Difference between 5400rpm & 7200rpm laptop hard drives speeds.

PeteHerts

Hello everyone.
I was just wondering if there was much difference between the 2?
Many thanks for all replies.

Pete.

Cat695

its more for the access time speed.....the 7200 obviously spin faster

but unless your a Big gamer (saying that the PS3 only has a SATA 5400rpm drive) or need to transfer files very quickly then you really won't notice a great deal of difference in normal daily use...especially while just on the internet etc its really only for moving LARGE files quickly

Oh and also how the HDD is connected can make a difference....SATA is easier as in setting up (no jumper to set etc if you have more than one HDD)

But a 7200rpm SATA2 HDD will be pretty damn fast compared to a 5400rpm IDE drive

trcooke

There's two sides to this argument really. What Cat695 says is true, the 7200rpm drive will beat a 5400rpm disk in a straight race reading a file. However, a 5400rpm disk will often come up to read speed faster than the 7200rpm so may win in reading a small file from a standing start.

In practice you'll probably not notice a significant difference on a laptop but you may find the slower disk will run quieter which is always a consideration for me.

esuhl

The faster a drive spins, the more heat it will generate and the more power it will consume, which is why laptops usually have slower drives than desktops.