensus I'm feeling from the boards?

Well... "no noticeable difference between 5400 and 7200" is not a general rule, but it happens to apply in this case, since real-world benchmarks show that the 5400 RPM stock drive (Hitachi TravelStar 5K500.B) is faster than the 7200 RPM stock drive (Seagate 7200.4) in 8 out of 10 situations.

I'm sure there will be 7200 RPM 2.5" drives that beat the hell out of the stock Hitachi drive, but this Seagate drive isn't it.

So basically, the options are...

1) Order the standard 5400 RPM drive and your machine will ship within 24 hours (unless you've added other options like 8 GB RAM, matte screen etc).

2) Order the optional 7200 RPM drive and it'll take 5-7 days extra to get the machine, and get a HDD that's slower, makes more noise and draws more power than the standard 5400 RPM drive.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. If faster 7200 RPM drives arrive in the months to come, you can just buy one from a third party and swap it with the stock drive.

 

[BinfordsTool]

Thanks. I'm in no rush to have it shipped either, since I myself am 7 days away from arriving in the US again, hoping to have this thing meet me at my door (or at middletown, since I live 30 minutes away..)

 

[Philflow]

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. If faster 7200 RPM drives arrive in the months to come, you can just buy one from a third party and swap it with the stock drive.

Exactly. It shouldn't be long before WD5000BEKT and Hitachi 7K500 are hitting the market.

I think they're taking their time because they don't want to release an immature product like Seagate did.

 

[Anuba]

Exactly. It shouldn't be long before WD5000BEKT and Hitachi 7K500 are hitting the market.

I think they're taking their time because they don't want to release an immature product like Seagate did.

Probably.

These drives are so cheap, too. Around 1,000 SEK (approx. $75-80?). I remember paying 4 times that amount for a 20 MB drive once upon a time.

 

[mach0024]

advice needed

Guys,

I went through all the posts and thanks a lot for all the answers posted so far. I plan to buy a MacPro 15' but it will be my first mac. I have no problems changing hardware by myself (experience from exchanging PC harware...) but I still can't decide between (5400) 500gb and (7200) 320gb or 500gb.
I think I don't necessarily need more than 320gb but what's more important is that I want to have a fast hdd... so which one to go?
I understand that Apple charges a lot if I order it customized but as I want to safe money, I plan to go for the cheapest preinstalled drive, exchange it and try to sell the "old" one... Is this possible?

besides. as I don't have osx experience, is there a guide or sth. which helps me to get this thing running after exchanging the hdd (or in case I get my hdd later and have already used the preinstalled drive => how to get the osx and data to the new drive?)

As mentioned I am new to osx and therefore help is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance and keep up the interesting posts.

 

[sneeks]

Actually the WD3200BEKT has a very small advantage over the WD5000BEVT when it comes to application speed.

I agree though that the WD5000BEVT is the more sensible choice. It consumes less power, makes less noise, causes less vibration and performs nearly the same.

For good UK deals on the WD5000BEVT check here:
http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...&cid=16268454636543444742&sa=title#ps-sellers

Many thanks for your help, I ordered a WD5000BEVT today

320gb would have probably been enough but I opted for the 500gb as if I use bootcamp it'll work out better for me.

 

[harcosparky]

Guys,

I went through all the posts and thanks a lot for all the answers posted so far. I plan to buy a MacPro 15' but it will be my first mac. I have no problems changing hardware by myself (experience from exchanging PC harware...) but I still can't decide between (5400) 500gb and (7200) 320gb or 500gb.
I think I don't necessarily need more than 320gb but what's more important is that I want to have a fast hdd... so which one to go?
I understand that Apple charges a lot if I order it customized but as I want to safe money, I plan to go for the cheapest preinstalled drive, exchange it and try to sell the "old" one... Is this possible?

besides. as I don't have osx experience, is there a guide or sth. which helps me to get this thing running after exchanging the hdd (or in case I get my hdd later and have already used the preinstalled drive => how to get the osx and data to the new drive?)

As mentioned I am new to osx and therefore help is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance and keep up the interesting posts.

OSX or windows .... HDD selection is about the same.

