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Are these drives ok? I need a new one for my laptop and this fits my
price range.

On 2007-04-13, JC <> wrote:
> Are these drives ok? I need a new one for my laptop and this fits my
> price range.

It's a long time (decades) since I've heard anything bad about Seagate
drives, that said noone can predict the future.

Bye.
Jasen

In article < .com>,
says...
> Are these drives ok? I need a new one for my laptop and this fits my
> price range.

For a wee bit more $$ and a wee bit less space, you could get a 100Gb
7200rpm drive.

--
Duncan

Dave Doe wrote:
> In article < .com>,
> says...
> > Are these drives ok? I need a new one for my laptop and this fits my
> > price range.
>
> For a wee bit more $$ and a wee bit less space, you could get a 100Gb
> 7200rpm drive.

It's not always a good idea to put a 7,200rpm drive in a laptop. Maybe OK if
you've used it for a while and it has *zero* heat problems or hot-spots. I'd
still think twice about it if the original drive wasn't 7,200.

There's a reason that OEMs don't often put then in the laptops. As they'd
improve the performance of their laptops quite a bit I'd say it's a
compelling reason. Heat generation. It seems that most of the 7,200rpm 2.5"
drives are destined for use in the small USB enclosures where heat isn't
such an issue.

Personally I'd be inclined to go with the 5,400 rpm drive.
--
Shaun.

"~misfit~" <> wrote in message
news:46203f3c$...
> ... I'd still think twice about it if the original drive wasn't 7,200.
> ...

Maybe think thrice. 7,200rpm 2.5in drives (eg Hitachi 7K100) are more
efficient than old slower drives. The higher bit density & rotation speed
suggests more data written/retrieved for same total energy use (& thus heat
dissipated) over a session, and they are generally more power efficient. The
spin-up current may be slightly higher. Check the full power specs against
your current drive, maybe especially "active idle". I suspect for "ordinary"
laptop use 7,200rpm would be superior in performance (notably) and energy
consumption.

B Campbell wrote:
> "~misfit~" <> wrote in message
> news:46203f3c$...
> > ... I'd still think twice about it if the original drive wasn't
> > 7,200. ...
>
> Maybe think thrice. 7,200rpm 2.5in drives (eg Hitachi 7K100) are more
> efficient than old slower drives.

Older? Slower? Care to quantify these? I don't think he's talking about a
486 laptop.

Generally newer HDDs will be more efficient. However, we're talking very
small percentages per "generation".

> The higher bit density & rotation
> speed suggests more data written/retrieved for same total energy use
> (& thus heat dissipated)

Cough<bullshit>cough.

> over a session, and they are generally more
> power efficient. The spin-up current may be slightly higher. Check
> the full power specs against your current drive, maybe especially
> "active idle". I suspect for "ordinary" laptop use 7,200rpm would be
> superior in performance (notably) and energy consumption.

Yes, notably superior in performance.

However, the rest of your post is twaddle. All things being equal (ie. Two
modern drives, similar bearings...) it takes more energy to maintain a speed
of 7,200rpm than it does 5,400rpm, around 50% more energy. That energy is
converted to heat. 50% more heat. In the depths of a laptop, not having an
easy way to escape, draining the battery.

Rule of thumb with laptops is to replace HDDs with another of similar speed.
Desktops are a different story as you can cool them.
--
Shaun.

jasen wrote:
> On 2007-04-13, JC <> wrote:
>> Are these drives ok? I need a new one for my laptop and this fits my
>> price range.
>
> It's a long time (decades) since I've heard anything bad about Seagate
> drives, that said noone can predict the future.
>
> Bye.
> Jasen

I agree....occasionally a manufacturer will bring out a dog of a series
of drives, maxtor, seagate and IBM have all had such fiascos......These
days bad reports get out a lot quicker on the Internet but sometimes it
is a year or two before they happen as a bad batch of drives do not
necessarily fail in the first week......(Maxtor's did....)....

regards

Thing

JC wrote:
> Are these drives ok? I need a new one for my laptop and this fits my
> price range.
>

While the performance would be good watch the heat output, one good way
is to compare the amperage demands of the drive. If these are
significantly higher than the original, think twice as, 1) The battery
will drain quicker, this may or may not be an issue for you. 2) Getting
rid of the heat, laptops can be hot little things, a "good" make such as
say a toshiba may survive this better than a cheapo.....but there is no
way to quantify this.....

