Macbook Hard Drive Upgrade

[maclovin']

I will be buying a new Macbook soon for University and I have a question about upgrading the hard drive. The purchase will most likely be done at my local Best Buy since my parents have a Best Buy card that will give them either 6 or 12 months same as cash, and they feel like it would be better to go that way than to go through Apple and get the $100 student discount and free iPod and have to pay now. So anyway, I want to get the high-end white Macbook and upgrade the hard drive to 250 gigs for music and movies so I was doing a little searching for a 250 gig HDD and the best that I can find for the best price is this one, but it is only a 5400rpm drive. So my questions are:
1. Is the difference in speed between 7200rpm and 5400rpm big enough to worry about?
2. If the difference is significant, where could I find a cheaper 7200rpm HDD that would ship to Canada?
3. Is all the hassle of finding, buying, and replacing worth it if at the current price of the HDD I found, I would only be saving $100 compared to the black Macbook?

Thanks for all the help!!

 

[logana]

The purchase will most likely be done at my local Best Buy since my parents have a Best Buy card that will give them either 6 or 12 months same as cash, and they feel like it would be better to go that way than to go through Apple and get the $100 student discount and free iPod and have to pay now.

The student discount is around $100 and the iPod Touch is around $299. I cannot see how 6 or possibly 12 months free credit is worth $400 !!!!

It makes more sense to buy direct from Apple and take advantage of the discounts and promotions.

A 250GB 5400rpm will be fine in your MacBook - 7200rpm discs are not cheap - yes they will speed up disk intensive tasks but nothing else. Go for a 320GB 5400rpm disk !!

 

[maclovin']

The student discount is around $100 and the iPod Touch is around $299. I cannot see how 6 or possibly 12 months free credit is worth $400 !!!!

It makes more sense to buy direct from Apple and take advantage of the discounts and promotions.

A 250GB 5400rpm will be fine in your MacBook - 7200rpm discs are not cheap - yes they will speed up disk intensive tasks but nothing else. Go for a 320GB 5400rpm disk !!

I know exactly what your saying, but it's not really my call as they are paying for more than half of the computer. What exactly do you mean by disk intensive?? I plan on doing alot of downloading of large files, and alot of DVD ripping and converting and all that fun stuff, so for stuff like this, will I be slowed down significantly? The main objective here is space, but if the already long task of ripping and converting a DVD is going to be made longer by going with a 5400rpm drive I'm not sure that's the way I want to go.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Also remind your parents that there is often an up front "administration fee" on those "No Interest" plans, of $20 - $40. Which is an effective interest rate of from over 4% to over 8% on $1000 on a 6 month pan.

Not to mention huge interest penalties if they are even 1 day late paying off the balance.

It just doesn't make economic sense. Fees + losing the discount + losing the credit to the iPod + having to deal with BestBuy.


The difference in performance between a 7200 RPM drive and a 5400 is marginal, not significant... many of your tasks are bound by other speed constraints like processor speed. Don't worry about it too much, go for the size instead.

From Barefeats.com Comparing the Western Digital 320 GB 5400 RPM to the Hitachi 7200 RPM 200 GB

CONCLUSION
The new large capacity 5K notebook drives are just as fast as the "limited" capacity 7K notebook drives. There's something to be said for "density."

 

[hookem12387]

I dont think you'll find a huge speed bump no matter what, but if youre doing a lot of video editing, gaming(you wont be on a macbook anyway), music editing, etc.. then you may notice a bump

 

[maclovin']

Also remind your parents that there is often an up front "administration fee" on those "No Interest" plans, of $20 - $40. Which is an effective interest rate of from over 4% to over 8% on $1000 on a 6 month pan.

Not to mention huge interest penalties if they are even 1 day late paying off the balance.

It just doesn't make economic sense. Fees + losing the discount + losing the credit to the iPod + having to deal with BestBuy.

Your preaching to the choir man.

I dont think you'll find a huge speed bump no matter what, but if youre doing a lot of video editing, gaming(you wont be on a macbook anyway), music editing, etc.. then you may notice a bump

Ya no gaming or video editing, maybe slideshows...but nothing extravagant, like I said before the heaviest things I'll be doing will be video conversion.

So now that all of that is out of the way, is there a better spot than TigerDirect for buying a notebook HDD. $110 is pretty good, but obviously the cheaper the better.

 

[logana]

I know exactly what your saying, but it's not really my call as they are paying for more than half of the computer. What exactly do you mean by disk intensive?? I plan on doing alot of downloading of large files, and alot of DVD ripping and converting and all that fun stuff, so for stuff like this, will I be slowed down significantly? The main objective here is space, but if the already long task of ripping and converting a DVD is going to be made longer by going with a 5400rpm drive I'm not sure that's the way I want to go.

Downloading large files will be limited by your internet connection speed and hard disk speed largely irrelevant.

Ripping dvd's is limited by the speed-crippling of dvd drive speeds so 7200rpm v 5400rpm won't make any difference to the rip speed.

Processing the dvd's will be processor intensive and I don't think you will see much difference between the two speeds.

 

[maclovin']

Downloading large files will be limited by your internet connection speed and hard disk speed largely irrelevant.

Ripping dvd's is limited by the speed-crippling of dvd drive speeds so 7200rpm v 5400rpm won't make any difference to the rip speed.

Processing the dvd's will be processor intensive and I don't think you will see much difference between the two speeds.

OK, sounds good, I'll probably go with a 250 or 320GB 5400rpm HDD then, thanks for the help guys.

 

[NovemberMike]

Also, high density drives (read: higher capacity) have better performance than lower density drives, so for example, the 320gb 5200rpm drives are often faster than the 160-250gb 7200rpm drives.

 

[Mpulsive81]

this is making me wanna "downgrade" off of my 7200 160gb hdd to a larger 5400 320gb hdd

 

[sikamikanico816]

Also, high density drives (read: higher capacity) have better performance than lower density drives, so for example, the 320gb 5200rpm drives are often faster than the 160-250gb 7200rpm drives.

Im will be doing music production with Logic Pro. Ill need plenty of memory. Im thinking about gettin a 320 gb 7200rpm disk. But whats this "high density" situation about? Who makes these? I think ill need the best of the best.