Heat? 4200 rpm vs upgrade to 5400 rpm in a laptop

This is likely off topic, but I hope I can get an answer regardless. Can some disk experts tell me the heat impact of changing the existing 4200rpm drive to slightly larger 5400rpm. I know the battery life will be cut when mobile. I don't care on this one that much. I do care about heat when it does a defrag or chkdsk or Acronis imaging. My laptop is valuable to me because of various ports current new computers don't have, so the most important thing is not to fry it.

 

A cooling pad made just for that purpose - has two usb powered cooling fans - will keep that baby cool as a cucumber. I use one myself. You could find them for well under $20 ... closer to $10 if you catch a sale. And, btw, I did the same - changed from a 4200 rpm to 5400 rpm drive ... gives a noticeable performance improvement.

 

I went from a 5400 to a 7200. Interestingly, the current requirement on the 7200 drive was lower than for the 5400 one I replaced. Remember that your disk access time will be reduced with the faster drive so it won't have to run under load as long.

 

Thanks to both of you.
Seekforever - you did that in a laptop?
DwnNdrty - I do use a desk fan for these long jobs. It blows cooler air under the laptop which is normally lifted about 2 inches in the back where the fans are.

Just to be 100% sure I can go to 5400, the current drive is 4200, ATA-6 kind or IDE, Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04 in a Toshiba Satellite A75-S226. If anyone sees anything that'll cause me issues, please speak up and I'll be grateful forever
I'm having a hard time also what drive to take with all this ATA, SATA, eIDE and other such words and zillions of models out there. But I think ATA is the important part, right?

 

They like to change terminology every now and then just to keep people guessing! IDE is also referred to PATA or Parallel ATA.

You shouldn't run into any issues because of the rpm increase of the hard drive.

 

RPM speed though is not everything, data density is also a factor so is cache on the hard disk.

New 4500 rpm EIDE drives with large cache and high density platters can actually be faster than a 7200rpm drive over all.

I got a second hand a 7200rpm drive to replace a 4200rpm drive from a well know on line auction site. I put it in my old laptop and it has transformed performance. Heat is not a problem as I use a 3 fan laptop cooling pad. It is the processor that gets too hot on my laptop not the hard disk.

 

The diff in heat output will vary more from one drive model to another than from one drive speed to another. Look for the current rating on the drives you want to use, as a rule of thumb, the higher the rating, the higher the heat output as the percentage of input energy shed as heat is not much diff one drive to the next - about 60-65% of input energy is shed as heat.

If a new drive did add more heat to your laptop, probably the worst you would experience is the system fan running more often at higher speeds.

 

Yes, a Toshiba Satellite A100. Original drive was a SATA Hitachi, new one is a Seagate. I can't notice any difference in how hot it gets or how often the fan runs but that's a long way from a scientific measurement.

 

I jumped from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm with a VERY noticeable performance increase - my whole laptop was running much faster with the lower disk latency and seek time.

I just installed a new 500G/7200rpm drive a few days ago with supposedly lower power requirements. So I'm curious how the power/heat generated goes

Mike

 

Smooth as silk using ATIv10 bootable CD. Two partitions installed in no time. Boy, Acronis is good, in case people don't remember. As are GroverH instructions
The only thing that threw me for a loop was when I connected both old and new drive, the naming was confusing enough that I had to quickly change the partition volume names. Other than that no issues whatsoever.

Temperature of 4200 Hitachi vs 5400 WesternDigital - it appears there's no change. I collected some Everest data before and now, and it's all under 40C. Where it'll hold up under continuous use like making an image, I can't yet tell, but likely will.

Thanks all for your helps. I really appreciate it.

 

The increase in heat when making an image will mostly be due to the CPU working much harder doing its compression and other computing.