If it is significantly higher in capacity you may need to Bios flash,
which could wipe the laptop....rare these days, but...

Saying that I upgraded my old laptop to 30gig (from 4gig) and it is a
lot faster, and now has usable space...

regards

Thing

"~misfit~" <> wrote in message
news:...

>
> Yes, notably superior in performance.
>
> However, the rest of your post is twaddle. All things being equal
> (ie. Two modern drives, similar bearings...) it takes more energy to
> maintain a speed of 7,200rpm than it does 5,400rpm, around 50% more
> energy. That energy is converted to heat. 50% more heat. In the
> depths of a laptop, not having an easy way to escape, draining the
> battery.

But then all things are NOT equal. New drives, new technologies,
different equations. Seen this benchmark comparison?

http://www.storagereview.com/article...otebook_7.html

Apparently the 7200 rpm Seagate consumes about 15% more power than its
5400 rpm cousin at idle (but still less than 1 watt). Under full load,
the difference is about 11%. And at startup from idle, when the power
demand peaks, the 7200rpm version actually consumes about 5% less than
the 5400.

The net effect then of an upgrade like this is likely to be very small
.. If you're a hard-core gamer running all-out 24/7 on battery, then
you're looking at a steady 0.42 watts of extra load , and so you might
need to plug in a little more often. More conventional users will of
course see most of that extra load only intermittently -- and losses
there will probably be offset by the simple fact that the drive is
faster and so performing everyday tasks more efficiently.

> Rule of thumb with laptops is to replace HDDs with another of
> similar speed. Desktops are a different story as you can cool them.

In the range of extra power we're actually talking about here, I can't
see heat dissipation being an issue at all.

impossible wrote:
> "~misfit~" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>
> >
> > Yes, notably superior in performance.
> >
> > However, the rest of your post is twaddle. All things being equal
> > (ie. Two modern drives, similar bearings...) it takes more energy to
> > maintain a speed of 7,200rpm than it does 5,400rpm, around 50% more
> > energy. That energy is converted to heat. 50% more heat. In the
> > depths of a laptop, not having an easy way to escape, draining the
> > battery.
>
> But then all things are NOT equal. New drives, new technologies,
> different equations. Seen this benchmark comparison?
>
> http://www.storagereview.com/article...otebook_7.html
>
> Apparently the 7200 rpm Seagate consumes about 15% more power than its
> 5400 rpm cousin at idle (but still less than 1 watt). Under full load,
> the difference is about 11%. And at startup from idle, when the power
> demand peaks, the 7200rpm version actually consumes about 5% less than
> the 5400.
>
> The net effect then of an upgrade like this is likely to be very small
> . If you're a hard-core gamer running all-out 24/7 on battery, then
> you're looking at a steady 0.42 watts of extra load , and so you might
> need to plug in a little more often. More conventional users will of
> course see most of that extra load only intermittently -- and losses
> there will probably be offset by the simple fact that the drive is
> faster and so performing everyday tasks more efficiently.
>
> > Rule of thumb with laptops is to replace HDDs with another of
> > similar speed. Desktops are a different story as you can cool them.
>
> In the range of extra power we're actually talking about here, I can't
> see heat dissipation being an issue at all.

Thanks for the URL, interesting to know, even if it's from 2005 and is a
generation behind current tech. (5400.2 and 7200.1)

Something that could influence things is the 5400.3 series of drives have
perpendicular data storage for a considerably higher areal density. As drive
/speed/ is usually a factor of rpm, areal density and cache size the drive
mentioned in the subject line could well outperform a 7,200 drive that
*wasn't* perpendicular.

From what I can tell, having just spent a fair while at Seagate's site, the
7,200rpm 2.5" drive isn't available with perpendicular technology. (The .3
series) In fact, Seagate seem to be aiming the 7,200rpm drives *away* from
the laptop market. This from their Momentus 7200.2 page:

"Seagate® Momentus® 7200.2 hard drives provide the optimum combination of
performance, capacity and mobility in a 2.5-inch form factor. They are also
a good fit in certain non-PC applications, including external storage,
copiers/printers and entry-level blade servers."

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...mentus_7200.2/

Cheers,
--
Shaun.