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Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?
Armando:
Thanks Lashiec... When you described the seagate as being bigger, I realized I made a stupid mistake : it's the samsung that's much bigger : 250gb....
Considering that my laptop is not a server, do you think that the I/O benchmark numbers are important ? If I'm more concerned with overall speed in indexing, backuping, searching, loading programs into RAM, etc., which numbers should one be looking at?
f0dder mentioned "random access time" and "long linear transfers"...
KenR:
okay... But considering the price/size/performance ratio, seems to me like the samsung is -- or might be -- the deal.
What I'm actually interested in is to know whether the Seagate will REALLY be faster than the Samsung or if the difference will be negligible. (because if the difference is negligible I don't see any point and spending more money for a smaller drive that consumes a bit more energy -- albeit not much).
in other words : yes I'd like a faster drive... but, according to the numbers, would the Seagate really be noticeably faster ?
-Armando (December 29, 2007, 01:39 PM)
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I spent the better part of the day researching and thinking about related issues. I found one site that was very helpful: http://www.storagereview.com/. This site is all about hard drive performance and it was extremely helpful to me in making a decision.
One drive I considered very seiously was the 250 GB Western Digital Scorpio (WD2500BEVS) which is supposed to perform similar to a 7200 rpm drive despite the fact that it is a 5400 rpm drive. It is very quiet. You might take a look at that drive if you have not.
Regarding sound, there was only a 1.5 db difference between the loudest and quietest drive in the review I read for the particular drive I purchased. Given the fact that my laptop fan is always running AND that the drive will sit insite my laptop, I seriously doubt I would be able to distinguish that difference. Also, while the drive was the loudest, it was described as queit or very quiet by everyone who tried or reviewed it.
Ken
Armando:
thanks for the info and the link Ken.
I did check that link for the Samsung, but didn't see the 160 GB Notebook Drive Roundup the first time. Here's the conclusion :
http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr?page=0%2C7
The Seagate performs really well in "everyday situations", but doesn't seem to be great for games (??? I have no idea why... And the article authors don't seem to be puzzled by that...), which is not a problem in my case since I don't even own one game.
Anyhow... I still haven't made up my mind. It's still pretty much between the Samsung HM250JI and the the Seagate Momentus ST9160821A... the Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 looks good to, but is not available nearby and seems less attractive than the Samsung.
Armando:
Actually, the store nearby has the NEW Hitachi Travelstar 7K200. It's pricey. $221.45
But it really out performs any other laptop drive out there. Really.
See the review's conclusion (and the benchmarks) : http://www.storagereview.com/HTS722020K9A00.sr?page=0%2C7
That said, the story remains the drive's single-user performance. In the end, the Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 blows away the competition by margins seldom seen in the hard drive world. Though it does not come cheaply, the Travelstar's showing is so superior to that of any other drive's that it stands as the only choice for those striving to attain true desktop-level performance from a portable system.
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Armando:
Ok... The Hitachi is a SATA2 hard drive. I don't think that SATA2 would cause a problem even if my laptop has a plain SATA hard drive at the moment... I believe that both SATA and SATA2 can be used with my inspiron 6400 SATA controller... Or am I mistaken ?
(I think that I'm going for the Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 (7200 rpm) after all : it's really fast, quiet, and doesn't seem to consume to much power... And I found a great price on eBay...)
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