Thinkpads Forum

It seems if I want a faster HD, my main choices are Hitachi 200gb/7200, Samsung (or WD or Toshiba) 320gb/5400 or an SSD
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/18/ ... page8.html

I can't find any 64gb SSDs at anything resembling a sane price. The 320/5400 appear to be the fastest or close to it for mechanical drives, with the added attraction of good noise, power, etc.

Am I missing something?

I currently have a Hitachi 120/5400. Would the 320/5400 be noticeably faster in day-to-day use?

well yeah i would say so... because of the improvements since the drive you had came out plus just the actual density of the platters. 1 revolution of your drive might only scoop up say 60MB while for the 320GB (160GB per platter) would scoop up maybe 200MB using the same 1 revolution. A lot more data is packed onto the same size platter so with the drive spinning at the same speed it would take less time to read a file than the 120GB.

Samsung recently announced its Spinpoint MP2 high performance HD: 7200 rpm, 250 GB. And Hitachi, which traditionally has led the laptop HD market, just began shipping a 320 GB 5400 rpm Travelstar 5K320 HD to OEMs, so you may want to wait for the benchmarks for those to come out before taking the plunge. I know the some of the rated specs for the 5K320 are much better than the Spinpoint 320 GB 5400 rpm: lower access times for the 5K320 (vs. average-at-best for the Spinpoint M6 320 GB) and much lower energy consumption for the Hitachi 5K320 as well. And I'm betting Hitachi will be announcing a higher capacity/better performance 7200 rpm Travelstar as well (7K250?).