Hitachi 100GB 5400 or 7200? Big difference?

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CRSO · #1 Post by **CRSO** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:30 pm

I know the 7200 drives are faster but here's my dilemma:

I bought the 5400 hitachi for $99.00 without knowing they had a 7200 100GB. I have it installed and running well. I wanted to know if it was that much of a difference to get the 7200.

I have a T43 15'', 1.6Ghz, ATI Card and 1G of ram and I'm fairly happy with the performance. Should I bother?

#2 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:40 pm

Lots of people here (including me) swear by the Hitachi 7K100 drives.

But ... if you have already bought, received and installed the 5400 rpm drive, and are pretty happy with the performance, I'd say that it's probably not worth the hassle to switch to 7200 rpm.

CRSO · #3 Post by **CRSO** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:09 pm

Yeah, i'm pretty happy with it. I'm a power user and always have a lot going on that takes up a lot of RAM and processing power.

The only lag I notice is when I am playing Doom 3 and it's very rare anyway. I don't think a 7200 spindle speed will help that.

But I still wonder what the difference will be...

pianowizard · #4 Post by **pianowizard** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:28 am

CRSO wrote:But I still wonder what the difference will be...

See this chart.

CRSO · #5 Post by **CRSO** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:10 am

Wow, great chart and it helps a lot...

What a difference on th epower consumption difference at idle and at max.

Grim · #6 Post by **Grim** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:07 am

interesting chart. very suprised by the difference in performance betwen two identical drives comparing sata v ide

i always thought the slow part of drives was the data reading and the heads flying around, not the transfer to the pc. looks like the hardware inside has finally caught up with the communications for speed.

the 7k100 has huge differences between the two

#7 Post by **tomh009** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:31 am

I take those results with a very large grain of salt as they show the PATA 7K100 far below the PATA 5400 rpm drives and on par with the PATA 4200 rpm drive. I think even Pianowizard will agree that the PATA 7K100 is significantly faster than a 4200 rpm drive ...

Here is another (smaller) benchmark test that shows what I think are more realistic results:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... 200_9.html

Brendon · #8 Post by **Brendon** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:05 pm

I just went from the 5K100 to 7K100 in my T43. There is definitely a significant difference. Boot up is quite a bit quicker and the laptop as a whole is more responsive.
Now I just need to get the IBM firmware on it to get rid of the warning during POST

Hitachi 100GB 5400 or 7200? Big difference?

Hitachi 100GB 5400 or 7200? Big difference?

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