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7200 rpm HDD worth it?

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pyroza

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 31, 2009
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Is the 7200 rpm drive worth the extra cash? How noticeable is the difference in speed?
 
hummmm

I know that this is an already discussed topic but, taking into account the new MBP specs do you think there is a real improvement in the performance using a 7200rpm disc in place of a 5400rpm (same size) ? (and the drawbacks? battery, heat and noise?)...

experienced MBP users can reply? thanks....
 
I'm no expert but my research has led me to believe that in smaller drives such as a 320GB it does make a difference, but in larger 500GB drives it's almost impossible to tell. The WD Scorpio Blue which I have is rated almost the same as its 7200 brother. Once again I could be wrong, but this seems to be the overall consensus from what I've read.
 
pyroza said:
Is the 7200 rpm drive worth the extra cash? How noticeable is the difference in speed?
Click to expand...

It's been benchmarked as materially better. However, no Apple stores carry them as an option. So your options are to order your own and install it, or order from Apple and do a BTO.

You can also do a BTO with some of the various resellers but most of them will tell you to wait 2 weeks before it ships. For some reason it takes a while.

The 5400 supposely makes less noise but I'm not sure that's true. That and a very small battery drain difference are supposedly why apple has the 5400 as the baseline, not the 7200
 
as a 50 dollar upgrade for 7200 RPM 500GB, there is no question that I'm going to upgrade to the faster hard drive.
 
hummm

vbman213 said:
as a 50 dollar upgrade for 7200 RPM 500GB, there is no question that I'm going to upgrade to the faster hard drive.
Click to expand...

yes... but I heard that for some applications the performance difference is quite small... and it cuts a litle in battery life... and noise issues (i'm not sure of this last point)... that was the reason I was looking for opinions of experienced user
 
The difference between 5400 and 7200 s astounding. The difference between 5400 and SSD is AMAZING.
I would get the lowest end hard drive you can and then swap out for an aftermarket SSD from Intel. These Gen 2 x25's are simply amazing.
 
I have the 320GB WD Scorpio Black and it's definitely faster. However I believe I have a bit more heat, slightly shorter battery life, and noticeable resonance (higher vibrations -- you feel the disk spinning under your hand). I think it's worth it because my Macbook was hot to begin with and I'm rarely on battery power.
 
Only problem is I want a new laptop by this weekend, but if I did the 7200 rpm option shipping time increases to 2-4 days. Hmm, decisions decisions
 
At the same capacity, the 7200rpm drive will be faster and personally, I highly recommend it.

As for heat/noise/power: Depends on the drive. The Hitachi 7k500 drives are said to be just as good as 5400rpm drives in terms of noise, heat etc. but I don't know which drives Apple currently uses for their MBPs.

In my experience, the difference in power consumption is negligible but the performance gain is noticable (especially in things like application startup times which are usually limited by disk access times).


Sooner or later the high end market will move to SSDs (which are much faster than _any_ HDD) but until the prices come down a bit, 7200rpm HDDs are the way to go.
 
This is a 7200 vs 5400 thread .. not a HD vs SSD one. We all know that SSD rocks.

I personally ordered the 7200 rpm. I have this one in my previous MBP and had no issues with noise or heat.
 
Kind of amazing the 7200 RPM doesn't come as standard. The 5400 should only come if you want it that way.
 
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