A smaller hard drive, in GB, is more money. The 250 GB is cheaper than the 200 GB because of the speed (7200 instead of 5400). However, how does the speed factor into performance? To be honest, I think I would rather have 250 GB.. but i dont know the advantages of a faster hard drive... I just want more space...
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why is a smaller HD more money?
- Thread starter lbjandai
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If you just want more space get the bigger drive! The performance differential will not be that huge anyway 
Some people will tell you otherwise but I always see a speed increase when I upgrade my factory 5400 laptop drives to 7200 drives. My mac I ordred with a 7200 and it runs amazing.
50 GB is no longer that much space. Is suppose you get it by increasing the platter (disk) radius, compacting the data, or adding another platter, all of which sound pretty cheap. But to increase the speed, you probably need a better motor and bearings, which must cost a lot.
The main advantage of more speed is that it takes less time to access the disk. The advantage of this becomes evident when you are loading large applications, reading large files, or copying large files from place to place. And I'm not sure how fast USB has gotten, but it may also decrease the time it takes to copy/move files between flash or other external devices and the computer. If you plan to be working with large files or doing a lot of interacting with the disk, you probably want higher speed. In my opinion, it's not worth it.
The main advantage of more speed is that it takes less time to access the disk. The advantage of this becomes evident when you are loading large applications, reading large files, or copying large files from place to place. And I'm not sure how fast USB has gotten, but it may also decrease the time it takes to copy/move files between flash or other external devices and the computer. If you plan to be working with large files or doing a lot of interacting with the disk, you probably want higher speed. In my opinion, it's not worth it.
with the 7200 rpm you will get faster boot times, faster load times. Anything related to disk activity. As currently the HD is the slowest piece in modern day computers. (except the DVD drives that is)
No, the 200GB drive is 200GB. It is approximately a 186GiB drive.
And the 250GB drive is 250GB. It is approximately a 232GiB drive.