Running a 7,200 rpm HDD in a 10" netbook - anyone tried it? Any problems?

Leopard

Has anyone tried running a 7,200 rpm hard drive in a 10" netbook - for example a Samsung NC10 / NC110, an Advent 4211 or a Wind?

If so, what was the result? Any overheating problems or unacceptable reduction in uptime between charges (with a 6-cell battery) ?

I have used 7,200 rpm drives for several years in a succession of 15" laptops (Apple) without any problems but these have all had titanium or aluminium casings which are designed to act partially as a heat sink.

My netbook (a Wind) has a polycarbonate casing, however, and I harbour doubt as to whether this - allied to its smaller size - might prove inadequate to deal with the heat from a 7,200 rpm drive.

That said, I don't (by the very nature of its dimensions and power) apply my netbook to very demanding tasks and it runs fairly cool on its brilliant little Atom 270 CPU.

Currently, I have a Western Digital "Blue" 5.400 rpm drive of 160 GB in it but I'll have a Hitachi (7K200) 7.200 rpm 200 GB drive left over when an imminent OS upgrade prompts me to laptop upgrade to 320 GB (Hitachi 7K320) while I'm about it and I've been pondering the merits of putting that into the Wind.

Theories are all well and good but what's been anyone else's actual experience of doing this? Good? Or bad?

My Wind is running on Mac OS 10.5.7, which makes slightly different demands than Windows XP of a 10" netbook with 2 GB of RAM.

I think many would like to know how well a netbook handles a 7,200 rpm drive, so please share your experiences if you've tried it!

Thank you.

AirCooledHeaven

I had a 7200rpm drive in a small form factor 12" laptop and had no problems with extra heat.

If you check out the Hitachi website you will find software to change the characteristics of travelstar drives. You can optimise for lower power consumption at the expense of spin up time (for example). So maybe you can use the 7200rpm drive you will have spare without increasing heat output?

Leopard

Thanks for your reply, for your feedback and for your advice. Much appreciated. :money:

I did check out the Hitachi website and would have liked to install its "Power Booster" utility but - like the Bulk Data Encryption facility on its BDE laptop drives - this only works with Windows. Hitachi is one of those companies that prefers to pretend that Apple does not exist. :rolleyes:

That said, I've never (personally) had any problem with IBM nor Hitachi hard drives and what drew me originally to the 7K200 drives I'm using currently (in a pair of MacBooks Pro) was Hitachi's claim that their's are comparable in power consumption to 5,400 rpm drives.

Although I've bought a couple of 7K320 drives with which to replace them, I've been waiting until some hands-on experimentation with Apple's forthcoming Mac OS 10.6, designated "Snow Leopard", reveals what will be the optimum partition sizes to set up on them with my own choice of software and whether any incompatibilities between OS 10.6 and my existing kit will oblige me to install both OS 10.6 and OS 10.5.8 - in separate partitions - on the 320 GB drives until any such clashes are ironed out by third-party driver updates. I expect many people are doing the same until they can actually get to grips with Windows 7.

The thing that induces wariness about popping into my Wind one of the 200 GB 7,200 rpm drives which will become available after putting 320 GB drives into the Macs is that Apple only offers 7,200 rpm drives as a customisable option in its 15" and 17" laptops. It's been nagging me that precluding that option in its 13" models might be because Apple has experienced heat dissipation problems from them in smaller form-factor MacBooks.

The best thing to do is just to try it and see if it performs satisfactorily - but I'd like to spare myself and others, here, the hassle of changing drives, repartitioning them and installing operating systems and software on them if somebody else has already found that it doesn't work because they get too hot inside a polycarbonate netbook! :sad:

Again, my thanks for your feedback.

Jakg

It works fine (in NC10's) at least, and while it eats the battery harder it needs to seek less being faster so theres little heat or battery issues.

Can I ask why you cant just buy a 5,400 RPM drive and DIY it? Apple charge an exorbitant amount for HDD upgrades at time of build.

Marty_J

Leopard wrote: »

The thing that induces wariness about popping into my Wind one of the 200 GB 7,200 rpm drives which will become available after putting 320 GB drives into the Macs is that Apple only offers 7,200 rpm drives as a customisable option in its 15" and 17" laptops. It's been nagging me that precluding that option in its 13" models might be because Apple has experienced heat dissipation problems from them in smaller form-factor MacBooks.

Apple might very well have, but a MacBook Pro is not an MSI Wind. The former is a much more powerful computer than the latter (with a very different method of construction), and so will run hotter anyway.

Just because Apple may have ruled it out on a 13-inch MacBook Pro, it doesn't mean the same holds true for any other computer.

Jakg wrote: »

Can I ask why you cant just buy a 5,400 RPM drive and DIY it?

Why would he buy a 5,400 RPM drive if he wants a 7,200 RPM one?

Apple charge an exorbitant amount for HDD upgrades at time of build.

I'm pretty sure he's not asking Apple to build an MSI Wind for him.

Leopard

Thanks for the feedback, Jakg. Most helpful. :beer:
Let me confirm that I always do my own RAM and hard drive upgrades! :money:

Marty_J wrote: »

I'm pretty sure he's not asking Apple to build an MSI Wind for him.

Damned right: they'd put a glossy screen on it! :mad:

I do take your first two points, though, and I thank you for making them.

Looks like I'll be in for a busy time with the spudger, the small cross-head and the Torx-6 and 7 next week! :cool: