Sony vaio 4200 hdd?

[adee]

Why is sony using 4200 rpm for the new FW models?. I wanted to buy a Sony Vaio VGN-FW21E with 320GB 5400 hdd but it`s out of production. Instead of that i can find now only Sony Vaio VGN-FW31M with a 500gb hdd and 4200 rpm. Is there a diffrence between 4200 and 5400 in this case? I need the laptop for djing live stuff.

 

[frozenlead]

A 4200RPM disk is much slower than a 5400RPM one. Especially for doing some kind of latency-based work.

 

[adee]

still i`m not fully statisfed could you be more specific?

 

[frozenlead]

Alrighty.

The RPM of a hard disk relates to how fast (in revolutions per minute) the disks that contain information spin. Now, because a separate mechanical interface (a reader/writer head) is used to read and write information to this disk, the faster the disk spins, the faster the read/write head is able to get information on and off the disk. (theoretically, of course - there are other limitation factors, but let's keep it simple) A 4200RPM disk is significantly slower than that of a 5400RPM disk. Therefore, in situations where data needs to be accesses as soon as possible (like when you're fretting to find the next song to play in the last seconds of a currently-playing song), a 5400RPM disk is favored because it can get to the information much faster. Ideally, you should be using a 7200RPM disk (or an SSD, if you've the money), but 5400 will do fine. 4200 disks, though, are noticeably more sluggish than their faster counterparts, and I think you'll find that, if you use one, you may run into trouble in certain situations.

 

[adee]

Thanks for your help. I would buy a ssd harddisck or 7200 rpm but most of sony vaio series have 4200 and a few 5400. The only ones with a ssd hdd are TT Series witch go over your head as a price.

 

[frozenlead]

Have you looked outside of Sony notebooks? 5400RPM drives are standard on most notebooks.

 

[Guest]

You can configure FW laptops to have different Hard drives

Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
Serial ATA (7200 rpm)
Ultra ATA Flash SSD

just go to the configure section.