After doing much research and seeing where 5400 RPM drives beat out 7200 RPM drives in OVERALL performance, what's the point in considering a 7200.

Oh sure the 7200 may beat out the 5400 in one or two tests, but at the end of the day it is overall performance that counts.

Conclusions
On the surface, little separates these 500GB notebook drives—well, the 5,400-RPM models, anyway. But after seeing how each handled our diverse suite of performance tests, a clear winner has emerged.

That winner does not come from the Seagate camp, despite the fact that the Momentus 7200.4 boasts a higher spindle speed than the rest of the pack. I was hoping the faster-spinning platters, combined with a larger cache, would translate into better real-world performance. But they don't. The Momentus was often slower than the best 5,400-RPM drives, and while it enjoyed a few moments in the spotlight, those victories were far too rare to justify the drive's significantly higher price.

........

That favorite? Western Digital's Scorpio Blue. We subject drives to a varied mix of performance tests because we're looking for weaknesses, and the Scorpio Blue exhibited none. It may not have come out ahead of the pack in each and every test, but over our entire suite, the Scorpio was clearly the performance leader.

Of course, if you need 'bragging rights', than get yourself an SSD .... nothing faster you know.

You can get this 512 Gig SSD for only $1599.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609415

 

[MADMAXX]

I just did that on the UK site. Seriously 7 days to add a different hard drive, seems a bit stupid.

Remember theyre currently shipping from China and will be batch shipment (airfreight) to UK and then UPS/DHL from there to you. So batch ship might take up to 3 days before it leaves Hon Hoi.

 

[JFreak]

Only thing I noticed is that I loose 10 min of battery usage compared to before installing the 7200.

Doing same things before and after? I bet you were doing more actual work after speedier hard drive. Given the same workload, the faster drive idles more thus consumes less power.

If it only takes you 10 minutes of battery time for being able to do more, then it is in fact a good thing. First of all you got to do more, second, you did it in less time. Win-win, because of time savings.

Comparing A and B is really tough. You need to be able to do 100% equal amount of work in both cases, which in reality is very often impossible.

Anyway, read the specs of the drives for reference. For example, seagate.com says that 5400.6/500GB and 7200.4/500GB draw power (watts) like this:
- idle: 0.81 vs 0.67
- seek: 1.54 vs 1.554

IOW, when you do something, there's no difference. When you don't, the faster runs cooler. And if you do same amount of work, the faster completes faster thus gets more idle time
==> therefore:
1) faster drive runs cooler under same workload
2) faster drive enables you to do more work

Win-win, no matter if you want to do more or use less power.

 

[JFreak]

7200 drive will always use more power than a comparable 5400

False.

Check my post above.
1) Given two drives do equal amount of work, faster uses less power due to more idling time
2) Given two drives work equal amount of time, faster gets more done for same power consumption

 

[JFreak]

So do these 7200 drives really have all the vibrations people report them to? Some reviews I've read say yes and some say no.

I once installed a drive badly and it had lots of vibrations. Did it all over again, this time making sure I had properly tightened the screws, and all vibrations were gone. So I would say there's some person to be blamed if a laptop has vibrations, not hard drive component.

 

[JFreak]

My understanding is that there's virtually no performance gain from a 7200 rpm drive when doing quick, random reads and writes. The boot time may be a fraction faster, but that's about it. The real difference happens when you're working with very large files, for example if you're doing audio recording on multiple tracks or working with large video files (or large file transfers in general).

True, the performance difference is smaller with small files. If you seek a million files it takes a million reading head movements no matter how fast the drive platter spins. And some few kilobytes are read so very fast it does not matter if you have a fast SSD or a slow USB stick or anything in between.

It's just that the faster drive has a huge potential of being insanely faster when you do transfer those big files, which at least I do quite often. That potential performance reserve is worth a lot for me, don't know about the rest of you...

 

[reallynotnick]

JFreak, while you are right about a faster drive idling more thing is the WD Blue (5400rpm) is faster and uses less power in both seeking and idling.
Really there is 0 reason to get the 7200.4, the Blue is faster, quiter, lower power consumption and is cheaper!