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Battery Drain: 4200 -vs- 5400 rpm hard drives?
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Junior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005
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Has anyone owned a 4200 and 5400 rpm hard drive concurrently and able to say if the 5400 rpm drive sucks more juice from the battery? Or, has there ever been any tests done?
I bought a Fujitsu 60-gig hard drive, 2mb cache, 4200 rpm because I use my Pismo at school mostly and power outlets are usually hard to come by when the library is busy. So I bought it thinking that the 4200 drive will consume less battery power and give me longer running time.
Compared to a 60-gig, 8 mb cache, 5400 rpm drive, how much power am I actually saving? Should I have just gotten the 5400 drive?
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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The difference in power and noise between 4200, 5400, and 7200RPM notebook drives is tiny (see the manufacturers sites for details). Changing between any of them you're unlikely to see more than a 10 minute swing in battery life.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Memphis, Tn. USA
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Originally Posted by mduell
The difference in power and noise between 4200, 5400, and 7200RPM notebook drives is tiny (see the manufacturers sites for details). Changing between any of them you're unlikely to see more than a 10 minute swing in battery life.
It may be a coincidence, but since I replaced the drive in a TI 500 PB with a 5400 80GB WD one, I notice fan coming on much more often.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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Originally Posted by romeosc
It may be a coincidence, but since I replaced the drive in a TI 500 PB with a 5400 80GB WD one, I notice fan coming on much more often.
How has your usage pattern changed? Since you have a faster disk, you may be running a higher CPU load since you're not waiting on disk as much.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Memphis, Tn. USA
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Originally Posted by mduell
How has your usage pattern changed? Since you have a faster disk, you may be running a higher CPU load since you're not waiting on disk as much.
Naw.... sometimes fan comes on when sitting idle. Just maybe like me getting a little old and tired! 
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Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2003
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Originally Posted by phuture
Has anyone owned a 4200 and 5400 rpm hard drive concurrently and able to say if the 5400 rpm drive sucks more juice from the battery? Or, has there ever been any tests done?
I bought a Fujitsu 60-gig hard drive, 2mb cache, 4200 rpm because I use my Pismo at school mostly and power outlets are usually hard to come by when the library is busy. So I bought it thinking that the 4200 drive will consume less battery power and give me longer running time.
Compared to a 60-gig, 8 mb cache, 5400 rpm drive, how much power am I actually saving? Should I have just gotten the 5400 drive?
I have posted that elsewhere in this forum.
A few weeks ago I have replaced my 60 Toshiba, 4200 rpm drive with a seagate Momentus, 120 GB, 5400 rpm drive and the battery lasts LONGER now. Checking the power consumption confirms that the old Toshiba needed more power.
But this cannot be generalized. Look into the specs of both drives and compare yourself.
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