Re: [G] significant differences betweeen a 4200rpm and a 5400 inG4 laptop?

[Stephen Jonke]

The question is, had you installed a new 4200 RPM drive, would it have 
shown similar performance improvements? I think my relatively new 4200 
RPM drive replaced with a new 5400 RPM drive may be more representative 
of the actual difference. Another thing to consider is noise and power 
consumption. Generally speaking, a 4200 RPM drive is going to use less 
power (i.e. it's going to provide longer batter life) and be quieter. 
Having said that, power consumption and noise varies by manufacturer 
and model. Still, my 5400 RPM Seagate is definitely a bit noisier than 
the "old" 4200, and we are talking about a Seagate drive, which are 
known for being relatively quiet. Not noisy in the way that a lot of 
cheap 3.5" drives can be - it's still very quiet, but it has its clicks 
and whirs that the old drive didn't. It is noisier.

So, it's not all cut and dry. If I had to do it over again, I think I 
would have gone with the longer battery life, lower noise and lower 
price of a 4200 RPM drive. I'm just not convinced that new (and decent) 
5400 RPM laptop drives have much of a performance advantage over new 
(and decent) 4200 RPM laptop drives.
Steve

On Apr 6, 2005, at 10:05 AM, Thomas Ethen wrote:
It made a noticeable difference in my G3 iBook when I went from a 30Gb 
4200
RPM to a 40Gb 5400 RPM drive, both in access speed and noise level. 
The two
drives were different brands though and that could have been where 
part of
the difference was. I don't know if I would label it a significant
difference, but it was noticeable to me.

Tom
on 4/6/05 8:46, Stephen Jonke at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I'll provide a dissenting opinion on this. Whether or not 5400 rpm
makes a difference may depend on the drive, or it might just be a
figure of peoples imagination - I installed a 100 GB 5400 RPM Seagate
Momentus drive in my Powerbook G4 1.5 GHz. I presume there is a
measurable performance improvement over the original 80 GB 4200 RPM
drive, but it sure is minimal. I didn't do benchmarks. Day to day it
doesn't seem any faster than before, even things you'd think would be
faster such as starting applications. Of course the extra 20 GB is
nice, but the performance improvement, which I presume is there, is 
not
noticeable. Maybe 7200 RPM makes more of a difference - I don't know.
If it's between 4200 RPM and 5400 RPM, I think I'd pay less and get 
the
4200.

Steve

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