A Poll to Help me decide: 5400 vs 7200

[Twe Foju]

what a silly poll - why would anyone "prefer" slower

it's not a silly poll at all

i go for 5400 for 3 reasons

-7200 runs faster, yes, but produced more heat than the 5400

-7200 makes ALOT more noise than the 5400

-7200 writing speed wont have too much different with 5400

and you can even barely notice it

because i had a friend who owns MBP with 5400 HD and i compared his to my 7200 HD

result? nearly the same copy time of a similar file

5400 FTW, even i regret putting 7200 HD on my MBP, and i will change mine soon to 5400

 

[xeux]

Does anyone else agree/disagree with this?
Anyone experienced both?

Go read the benchmarks man. Read some reviews.

It's clear as purified water.

Get the 320GB. Or be patient and go for the 500. Don't make uneducated decisions based off of RPM specs.

That's like saying a 3 Year old 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 will smoke your 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo Merom SR.

 

[iBunny]

I have a MBP SR 2.4Ghz / 4GB RAM / 200GB Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM Hard Drive.

The First upgrade I did to my machine was Max out the Ram. I noticed an improvement only when using my machine heavily. Not so much right away.

Then I upgraded the hard drive to the Hitachi travel star. This Hard Drive increases the rotational speed from 5400rpm (stock MBP) to 7200rpm. It also increases the Hard drive cache from 8MB to 16MB. And Increases the density per plater which decreases seek time, and increases read and write speeds.

Over all with the new harddrive, I noticed a severe decrease in boot time, and much faster loading with applications with alot of items associated with them such as iPhoto and all my Photos, and iTunes with all my music. The Difference is very noticable and very worth it.

Whatever side effect it has such as shorter battery life or heat is negligable. I dont notice the 10 less minutes or minor increase of temp (if at all) but you will notice the speed. Best 200$ upgrade I ever spent on a computer.

 

[blackeyed]

This is pretty much true. They have higher density so the speed difference between a 320GB 5400rpm and a 200GB 7200rpm is very small.

It's the same for the 250 GB 5400rpm bto, isn't it?

 

[Joko]

Sorry why would they make two different drive speeds if they actually performed equally?

Surely a 7200 is faster, to say that they are equally fast is bizarre.

 

[tmoney468]

Sorry why would they make two different drive speeds if they actually performed equally?

Surely a 7200 is faster, to say that they are equally fast is bizarre.

There are still some things that a 7200 RPM are faster at than a 5400, but it's increasingly the case where higher platter density 5400 drives have higher read and write speeds when compared to 7200 drives.

Another reason is that both drives are targeted towards different usage markets, so that's why we have different speeds. Personally I went from an older 7200 to a newer 320GB 5400 drive and my computer does seem faster for the most part. That and I have 185 GB free still

 

[Neil321]

My understanding is its down to the number of platters & data density. The 320GB has two
platters,the 7200 has three,therefor the less platters for a given capacity, the greater
the density = better performance

 

[ucfgrad93]

For me, the 5400 is fine. I really don't need the faster drive.