5400rpm hdd vs. 7200rpm hdd in a laptop

blacktop89

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I have a Dell 700m laptop. It has 1gb RAM, Pentium M 1.7Ghz processor, and a 60gb hdd (5400rpm). My average battery life is right at 5hrs. I am looking into replacing the hdd for a faster one (7200rpm). My question is, will getting a faster hdd greatly reduce battery life? Is it worth the performance gain? Thanks for your input.
 
7200RPM is alot faster than a 5400RPM drive, and you'll probably notice the difference I believe.

Though wondering how much the battery life wil be affected is unknown to me, but it sure will affect it in some way or other.
I'd guess at about 20-30 mins of power time loss.
 
blacktop89 said:
Thanks Kage. Do you think the performance gain would be worth the loss of battery life?

that really depends. If u use it alot at home or some other place where u can recharge it at any time then I think it's worth upgrading. Though then again there ain't manny places where it's impossible to recharge it.
 
Yeah thats true, and in terms of programs loading and working more efficently, it probably is worth it, yes.

If you wanted, you could buy a USB 2.0 drives (check your ports are 2,0 for faster access) and get a 7200RPM drive so you can unplug it, etc when you want.
It'd probably also be made to draw less power.
 
Also depends on what you do with it, if you are gamming alot you should but if you just use it for word proccessing, internet and movies on cd it really wont matter and make a difference so i would just stay with the 5400 rpm also look to see how much cache they each have.
 
Hitachi's 5,400rpm drives have said to match the performance of some of the slower 7,200rpm drives, and with 7,200rpm notebook drives costing quite a bit, I'd say stick with your 5,400rpm one.

According to Hitachi's information, there is no difference in power consumption between 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm drives, or it is neglidgible at least. 7,200rpm drives do make a little less noise and run a bit hotter, but it's not by a considerable margin.
 
7200RPM is way faster, but the trade off is in battery life, sound and heat.
 
If you travel a lot I would stick with 5200...then again you COULD just bring your power brick and cords with you, and maybe if you have a car adapter charger you can bring that as well. If you DON'T and it's most likely you won't then...


Stick with the 5200 :D
 
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