Dell XPS M1530 - 5400 rpm SATA Harddrive too slow?

adrianmachland@gmx.at

Hi everyone,

I'm new here so I should actually introduce myself, but it is a very
urgent question I have:

I'm planning to buy a Dell XPS M1530, Core 2 Duo 2.2. GHz, 3 GB RAM
and a 250 GB SATA 5400 rpm (14ms mean).

I'm anxious that this harddrive might be too slow and actually present
a performance bottleneck.
Unfortunately, Dell doesn't offer an optional other HD on these
machines.

Does anybody have any, especially negative expereience with this type
of harddrives? I'm most concerned about performance, but reliability
is of course also an issue.

Does anyone here actually have a direct comparison between the 7200
rpm and the 5400 s Dell is offering nowadays in their notebooks?

Thanks so much for your input.

Adrian

BigJim

they do offer other drives, check under customizing and the 7200 is faster
at retrieving data.

<adrianmachland@gmx.at> wrote in message
news:51cf2116-09cd-40c1-a038-a122bd22185f@k39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm new here so I should actually introduce myself, but it is a very
> urgent question I have:
>
> I'm planning to buy a Dell XPS M1530, Core 2 Duo 2.2. GHz, 3 GB RAM
> and a 250 GB SATA 5400 rpm (14ms mean).
>
> I'm anxious that this harddrive might be too slow and actually present
> a performance bottleneck.
> Unfortunately, Dell doesn't offer an optional other HD on these
> machines.
>
> Does anybody have any, especially negative expereience with this type
> of harddrives? I'm most concerned about performance, but reliability
> is of course also an issue.
>
> Does anyone here actually have a direct comparison between the 7200
> rpm and the 5400 s Dell is offering nowadays in their notebooks?
>
> Thanks so much for your input.
>
> Adrian

mike

adrianmachland@gmx.at wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm new here so I should actually introduce myself, but it is a very
> urgent question I have:
>
> I'm planning to buy a Dell XPS M1530, Core 2 Duo 2.2. GHz, 3 GB RAM
> and a 250 GB SATA 5400 rpm (14ms mean).
>
> I'm anxious that this harddrive might be too slow and actually present
> a performance bottleneck.
> Unfortunately, Dell doesn't offer an optional other HD on these
> machines.
>
> Does anybody have any, especially negative expereience with this type
> of harddrives? I'm most concerned about performance, but reliability
> is of course also an issue.
>
> Does anyone here actually have a direct comparison between the 7200
> rpm and the 5400 s Dell is offering nowadays in their notebooks?
>
> Thanks so much for your input.
>
> Adrian
I had to send my 7200RPM drive back for replacement. Used a 5400 in the
meantime. It's an uncontrolled experiment and there are many factors and
I don't have any numbers. Let's just say that I was really glad to get
back my 7200RPM drive. I don't normally do sustained read/writes where
the speed should matter. But the FEEL of the laptop was different by

more than I expected.
YMMV
mike

--
Return address is VALID!

adrianmachland@gmx.at

On 17 Jan., 19:52, "BigJim" <woody10...*************> wrote:
> they do offer other drives, check under customizing and the 7200 is faster
> at retrieving data.
>

Hey Jim,

unfrtunately, in Austria, where I live, they don't.

I should urge them if they cold make an exception, though.

Thanks for the input.

Adrian

John Doue

adrianmachland@gmx.at wrote:
> On 17 Jan., 19:52, "BigJim" <woody10...*************> wrote:
>> they do offer other drives, check under customizing and the 7200 is faster
>> at retrieving data.
>>
>
> Hey Jim,
>
> unfrtunately, in Austria, where I live, they don't.
>
> I should urge them if they cold make an exception, though.
>
> Thanks for the input.
>
> Adrian
Personally, I would not worry about the speed difference.

First, I am amazed that such large HD are available for laptops when not
so long ago, the largest available was 160G.

Secund, with a 7200rpm drive, chances of feeling vibrations under your
wrist are not negligible.

Third, how often will you be able to detect the speed difference? So
many factors come into play, and how often do you use hard disk
intensive applications?

I will not mention reliability issues, but chances are a 5400 rpm disk
is somewhat more reliable and produces less heat.

All in all, I would be much more concerned about Dell's ability to
deliver what you will eventually order, in time and without trying to
steer you towards a differently equiped laptop. The two times I placed
an order with them (the first time, a 40G hard drive was so new, they
could not actually deliver it!), I ended up cancelling it ...

Regards
--
John Doue

alexmsuh@gmail.com

On Jan 17, 1:52*pm, "BigJim" <woody10...*************> wrote:
> they do offer other drives, check under customizing and the 7200 is faster
> at retrieving data.
>
> <adrianmachl...@gmx.at> wrote in message
>
> news:51cf2116-09cd-40c1-a038-a122bd22185f@k39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > Hi everyone,
>
> > I'm new here so I should actually introduce myself, but it is a very
> > urgent question I have:
>
> > I'm planning to buy a Dell XPS M1530, Core 2 Duo 2.2. GHz, 3 GB RAM
> > and a 250 GB SATA 5400 rpm (14ms mean).
>
> > I'm anxious that this harddrive might be too slow and actually present
> > a performance bottleneck.
> > Unfortunately, Dell doesn't offer an optional other HD on these
> > machines.
>
> > Does anybody have any, especially negative expereience with this type
> > of harddrives? I'm most concerned about performance, but reliability
> > is of course also an issue.
>
> > Does anyone here actually have a direct comparison between the 7200
> > rpm and the 5400 s Dell is offering nowadays in their notebooks?
>
> > Thanks so much for your input.
>
> > Adrian- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Hi Adrian,
I am about to put in an order to purchase XPS M1530 with exact
configuration. I need to decide between 320GB 5400rpm or pay $25 more
fore 200GB 7200 rpm. Did you purchase the notebook? If so, do you
like it? Could anyone give me suggestions? Thank you!

Dave Martindale

alexmsuh*********** writes:

>Hi Adrian,
>I am about to put in an order to purchase XPS M1530 with exact
>configuration. I need to decide between 320GB 5400rpm or pay $25 more
>fore 200GB 7200 rpm. Did you purchase the notebook? If so, do you
>like it? Could anyone give me suggestions? Thank you!

The 7200 RPM drive will have lower rotational latency; it just takes
less time for the data you want to rotate under the heads. It *might*
have faster seek times as well, since it's aimed at higher-performance
systems. But the data transfer rate is probably close to the same.

If you were comparing two 200 GB drives, the higher rotation rate would
generally provide a proportionally higher transfer rate. But the 5400
RPM drive has 1.6 times more space, so the bit density per track is
likely higher, and this also increases transfer rate.

The faster disk probably uses more power and generates more heat in
operation - though both drives probably shut down when idle.

Ultimately, how do you use a notebook? If, in normal use, the disk is
busy almost all the time and the CPU is mostly idle because it's waiting
for disk, the faster drive may be worthwhile. But if the disk is idle
most of the time (either running CPU-bound programs, or the whole
machine is mostly idle), you might as well have the larger slower disk.

Dave