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Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

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Armando:

Yet another hard drive question. :-[

I'm going to buy a new HardDrive for my laptop. I'm looking for a 160gb SATA (Seagate),  instead of my current 80gb.

I was going to buy a 5400 rpm model (ST9160821AS). The recording method of that drive is supposed to perpendicular, which is considered a good thing (but I'm no specialist...)
 
But now I'm hesitating : should I go for the 7200 rpm (ST9160823AS )?? This one uses similar technology (perpendicular), but Seagate also mentions "16/17 EPRML" (I thought that was pretty standard, ….. anyway). Seems faster according to the specs, but I wonder about 2 things :

- Heat (will my laptop run significantly warmer ?)
- Battery life (will the battery life decrease significantly ?)
 
Anybody ?
 
Thanks!!

Lashiec:
Not much experience with laptop hardrives, but since performance is not a key factor in a laptop, I'd go for a 5400 rpm disk, less heat and power consumption. If both use perpendicular recording, I'd say it's a no brainier.

EPRML means, basically, more density without more errors in data reading. So it's a good thing. Don't know if it's something you should consider when you're buying it.

Ralf Maximus:
Too bad the solid state drives are still so small and expensive; that'd be ideal for a laptop.  But 16GB still costs ~$300 USD.

mouser:
hmm.. in general the answer is always that, all things being equal, go for the faster hard drive.
having a faster hard drive will noticeably speed up your computer use.
i dont know about battery and heat though.. but for me, even though i agree with lashiec that performance isn't usually the end-all be-all for notebooks, i'd still go for the faster hd.

Darwin:
I looked into this A LOT in the spring and as far as I could gather from my research, the heat and battery issues are non-issues when deciding between a 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm laptop drive. I didn't jump then because the larger capacity and faster second generation drives were just out and crazy expensive, but I'll be considering it in the new year.

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