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Ordering 15'' Macbook Pro - 5400 or 7200 rpm?

zRedbullz

zRedbullz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2006
104
1
UK
Hello,

For not much extra (price wise), I can opt for the 7200 rpm hardrive.

Is it worth the upgrade? How much does the 7200 rpm drive affect battery life compared with 5200 rpm in the latest Macbook Pros?

I've heard manufacturers say the difference between the two doesn't in any way affect battery life.

Any advise would be much appreciated

Thank you very much
 
Hey it wont affect battery life much if any, the macbooks when they run off battery automatically adjust the performance of the machine based on the demands of the system, so if you are just doing piddly stuff the hard drive is barely spinning but if you crank it up it will consume more, saying that being its a faster hard drive it will complete tasks faster and boot your computer faster.
 
Go with the 7200 RPM drive. You'll see the performance boost in read/write times if you're doing any heavy-duty data transferring or manipulation. As TopHatPlus said, the difference in battery-life is negligible and the hard drive rotational speed automatically adjusts to what the user is doing.

As for the longevity of the drive, the 7200 RPM drives should theoretically die before their 5400 RPM counterparts, but I've had 7200RPM drives that were manufactured 4 years ago that are still working away and I haven't had any problems. With hard drives, the longevity really just depends on the luck of the draw.
 
You could always do an aftermarket SSD too. That's where the real speed is!
 
I'm using a WD Scorpio Black (320GB 7200rpm) in my MBP 4,1, and the battery went from ~4 hours to ~3 (from the stock 200GB 5400rpm). different models have different power requirements, though, so maybe the Scorpio is just power-hungry.

a 500GB 5400rpm drive may be faster than a 320GB 7200rpm drive, depending on how much space you use (same for a 1TB vs 500GB drive, or any bigger vs smaller). so get space first, speed second.
 
Just add it, its $50 extra and when you decide to upgrade you have a great HDD for an external case like the OWC On-The-Go Pro which will be great for time machine and other stuff because you can get a firewire case.
 
apple products/components cost 100$ then they should. that being said get the lowest possible ram and hdd then buy 1 separately. i bought a 256SSD from newegg and saved 150$
 
Thank you for your replies. Very helpful.

I'm not really in the market to run a laptop with SSD. SSD's are very pricey at the moment, even aftermarket, so I think it would be sensible to stick with HDD until SSD's are little more affordable (with more space). Obviously I don't really need to worry too much about my HDD expiring as I'm sure I'll upgrade to SSD before that happens.

I'm favouring 7200 rpm but battery life is still very important to me. I'm jumping up from a 17'' Powerbook 1.67 G4. I guess 7200 will be handy if I run bootcamp/windows.
 
I have a 320 gig scorpio black in my machine, and I haven't noticed a change in battery life at all, so it doesn't really change anything there
 
I would get the 5400rpm drive and spend the extra money saved on a faster hard drive if you need it later. That way you can have your speed and have a spare hard drive to put inside an enclosure or something
 
i suggest just getting the plain 5400 drive and buying a momentus XT aftermarket. this is THE fastest laptop hard drive available. I would get this. if you want something faster, get a SSD in like 2011 because prices are supposed to come down next year because intel is using a new manufacturing process which makes the cost lower.
 
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