Which would you use?

[jolycu]

I am fixing up an older laptop for a friend and I have these two hard drives on hand:

Western Digital Scorpio Black WD1600BEKT 160GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s

OR

Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s

Which would you use? Does the larger size of the Seagate offset the faster speed-larger cache of the WD? In real-world use, would the differences be noticable?

The most strenuous use will be converting video and ripping audio. Then just mostly internet and some word processing.

Your thoughts and opinons are welcomed.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Which would you use? Does the larger size of the Seagate offset the faster speed-larger cache of the WD?

Heh. That depends on whether you need the extra capacity or not. Only you can answer that -- we don't know your requirements.

It's sort of like a two-seater sports car versus a family sedan. If you have kids, it doesn't really matter how cool the sports car is, there's nowhere to put a car seat.

 

[jolycu]

I don't think storage would be that much of an issue because we can always move stuff to an external drive. Would just have to do it sooner with the smaller drive . I guess my main question is would the difference in speed/cache really be that noticable? I mean, if encoding a video takes 50 minutes with the 7200/16 mb cache drive and 55 minutes with the 5400/8 mb cache drive, that's insignificant to me. But if the difference was 50 minutes compared to 90, that would really be a significant difference! I hope I'm explaining myself clearly enough.

 

[corkyg]

Encoding video speed depends more on the CPU and memory than the HDD. Anyhow, I would opt for the 160GB/7200 for my OS. I would configure the 500GB as a data storage drive. That can be internal or external depending on your laptop model, etc.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I don't think storage would be that much of an issue because we can always move stuff to an external drive. Would just have to do it sooner with the smaller drive . I guess my main question is would the difference in speed/cache really be that noticable? I mean, if encoding a video takes 50 minutes with the 7200/16 mb cache drive and 55 minutes with the 5400/8 mb cache drive, that's insignificant to me. But if the difference was 50 minutes compared to 90, that would really be a significant difference! I hope I'm explaining myself clearly enough.

I would expect the difference to be somewhere between the examples you stated. It's really quite easy to get used to various performance levels, and if you need the extra space you'd be fine with the 5400. But the 7200 will perform noticeably better especially in random accesses and in terms of responsiveness, so if you don't need the space, go with the 7200.

Either way, make sure you have lots of RAM.

 

[npaladin-2000]

I would bite the bullet and go buy a 500 GB Caviar Black for under $100

 

[jolycu]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I think I'll put the 160 in the laptop and use the other for external storage.