laptop hard drives...

[wrender]

What is the difference between the 5400 vs the 7200 rpm hd's heat produced and their energy consumption?

Also more information about the hd's would be nice. ie. amount of cache and seek times?

[thomasaaron]

What is the difference between the 5400 vs the 7200 rpm hd's heat produced and their energy consumption?

It kind of depends on what you are doing with the machine. For the average user, it doesn't make a huge difference in heat produced or energy consumption, as the disk isn't constantly working. I'd say its negligible.

If you are constantly writing to, and reading from, the hard drive -- particularly if you are working with large files -- you would probably notice a difference.

However, I don't have any firm metrics to describe the change, but there would definitely be a change.

[glacialfury]

Edit: no longer relevant; please delete my post in this thread.