7200RPM or 5400RPM

MoBetta wrote on 2/8/2005, 12:39 PM
I am posting again... please send feedback!!! I am trying to decide on a notebook for mostly logging tape, rough edit, but still planning to do final post on my studio desktop PC. I am somewhat confused about laptop hard drive RPM, on my desktop, all my drives are 7200RPM and now I am told to get 5400RPM for a laptop due to heat factor ( which brings another question: should I consider only a laptop with 3 fans??) I've seen some of them advertised with HD only @ 4200RPM ( Dell Inspiron 9200 ). What is best? What is the minimum speed to be considered AND any other factors to be taken into consideration ( Video card, RAM, etc.)

Thanks

MoBetta

Comments

boomhower wrote on 2/8/2005, 12:53 PM
Are you planning to capture to the hard drive on the laptop? Since you plan to edit on a desktop later, it would seem you would want to capture to an external drive attached to the laptop so you could transfer it to the desktop a bit easier. If that is the case, the internal drive would not have to be 7200 rather the external should be.

I have a Dell 9100 and had them put a 7200 inside since I figured I might capture to the hard drive in certain circumstances. The 9100 has plenty of fans so heat has not been an issue for me and the noise (even with all fans going) is not too bad.

I wouldn't want to capture to any drive under 7200. If you can afford the upgrade, have them throw in the faster drive. An external drive is probably the best route for what you want to do based on your question. Others may feel different.....
smhontz wrote on 2/8/2005, 1:01 PM
I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 with two installed hard drives - a 40 GB system drive (C:), and an 80 GB data drive (E:). I keep all my apps on the system drive, and all my media (video clips, stills, music, etc) on the data drive. Both are 5400 RPM drives. I have never had a dropped frame. I keep the drives defragmented using PerfectDisk. When I want to make a DVD, I have DVD architect use the .MPGs and AC3 I created on the E: to make the DVD image on the C: drive. I then use an external Sony DVD burner to burn.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/8/2005, 1:10 PM
I have an old 750 MHz laptop. The original disk drive was 4500 rpm. No dropped frames, capturing through a PCMCIA firewire card. I now have a 5400 rpm drive in that laptop, and it too is just fine. I noticed a substantial improvement in how quickly applications load when I upgraded, but no difference in capturing. Once the drive is fast enough to capture without dropping frames, getting a faster drive won't make it capture any better.

Of course, the 7200 rpm drive will copy files faster, and other operations will be faster as well.

A bigger issue is the on-board internal disk cache that comes with the hard drive. Some of the older 5400 rpm drives had really small cache size and this definitely can make a performance difference. You want 2MB for a 7200 rpm drive, and I would suggest something not much smaller for the 5400 rpm.
riredale wrote on 2/8/2005, 1:32 PM
Ditto the previous note. Disk drives are universally very fast these days and much faster than what is needed for DV capture. Six years ago it was a different story, but that was then. I'm not so sure that defragging is even all that necessary any more in the NTFS file system.

I go for capacity and not rpm's.
MoBetta wrote on 2/8/2005, 3:36 PM
I am looking at a 80GB hard drive, 54RPM with 2MB cache. I was trying to avoid external hard drive, never had much success in the past, but was planning to partition my main drive; 10 GB for operating system and programs, 10GB buffer and 60GB for capture and editing. I will also use a Nnovia external drive to capture and storage.

Any good recommendations for external hard drive??

Thanks

MoBetta
johnmeyer wrote on 2/8/2005, 6:15 PM
Any good recommendations for external hard drive??

LOTS of old posts on this. The situation changes all the time. I had bad luck with WD, but good luck with Maxtor. Others have reported the opposite. Whatever you do, think BIG. Don't even bother with less than 120GB. I love my 250GB Maxtor.