Laptop users (including Netbooks) upgrade to 7400 RPM HDD's

kodi · 12 Nov 2010

Beware of 7200rpm drives if your Laptop tends to overheat as this will make the problem worse.
More revs = more heat.

jimbo45 · 12 Nov 2010

Hi there.

I'd love an 80 GB SSD but I do travel a lot so if I can get the data on to a 500GB driive --saves me carrying too much. 80 GB is just TOO small -- I do need 20 GB of disk space for a Virtual XP machine to run software / hardware not available on W7 and also to connect to some corporate applications (SAP CRM / APO etc.)

I can use an external larger screen at work but I really appreciate the speed and capacity of the 7200 HDD's even if the machine runs slightly hotter.

In any case the whole Laptop only cost me 212 GBP with 17.5% VAT which I am getting a refund for --Iceland is not (yet) a member of the EU although work and other residence requirements operate just like EU citizens throughout the EU. So if it burns out its still mega cheap to get another one.

TWO of these laptops / Netbooks (Acer Aspire LO521) even with the extra changes I've made are STILL cheaper than an IPAD.

so I'm not really worried about shorter life due to possible heat problems.

A small Netbook plus a pocket size 1TB usb HDD for multi-media (copied DVD's / movies etc) is all I need on the road now. A few USB sticks are also OK when needed.

Weight and Volume is the name of the game now when travelling.

I used to go for BIG 17 inch screen (Alienware) laptops but beautiful as these are they are totally impractical for use as "Road warriors" given security hassles and baggage restrictions at Airports etc these days.

If Airport security was sorted out and I was about 15 years younger I'd get one of those large Alienware laptops -- brilliant for home use but TOTALLY impractical for someone like me who is on the road a lot.

Cheers
jimbo

whs · 12 Nov 2010

Jimbo45, you certainly made a good choice for low cost. But I just cannot get too excited about those slowpoke netbooks. I would opt for a 13 or 14" laptop with a nice i5 or i7 processor and decent graphics and then an 80 or 120GB SSD. Especially when travelling, those PCs get thrown around a lot and I would be afraid of a head crash with a rotating disk. For extra capacity I carry a 500GB 2.5" USB attached disk. That I can keep in my carry-on where it is safe.

fseal · 12 Nov 2010

Just a note about my 10x as fast comment.

No the total write/read speeds are not 10x as fast but the /access time/ is. And that is what really makes the laptop (or desktop) so much faster. Expecially launching programs or booting the OS. When you have to access/seek to thousands of files and tens of thousands of sectors, having the 0.1ms acess time makes the machine seem an order of magnitude faster even if the actualtransfer rate is the same...

pparks1 · 12 Nov 2010

whs said:

I would opt for a 13 or 14" laptop with a nice i5 or i7 processor

I find that funny considering that my desktop machine...which feels like a powerhouse to me, only has a Q9550 Quad Core in it. I don't think it really takes a nice i5 or i7 to be a speedy machine.

whs · 12 Nov 2010

pparks1 said:

whs said:

I would opt for a 13 or 14" laptop with a nice i5 or i7 processor

I find that funny considering that my desktop machine...which feels like a powerhouse to me, only has a Q9550 Quad Core in it. I don't think it really takes a nice i5 or i7 to be a speedy machine.

I was just trying to compare to the Atom processors that are usually built into the netbooks. A desktop with a quad is certainly a powerhouse - although I was quite disappointed with my Dell desktop that has a Q6600. But I guess that is an antique quad and one should not expect too much of it.
A while ago I saw a neat Toshiba 14" with an i7 and a backlit keyboard. I would have bought it but my finance minister vetoed the transaction.

madtownidiot · 12 Nov 2010

The problem with putting an i7 in a laptop 14" or smaller, especially a high end i7 with an nvidia gtx series or ATI/AMD HD4XXX+ series, no matter what you do, it's going to overheat. The wattage a laptop consumes results in every bit as much heat as a light bulb of the same wattage. With air cooling, the amount of air a fan can take in at any given velocity is roughly the square root of the volume that can be displaced by a single rotation. If you quadruple the power consumption of any machine without improving the thermal design it's pretty much guaranteed to die before the warranty expires, and most laptops that fit the above description require at least 1 hardware RMA in the first year. The average 7200 RPM HDD consumes 3-4 watts max, less than a .125 watts unless it's reading or write, so any additional heat is coming from other components, not the HDD.. at least not directly. If switching from a 5400 rpm to a 7200 rpm HDD produces any more heat, it's because the 5400 rpm HDD was throttling the system.

whs · 12 Nov 2010

One more reason to opt for a SSD in such a configuration.

madtownidiot · 12 Nov 2010

This is a bit faster than a latency of .1 seconds, but the best part is.... it's a lot cheaper than 2 512GB SSDs. You have to install your own controllers though.

Laptop users (including Netbooks) upgrade to 7400 RPM HDD's-velociraptor.png

3ms is .003 seconds, for those of you that don't do so well in math.
Again.. heat comes from wattage consumption. If a faster HDD makes a laptop overheat out of proportion to the increase in the HDDs wattage consumption, why would you want to accelerate the process? On the other hand, if you have never melted a CPU core, you haven't built a fast enough machine yet.
Average wattage consumption during R/W is 7 watts. If the machine you put it in has a good thermal design, the HDD won't overheat. I have two of them in a Dell inspiron 1720, but if someone offered me $500 to put one in a DV3, I'd have put it in the contract that the user is responsible for any damages to his own machine, and that the customer has to be the first person to boot it up. Otherwise I would pass on the job, even though it would take me less than an hour to set it up. SSD drives are faster in a bench mark, but there are spinning HDDs that are faster in overall performance

whs · 12 Nov 2010

SSD drives are faster in a bench mark, but there are spinning HDDs that are faster in overall performance

Those I would like to see - as OS drives, not data drives where you move GBs of data. I think for the OS, the SSD cannot be beat because of its 0.1ms access time. And the OS typically only moves small bits of data.