5400rpm - Enough?

I will be buying a blackbook in the next couple months. Storage is not an issue at all and there is no way I will use all the hdd space even on the low end macbook - but the color and matte plastic draw me towards black.

the question is, will I see a performance increase going from system 1 to system 2? What do people who have done this think?

system 1: 2.4ghz penryn, 4gb ram, 250gb 5400rpm hdd

system 2: 2.4ghz penryn, 4gb ram, 100gb 7200rpm hdd

I know there are many threads on this, but I can't find a clear answer

Will you see a performance increase going from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive? Yes.

How much you'll notice is a completely different matter. If you plan on using the computer for normal day-to-day tasks, you'll notice apps opening a bit faster, and maybe faster boot times if you reboot often. But if you're going to be using it for slightly more intensive applications, like photo/video editing and anything requiring a lot of disk access, then yea, you'll notice a significant improvement with the 7200RPM drive.

When I bought my Macbook I got the 160gb hard drive thinking that would be plenty space and I would never fill it up. A month later when I have 20gb left and I'm on the hunt for a external I was glad a went with the bigger hard drive. Are you ever going to need over 100gb of space? Movies, music, another OS partition add up in space really fast. If you do fill that 100gb up you won't tell a speed difference between the two. It all depends on how much space your going to use.

say I use about 100gb, would 7200rpm be noticeably quicker?

I would definitely go with the faster and bigger hd. They fill up sooo fast. You'll be glad you did. If you're like me you'll have to buy an external hd anyway, but it's always good to have everything backed up.

Kash said:

Will you see a performance increase going from a 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive? Yes.

How much you'll notice is a completely different matter. If you plan on using the computer for normal day-to-day tasks, you'll notice apps opening a bit faster, and maybe faster boot times if you reboot often. But if you're going to be using it for slightly more intensive applications, like photo/video editing and anything requiring a lot of disk access, then yea, you'll notice a significant improvement with the 7200RPM drive.

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Agreed, although a 90% full 7200rpm drive will not perform as well as a 40% full 5400rpm drive. OS X starts to slow down once you're down to the last 10% .

how about

50% full 7200rpm compared to a 25% full 5400rpm

MPC said:

how about

50% full 7200rpm compared to a 25% full 5400rpm

Click to expand...

The 7200rpm. If you only need a small amount of space, get the faster drive.

What's the price difference between these 2 machines? You can upgrade the HD in a Macbook without voiding your warranty, and they're extremely easy to swap out.

If may be worth looking into going with the cheaper option, and buying another drive after the fact. You can use the original drive as an external backup. Just buy a cheap enclosure for it. The Macbook will even boot from a USB drive, so you can backup your OS on it.

-Nick

fiveightandten, the Macbooks don't come with an option for a 7200RPM drive.