Thinkpads Forum

hi there!

i know that there are a few posts about hardisk replacements for x60, however i cant seem to find a post that discusses the pros/cons of hitachi 7k100 vs. momentus 7200.

i will be purchasing one of these disks for my new x60 (which will come with 60gb @ 5400). i was wondering if owners of one (or both) of the above could offer some subjective comments on - compared to either each other or others:

1. durability
2. power consumption
3. temperature that the drives run at
4. noise level

the objective facts are here if anyone is interested:
Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 100GB S150 8M
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB S150

according to the links above they are pretty much on par with each other:

a. hitachi being slightly fast (seek time by 0.5ms)
b. hitachi being more durable (shock tolerance, 50g operating, 200g when powered down)
c. seagate being slightly quieter (by 1db)

though from experience i'd take these facts with a pinch of salt - especially that from experience the hitachi drives are way hotter and noisier than my western digital drives (even though according to specs they are supposed to be similar).

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if having a 5400rpm drive means substantially better durability, less power compsumption and noise then i'd be happy to go for a 120gb version of either one.

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are there any compatibility issues with either of the above?

thanks for reading!
tian

according to the review on notebookreviews they are pretty much the same for the PATA versions - i'm assuming that the SATA versions arnt going to be too different

i think i'm going to go for the hitachi one after all.

tian wrote:the objective facts are here if anyone is interested:

I'm not sure I'd call the manufacturer data sheets "objective."

You can look at the different tests of the drives:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25 ... &chart=144

This article has more of a description of the drive performance:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/11/ ... d_furious/

thanks for those links!

whoa... it seems that the 7200rpm drives are pretty power greedy - twice the wattage of the 5400rpms. this is making me think twice about the performance/battery compromise.

I recently purchased this drive from NewEgg for my new X60s. Great price and has gotten great reviews.

yep - i'll personally vouch for the western digital drive. i used the very same one in my old dell x300 when it suffered a drop - though unfortunatly it's a 5400rpm. quiet as a mouse and never got very hot even after a night's bittorrenting .

i'm half thinking of waiting until perpendicular drives becomes more common as the 7200rpms seems to be a lot more power hungry than the 5400s.

I have one of the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB SATA drives, and don't like it -- in fact it's sitting unused in a drawer, rather than in a computer being used. The 'whooshing' sound of the platters at 7200rpm are simply too loud for my liking.

I much prefer the Hitachi 60GB 5400rpm drive that came with my X60s.

If low noise is a priority for you, check out www.silentpcreview.com -- they have a section on recommended hard disks. General reports seem to be that Samsung and WD are the go for low noise, and to reduce the 'whoosh' sound as much as possible, try and find a single-platter disk (which unfortunately limits storage capacity).

I have the Hitachi 60GB in my X60s and I thought that was noisy enough.

Hitachi 80gb 5400rpm yeah its hell noisy already lol

my x60 is due to arrive any moment now

i ordered an 7k100 and fitted it in my housemate's laptop (x60 and t60), and i have to say: it's not that much louder! (i will probably retract this post when i try installing windows xp later on today )

I currently running a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB SATA on my X60s
It's much faster and feel a little bit quite than my old 7k100 100g
Transmission Rate is 60mb/s(7200.2) compare to 50mb/s(7k100)

i managed to set up my x60 last night. first thing i did after taking it out of the package was to slot in an extra gb ram and swap the 5.2k with the 7.2k (hitachi 7.2k 100g)... and boy is it zippy

poky: where did you get the perpendicular drive from?! (not that i'll be upgrading for a while yet, if i do it will be to a ssd in a couple of years time)

(and as predicted, yes, i do retract that statement about the noise, it does "click" noisily but in a comforting kinda way )

can anyone make a ballpark approximation of what kind of impact a 7200rpm hdd vs. a 5400rpm hdd would have on battery usage for an average user in average conditions? just looking to get a feel for the basic difference in a real-world setting... i realize there's no "average user", etc. it looks that the power consumption in either idle or max. is about twice that of a 5400rpm hdd. what might that mean in terms of battery time?

cheeebs wrote:can anyone make a ballpark approximation of what kind of impact a 7200rpm hdd vs. a 5400rpm hdd would have on battery usage for an average user in average conditions?

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25 ... &chart=157

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25 ... &chart=156

Just look at the watt hours of your battery to get an idea of the impact of the difference.

On my T60 with 6 cell battery, I got about 2:50min with the stock 100GB 5K100 HDD while with the 100GB 7200.1 HDD the battery life shrunk to 2:20min. 7200rpm is noticably hotter than 5400rpm BTW.

rek wrote:I have one of the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB SATA drives, and don't like it -- in fact it's sitting unused in a drawer, rather than in a computer being used. The 'whooshing' sound of the platters at 7200rpm are simply too loud for my liking.

I much prefer the Hitachi 60GB 5400rpm drive that came with my X60s.

If low noise is a priority for you, check out www.silentpcreview.com -- they have a section on recommended hard disks. General reports seem to be that Samsung and WD are the go for low noise, and to reduce the 'whoosh' sound as much as possible, try and find a single-platter disk (which unfortunately limits storage capacity).

Do you want to sell that guy?

I have a 5400 40 gig, 5400 60 gig, and a 7200 100 gig, all Seagate and I love them. I went with the Seagate because I have had 2 Travelstar 4200 40 gig drives go down, while my good friend has had 1 5400 (or 5200) Travelstar 60 gig that's about to die last I checked. I'm not saying the 7k100s are bad, it was just enough to keep me away from them. The Seagate has a GREAT warantee. I've been using all but the 100 gig for over a year and the 100 for around 8 or 9 months. My friend bought the hitachi travelstar 7k100 and it's been working fine for him for about a year.

proaudioguy wrote:

rek wrote:I have one of the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB SATA drives, and don't like it -- in fact it's sitting unused in a drawer, rather than in a computer being used. The 'whooshing' sound of the platters at 7200rpm are simply too loud for my liking.

Do you want to sell that guy?

I ended up finding a buyer for it shortly after I posted that, sorry