5400 vs 7200 RPM HDD Affects on Battery Life

Hello John,

Welcome to the Apple Discussions...

You'll probably get lots of different views, but the end result is... Unless you're doing heavy gaming or video then you'll probably not notice a great performance boost with a 7200 as opposed to a 5400. So if battery life, heat, noise and vibration are important to you, stick with the 5400 as Apple designed. You'll be happy with it, battery is important on a laptop!

Welcome to Apple Discussions 🙂

+I'm looking for personal advice. Are any differences really noticeable?+

In my experience the Seagate 500GB 7200 is an excellent drive, there's no noticeable difference at all in battery consumption, the only 'negative' I've observed is slightly more vibration/noise than the original 5400 (Hitachi)

Battery consumption is dependent solely on the power draw of the hardware and it's operational cycle time. Generally speaking 5400 RPM drives consume less power, but not all 7200 PRM drives consume more, and even if they consume equivalent amounts of power, the lower transfer time may mean quicker sleeps and lower overall power consumption.

Performance-wise, you'll notice it mainly for disk-intensive operations. If you do a lot of those, you probably have batter life concerns anyway.

Hello John,

I recently replaced my Fujitsu 160GB 5400 RPM with the Seagate 250GB 7200.4. Here's a link to my old drive for spec comparison:
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2 F%2Fwww.fujitsu.com%2Fdownloads%2FCOMP%2Ffcpa%2Fhdd%2Fmhw2160bh_datasheet.pdf&ei =HXXIS-TQIpT0sgOVv5j1BA&usg=AFQjCNElvw2ms0tEFNRGbV3HaOuxcwDB7Q&sig2=fv10qnQiTKiw MSp9YMJupQ

First off, it's worth mentioning that the power and sound characteristics of the Seagate 250GB versus the 500GB model might differ a little. If I remember correctly, the two drives use a different platter configuration that might result in a somewhat more noisy/power hungry performance from the latter drive. I stand to be corrected though, and I would expect the difference to be minimal.

Specifications aside, I did notice a difference in the vibration and sound that came from the Seagate. Despite the 5400 vs. 7200 difference, the Seagate drive is three years newer than my 5400 and I expected that this would result in highly similar noise and power characteristics.

I must clarify that the difference is minimal. You will only notice it if you have highly sensitive ears and you're working in an environment that is virtually silent. For example, I only notice the noise of the drive when I bring the computer to a library. In other environments, I have to literally bring my ear to the machine to notice the difference. I should also mention that the noise is from idling, not access. The noise is constant and I can only hear data being accessed if I bring my ear within centimetres of the drive, this is the main reason why it doesn't bother me very much.

With regard to vibration, again the difference is negligible but it exists. I didn't notice it until I had the drive in for a few days. Once, when I rested my left hand above the drive, I felt a very mild vibration. Like the noise, it is the sort of difference that you acknowledge and soon forget.

Unfortunately, I cannot be of much assistance with battery life. I compared the stats on my two drives online prior to installation and they were supposed to comparable. I would say that they are, but I rarely work off of battery and even more rarely run my battery to empty. In the few times that I have, I did not noticed a difference. Keep in mind, I'm at 250 cycles on my battery, so my expectations for performance are not high.

I am not a big gamer or video editor, but I have noticed the performance increase more than the factors I've mentioned above. In weighing the pros against the cons, I would recommend the upgrade.

John,

Get the 7200. It's a no brainer. The MBP will start faster, apps will launch faster, and working with large files (HD video, RAW images, etc.) is dramatically improved.

I've used both 5400 RPM & 7200 RPM drives in several different Power/MacBooks and have never noticed a significant difference in vibration or power usage between them, but I have absolutely noticed a performance difference. Getting the largest, fastest drive you can is a decision you won't regret.

FWIW: A quick search on Barefeats.com will show you some performance comparisons between the 5400 and 7200 RPM drives in real world usage. You'll find the benefits are very real and very significant.

Now about that 512GB SSD... 🙂

Message was edited by: KBeat (added the Barefeats info)

I recently installed a Seagate 500GB 7200RPM drive and went from 2 to 8 GB of RAM in my MBP 13. My battery time has been cut by at least half. The machine runs from hot to very hot most of the time and the noise of the drive sounds like a small fan. Change in vibration is negligible.

I don't believe that the drive ever spins down, but System Profiler and System Preferences both show that it should. I'm guessing this is why my battery life is so poor now. I have found no way to make the preferences stick or force the drive to spin down.

Oh, and it went from being dog slow, and at times unusable, to being a the powerhouse I expect an Apple computer to be. The noise is not an issue and the heat is livable as long as the processor survives, but the reduction in battery life now borders on unacceptable for a portable.

Contrary to popular belief just because the 7200 rpm hd takes more energy doesn't mean that it will decrease your battery life more. It should improve it! Think about it this way say your copying a file from a wireless backup to your computer the 7200 would get it done in 3mins and 75 seconds whereas the 5400 would take 5 mins to copy that file. The performance at both those leves is high and the 7200 would finish faster. However, if your just doing word processing and music etc, then you might want to go with the 5400 for battery life conercns.

To me i would rather have the 7200 because everything is so much quicker 🙂

Bad math there, I should learn how to use a calculator 🙂
5400 would be 5 min copy
7200 would be a 4.15 second copy

This is just an easy conversion but you can see how it would add up over the use of the computer on a battery charge

5400 would be 5 min copy
7200 would be a 4.15 second copy

That's still pretty bad math, ik. Why not wait until you're awake to post?

Your situation sounds exactly like mine except I installed a Hitachi rather than a Seagate. I'm working in a 13" Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo at 2.4ghz. Battery life is around 5 hours with the 7200rpm drive. No explanation. I'm going to rough it out at least for now because that long of battery life isn't critical to me. Hope to keep tabs on this thread to see if anyone has anything new to offer. Returning the drive really isn't an option, unfortunately.