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From: adrianmachland on 17 Jan 2008 10:38
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
From: BigJim on 17 Jan 2008 13:52
they do offer other drives, check under customizing and the 7200 is faster
at retrieving data.

<adrianmachland(a)gmx.at> wrote in message
news:51cf2116-09cd-40c1-a038-a122bd22185f(a)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


From: mike on 17 Jan 2008 15:01
adrianmachland(a)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!
From: adrianmachland on 18 Jan 2008 10:33
On 17 Jan., 19:52, "BigJim" <woody10...(a)hotmail.com> 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
From: John Doue on 18 Jan 2008 12:08
adrianmachland(a)gmx.at wrote:
> On 17 Jan., 19:52, "BigJim" <woody10...(a)hotmail.com> 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
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