7,200 RPM Notebook Hard Drive?

[silky]

I have a Compaq laptop with an Athlon 2600 CPU and 40GB hard drive which I believe is 4,200 RPM drive. Has anyone installed the new Hitachi 60GB 7,200 RPM hard drive in their laptop? I am wondering if it will speed up the boot time and apps. Thanks for your replies.

 

[selene]

my friend has it in his ibm thinkpad, he tells me it's super fast! I wanted to get one but price is still around 195-250.. too rich for my blood

 

[bacillus]

if you do more than just writing letters & internet browsing then you'll see a great increase in performance.

 

[Sunner]

A guy here at the office got one for his HPaq nx7000, and from what he's told me there's a big difference between the Travelstar 7K60.

 

[Regs]

Wow, they make 72's for notebooks? For sure then. The stock hard drives on some of these laps tops, even some new, are slow. There would be a major difference with a faster hard drive. If its dependable and affordable, you shouldn't have to think twice.

 

[Knightlife]

My T20: 4200RPM HDD. Slowwwwwwww...
My M355 (Voodoo): 7200RPM HDD. Fast, acts just like my desktop. It's beautiful...

 

[sathyan]

It should feel much faster.
Does anyone know of the impact on battery life?

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: sathyan
It should feel much faster.
Does anyone know of the impact on battery life?

The impact is there, but it is minimal when you consider the time gained with the performance increase.

 

[Pariah]

Here's a brief review of the Hitachi drive. Someone else I can't remember reviewed the drive, and there was practically no effect on battery life vs 5400RPM drives.

The Revolt of the Munchkins: 2.5" 5,400 and 7,200 rpm Hard Drives

Here's a much more indepth review:

Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 HDD: 7,200rpm Achieved!

 

[Amused]

I have one in my T41p and just put one in my R40.

I did some informal comparisons of how the R40 "felt" before and after the upgrade and there was a MAJOR difference in responsiveness with the 7200RPM drive. Windows load time was signifigantly reduced and opening and closing programs was MUCH faster.

The power hit is very small, and more than negated by the time saved waiting on the HDD to do it's thing. My R40 still gets more than 5 hours on battery. (CPU set to adaptive and all power savings on)

In short, it made a sluggish R40 feel like a quick T41p in day to day HDD intensive tasks. People don't realize how much a HDD affects performance and can make a computer feel sluggish, or snappy.

BTW, according to SANDRA 2004 SP1, this drive SCREAMS and holds it's own among the fastest 7200 RPM drives out there.

 

[overclock]

I put a Hitachi 7k60 in my HP 4560. It replaced a 40gb Seagate Momentus 5400 rpm. I noticed a difference in Windoze load times and program load times. It is faster, noticeably. Newegg had it for $217. I put the Seagate in an external usb/firewire enclosure. Too much storage.

 

[eelw]

Originally posted by: Amused
People don't realize how much a HDD affects performance and can make a computer feel sluggish, or snappy.

This is why I wish computer hardware and software manufacturers would spend more time improving things other than CPUs and graphic adapters. Imagine if solid state memory were used in place of hard drives for our primary storage device. We would be able to boot our computers almost instantaneously.

 

[JBT]

I am considering getting a 7200 drive. when I got my laptop I knew I wasn't going to be able to deal with 4200 rpm with out wanting to kill my self/someone else. So I went with a 5400 cause thats as fast as they offered. Now that I have my 74 gig Raptor I hate leaving it to use my notebook I really want to upgrade but im broke now hehe. oh well in a couple months maybe?

 

[addragyn]

Yes it will make a big difference.

You will notice at most a few minutes coming off the battery time.

Hitchi/IBM makes the fastest. quietest 2.5" drves out IMO. Latest series is 5k80 and 7k60. I just bought a 60 gigger in both speeds. Much quieter than the 4200rpm Hitachis they replaced.

Stick your old drive in a 1394/USB external case. You'll be suprised how useful that little guy will be.

 

[GnomeCop]

I have one in my Voodoo M:355 and it is fast, I dont think I cant go back to 5400.
My first choice for a 5400 rpm drive would be a seagate momentus with 8mb cache though.

 

[vegetation]

Looking to get one myself as my current drive is getting really loud, very annoying. Will there be more 7200rpm drives in the near future by other manufacturesr leading to rapid price drops?