Thinkpads Forum

I have currently, the 5400RPM WD Scorpio in my laptop, and it's blazing fast, (I think it's even faster than my 200GB Hitachi 7200RPM drive). Anyways, I'm looking at the 320GB drives now and they are freakin' CHEAP. 99$ for the 7200RPM one... the question is, will this be much faster, will it be worth it? I'm running 64 bit Linux and the hard drive does get taxed when I am running GNS3 and/or VMWare Workstation.

I'm also wondering, if it's worth waiting for an SSD to come down in price, as they're still fairly costly.

Any recommendations from people who've used these drives?

Thanks in advance!

I, too was pleasantly surprised at how much faster my system runs with the Scorpio 5400 RPM drive after replacing the 5400 RPM Travelstar. Now that's a great improvement! I also have a 7200 RPM Travelstar and I don't think it's any faster than the Scorpio at 5400 RPM. How'd they do that? !!!

The scorpio blue is a great combination of power consumtion and speed. While consuming a decent amt. less power than the scorpio black and other 7200 rpm laptop drive, it still maintains good speed.

I would definitely recommend the 500gb 5200RPM WD Scorpio blue, or the 400gb scorpio blue which should be the same, just a bit smaller capacity platters.

Here is a great HD comparison from toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2-5- ... n,684.html Basically select the current drives from newegg that are interesting and on that list, and compare them. I chose the 3 500gb 5400 rpm drives and all the 320 gb 7200 rpm drives, the highest capacity drives of each class. I'd also put the 400gb WD scorpio on the comparison just to make sure it is the same as the 500gb version because it can be had for pretty decently cheaper.

Then start removing the worste of each, like ones that take way way more power than the others and such and see what you are left with.

GL

Cunha wrote:Here is a great HD comparison from toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2-5- ... n,684.html

Great link! Thanks!

EDIT: I compared the numbers with the benchmarks I have done on my three HDs (Seagate 7200.3, Hitachi 7K200 and Toshiba MK1234GSX) and they all agree... unlike the numbers provided by some vendors... I´m waiting for 300+ GB HDDs with better access times than the current ones.

BuzzBuzzard wrote:I, too was pleasantly surprised at how much faster my system runs with the Scorpio 5400 RPM drive after replacing the 5400 RPM Travelstar. Now that's a great improvement!

The latest generation of 7200 rpm drives is also noticeably faster than the earlier 7200 rpm drive, so comparing an older 7200 rpm drive with a newer 5400 rpm drive only tells you that 2.5" HDD technology in general has improved!

Current 7200 rpm drives still noticeably out perform current 5400 rpm drives.

Cheers,

Bill B.

bill bolton wrote: The latest generation of 7200 rpm drives is also noticeably faster than the earlier 7200 rpm drive, so comparing an older 7200 rpm drive with a newer 5400 rpm drive only tells you that 2.5" HDD technology in general has improved!

Current 7200 rpm drives still noticeably out perform current 5400 rpm drives.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Is that chart linked above out of date then?

I was looking at purchasing a 7200RPM 320GB drive for the primary use\applications, and tossing a 500GB 5400RPM drive in the ultrabay for multimedia storage... but it sure looks like the scorpio blue 500GB pretty much dominates the field?

*edit*

Ok, looking further, it was mainly that the scorpio blue dominated the hitachis I was looking at.

Anyone have some idea why the seagate drive seems to have better benchmarks than any of the other 360GB 7200RPM drives on the individual performance (read, write, power consumption) scores, but the amalgamated (database, webserver, et al) scores are significantly lower?

Wow, I'm kinda surprised, actually, my experience was desktop HDDs was mainly that the WD\Seagate\Hitachi race was pretty much even... Different story with notebooks, I suppose... eeking out every last iota of performance from limited resources.

P.S. Bill, your forum rule which limits quote nesting is rather irritating.

enneract wrote:P.S. Bill, your forum rule which limits quote nesting is rather irritating.

So are members who quote multiple replies without thinking.

JaneL wrote:
So are members who quote multiple replies without thinking.

Sorry, this is just the first forum I have seen which nested replies were not the SOP. Just struck me as odd~