Huge difference in speed from 5400 to 7200 rpm drive? T42

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muffd · #1 Post by **muffd** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 10:34 am

I've got a Western Digital 120gb 5400 rpm drive right now and got ahold of a brand new Seagate ST980825A 7200 rpm drive. It's only 80gb though and I could use the extra storage space but if I will lose alot of performance, I don't know if it's worth it.

I mainly use my T42 for Photoshop, word processing and light coding.

Should I just go with the seagate and keep the 120gb for extra storage in my docking station or just keep the 120gb drive?

Thanks for your input.

#2 Post by **schen** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 12:01 pm

That depends; I know that sounds like a cop-out. I've used both 5400 & 7200 in the same machine was primary drives and for what I did with them, there wasn't a lot of difference. Of course, what I do on my notebook is pretty light; meaning MS Office, web surfing, email and occasionally some Photoshop Elements work. Mostly on a T30 and now a T41 where (anecdotally), there wasn't a lot of change. But, none of those thing required a lot of fetching.

If you have a fair amount of RAM, meaning 1Gb or more, than I'd say you're probably fine with the bigger drive. Which is to say that you'll be more likely to appreciate the space than to be frustrated with the platter speed difference. On top of that, the data theoretically would be packed closer together given the difference in areal density (as long as you keep the drive fairly fragmentation free).

Of course, all that is just opinion and I don't have empirical evidence to back that up. I do know that the just from 4200 to 5400 seemed huge though.

Marc_G · #3 Post by **Marc_G** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 12:12 pm

To add my own experiences, on another thread here I mentioned I swapped out a 7200 RPM 100GB drive for a 5400 RPM 250GB drive. There was no big difference plus or minus in effective speed for my typical uses (boot up, MS office, web surfing, light graphics, Lotus Notes, etc..). Some very disk-intensive tasks did seem a bit slower but nothing that worries me. The extra space meant I could decompress all files, and there's no problem defragging, so overall my system is running more efficiently.

Basically, RPM is one factor in speed, and another factor is the data density on the disk platters. Higher GB drives have higher density which increases effective speed.

There are lots of other factors too. I say go with the bigger drive.

Marc

#4 Post by **richk** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 12:38 pm

At some point, I did a test with a T42p I was using at the time. I work on machines so I always have drives around. At the time, I was using a 5400RPM drive and was considering moving to a 7200RPM drive. I cloned the disk twice (4200RPM and 7200RPM) so I had 3 drives with the same data and all 3 were just defragmented. There was a dramatic difference i boot time. The time was almost exactly inversely proportional to the drive speed, but copying large files was not affected much. When I thought about it, it made sense to me. During boot-up, you read lots of little files, so you are waiting for the drive to spin to the sector with the start of the file. (latency time) When you copy files, you are limited by the controller speed and the disk's cache helps get the "next" data ready. Since then, I have always tried to use the fasted drive I could get, because my primary machine is my desktop and I use the laptop for short periods, so I boot up a lot.

sjthinkpader · #5 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:38 pm

richk wrote:At some point, I did a test with a T42p I was using at the time. I work on machines so I always have drives around. At the time, I was using a 5400RPM drive and was considering moving to a 7200RPM drive. I cloned the disk twice (4200RPM and 7200RPM) so I had 3 drives with the same data and all 3 were just defragmented. There was a dramatic difference i boot time. The time was almost exactly inversely proportional to the drive speed, but copying large files was not affected much. When I thought about it, it made sense to me. During boot-up, you read lots of little files, so you are waiting for the drive to spin to the sector with the start of the file. (latency time) When you copy files, you are limited by the controller speed and the disk's cache helps get the "next" data ready. Since then, I have always tried to use the fasted drive I could get, because my primary machine is my desktop and I use the laptop for short periods, so I boot up a lot.

Looking at the Hitachi datasheets for 7K100 and 5K500, latency are rated 4.2ms and 5.5ms (milli-second). 1.3ms is a long time since avg seek is only 11ms and 12ms respectively.

But difference in rotations latency is actually very small. Assuming the data on average is located half rotation from the start of index.

((1/5400)-(1/7200))/2=24 micro-second

So something else is causing the 7K100 to be 1.3 milli-second faster than 5K500 and not the rotational speed. May be it needs a few rotations to find the start index?

Specter · #6 Post by **Specter** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 4:58 am

No, 5400 and 7200 are revolutions per minute(!), so you would have to multiply your figure by 60 to get seconds. Doing this you get a difference for half a revolution of approximately 1.4 ms.

vadarfone · #7 Post by **vadarfone** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 6:07 am

Hey

Yeah, I have just installed a 7200rpm in my T42.

I am not sure about the maths involved, but everything feels a lot faster and slicker (like I had wanted!)

I do a lot of audio work with my T42 and the upgrade has made streaming samples and stuff a lot lot faster.

You cant lose out from installing something faster.

If you are planning to clone your 5400 drive, use Acronis software. Worked perfectly for me and found the hidden UBM partition that other cloning software could not.

#8 Post by **underclocker** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 7:42 am

It's not a simple answer. From my personal, non scientific testing, the newest laptop 5400rpm drives perform as well as the first generation 7200rpm drives.

I'd say the newest 5400rpm drives are very fast and great upgrade options. Plus, it's really tough to find a 7200rpm IDE laptop drive and 5400rpm drives are available in much higer capacities than offered in the 7200rpm lines.

Regarding the OP's question, I think that particualr Seagate(7200rpm) would be a better choice than that particular Western Digital (5400rpm).

vadarfone · #9 Post by **vadarfone** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 8:17 am

Yeah, I was wondering about the difference between my 3 year old 7200rpm drive and a new 5400rpm job

The drive I replaced was about 3 years old, so I saw benefits, although I am not sure how much I would have noticed if my T42 was new.

Jalit · #10 Post by **Jalit** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 9:25 am

I have a Western Digital 250GB 5400 RPM drive in my Thinkpad and it seems to perform pretty close to my 75GB Seagate 7200RPM in my desktop computer.

sjthinkpader · #11 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:08 am

Specter wrote:No, 5400 and 7200 are revolutions per minute(!), so you would have to multiply your figure by 60 to get seconds. Doing this you get a difference for half a revolution of approximately 1.4 ms.

Thank you, yes, 1.4 milli-second difference by calculation. Almost same as datsheets' 1.3 milli-second difference. I am using an E7K60 now. This is a server drive but worked fine in my A31 for several years.

muffd · #12 Post by **muffd** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:38 pm

Hi everyone,
Thank you for all the input. I installed this drive last night but am now debating if i want to keep it. I can't store my mp3's on here like I want which is starting to bother me.

rbena · #13 Post by **rbena** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 7:51 pm

Often is a question of speed vs storage size. I would rather have all the files I need, rather than slightly faster speed. But others require the speed - especially for demanding apps.

alfio · #14 Post by **alfio** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:31 pm

i dunno about a T42 but i recently upgraded the HD on my 600X from 5400 to 7200 rpm and it makes a huge difference all around, not just boot time. can you used the 5400 via ultrabay? just a thought

alfio

muffd · #15 Post by **muffd** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:34 pm

I have an ultrabay in my docking station but couldn't get it to work for some reason. IBM is sending me the Ultra Slim bay caddy that goes where my cd-rw drive goes. I think what I might do is run the 80gb as my primary drive and 250gb as my storage drive.

Huge difference in speed from 5400 to 7200 rpm drive? T42

Huge difference in speed from 5400 to 7200 rpm drive? T42

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