80gb 4200 vs 80gb 5400???

[vilmo]

hey--

i've been appoved for an apple loan and i'll be buying a 15''pb 1.25 from maczone--they give away a free battery. (my first mac)

Question: Are there any noticable differences between the

80gb Ultra ATA drive @ 4200 rpm

vs

80gb Ultra ATA drive @ 5400 rpm?


Is the 5400rpm noticable faster? Does it make more noise, use more battary power, flat out better?

I haven't seen any news indicating anything.

vilmo

 

[manitoubalck]

Seek times

The main advantage of SCSI drives that spin @ 15k RPM is that their seek times arve very low approaching 3.2ms. That in mind the 5400 drive will have a smaller seektime than the 4200 drive. The average data transpher rates depend on the bus speed, I'm guessing ATA100 and the noise from hard drives is bugger-all unless something is wrong

Hence the preformance for the 5400 drive will be slightleyabove tht of the 4200 drive. Never forget the 'WHY' in why you are buying a computer. If all you are doing is office based tasks the 4200 will be fine, is you are playing 3d games, videoediting ect... the 5400 is a safer bet.

 

[Powerbook G5]

My 5400 rpm HD is fast, quiet, and doesn't seem to drain the battery any more than the 4200 rpm HD since I've noticed my battery times are greater than many of the people posting results with the 4200 drives. I'd say go for it, the extra $100 seems worth it to me.

 

[riwanami]

Go with the 5400rpm

I also think that the 5400rpm may be worth the extra $100. I don't have a PowerBook yet, but I see very noticable differences between a ThinkPad T30 with a 4200rpm HD and a 5400rpm HD, especially using large files or disk intensive stuff. I tested them side by side with same RAM, software installed, etc, and the 5400 rpm started up faster as well.

Also, in the PC notebook world, 4200rpm HDs are considered as the low end, where as 7200rpm HDs are on the high end. I really consider the PowerBooks as Workstation level notebooks, so I'm really curious as to why Apple didn't even offer a 7200rpm HD as an option, let along not allowing 5400rpm HDs as standard equipment.

Again, I haven't purchased a PB in 10 years, so this is from a PC biased contributer about to switch in several weeks!

 

[Powerbook G5]

I checked because I was thinking the same thing, but from the Hitachi website, I found the specs for the 5400 rpm drive to actually be close to or even exceeding the specs of many notebook sized 7200 rpm HDs, along with using less power at the same time. These are newer drives with higher densities and a pretty nice set of features, so I am definitely happy with the 5400 rpm drive in my PowerBook.