Harddrive speeds?

[Myst and rain]

I've been reading a lot on the internet about the supposed pros and cons of 5400 rpm HDs vs. 7200 rpm HDs. Apparently, this is a debate that has been going on for years? But I've read through a bunch of stuff and here's what I gathered:

- The increase in production of heat and consumption of power of a 7200 rpm HD in comparison to a 5400 rpm HD is negligable.

- 7200 rpm HDs are not less reliable that 5400 rpm HDs.

- The increase in performance speed of a 7200 rpm HD in comparison to a 5400 rpm HD is only noticable whilst doing things like video editing, 3D rendering and the like. And this increase is considerable.

Would you guys agree with those things?

[markg5150]

I recently replaced the 5400 hard drive in my Mac Mini with a 7200 drive. I notice a definite improvement in speed in just general use and when using Logic Express or iMovie.

[djohns74]

I would agree with all of that. 7200 rpm hard drives have been around for some time now, even in the 2.5" form factor, so their reliability really shouldn't be questioned at this point. There will, of course, be a degree of increased heat and power draw, but neither are anything to worry about unless you need the absolute maximum battery life.

The issue is that as fast as modern CPUs and memory are, the bottleneck for any process that requires use of the system page file or any kind of swap space will be the hard drive, so you want it to be as fast as possible to reduce this bottleneck. Which is essentially why photo and video editing and the like are improved.

[jemsite]

7200 rpm drives will be notably faster to boot, open apps & do everything in an OS. Especially in a notebook which might have less than ideal memory and slower relative drives to begin with at any given rpm... glen

[Lefty Robb]

yup, 7200 are the best, don't be fooled by the 10,000rpm ones, they are a complete waste of money, especially if you get a good 7200, I have a Caviar Black edition 500 GB and its seek, read and write times are just slightly less that a 10,000 and have a GB/$ ratio of like 1/5 that of a 10,000, and you can get a 7200 green drive that consumes a lot less power.

I've also never had a 7200 fail on me, and you will notice a huge difference over the 5400 doing anything.

[Myst and rain]

Ok, wonderful. I'll go for the 7200, then.

[jb4674]

Do it, and make sure it has a high cache buffer.

Jimmy