Thinkpads Forum

I'm thinking of upgrading my X61 to a bigger harddirive. Now consider between this 2 drives (200GB7k2 and 250GB 5k4) from either Hitachi or Western Digital. Pls advise which one I should go for? Will the performance of the 7k2 drive outstanding?

I haven't used a 7200 RPM drive in my Thinkpad, but I've read several posts in the forum that say you do get a noticeable performance increase over a 5400 RPM drive.

If cost is not a limitation, I would go for the 7K200.

phongdt wrote:Will the performance of the 7k2 drive outstanding?

Yep! That what it says in all the reviews.

I went with the 5400rpm and 250GB of space. Don't ask me why...

I don't even need the space...

Not too on topic, but I bought my machine a 100G 7K100 disk, and replaced it with a Hitachi 200G 7K200 last week. Performance testing under Linux:

## 7K100
/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 140 MB in 3.01 seconds = 46.51 MB/sec

## 7K200
/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 198 MB in 3.02 seconds = 65.64 MB/sec

This is not a very good benchmark but on the surface the 7K200 is 44% faster at bursting. Its specification says it uses less power, and in my opinion seems quieter and puts out less heat.

I like 200GB7k2

IMHO, X6x is designed for portability and long battery life, not for high CPU or HDD intensive performance. You may not notice speech difference except some booting seconds. Thus, you'd better go for 250GB 5k4 as less energy consume.

Anyone go with the Hitachi orScorpio?

I mightget the Hitachi 250GB but there are no reviews on newegg

casperkid wrote: Thus, you'd better go for 250GB 5k4 as less energy consume.

Isn't the power consumption about the same?!

CRSO wrote:Anyone go with the Hitachi orScorpio?

I mightget the Hitachi 250GB but there are no reviews on newegg

I went with the 250GB Scorpio... and it's great, except it has a strange "clicking" noise which, if you search Google, seems to affect others too. WD released a firmware update when this affected older Scorpio disks (2005) but now there's nothing. It's a quiet click that happens every 10-20 seconds, mainly when the box is idling.

Great disk, nice size etc - but annoying click.

A 7200 RPM drive will use 5-10% more battery life (20 min or so). Personally, the extra speed is worth the battery life.

You'd also notice this difference when working on the computer (i.e. when you want it to be fast); power consumption when the drive is not spinning is off. On flight's I watch DVDs off a flash memory USB stick and I have no problem watching 4-5 hrs of video.

When i connect external USB Flash drive, my battery drains faster then when not using flash drive... I haven't tested watching movies though. I watch movies very seldom anyway.

i would think the 7200RPM would be better if you don't need the extra storage space.