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why are laptop hard drives so slow?

just that pc guy
By just that pc guy
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by SupaKomputa,

Simple answer, most of it are 5400rpm, which is slow by design and to keep power consumption lower than regular 7200rpm, but there are some 7200rpm laptop drive.

With the reduced power consumption it comes with reduced responsiveness / higher seek time.

 

7 minutes ago, just that pc guy said:

i thought it was because that the disk is smaller than normal desktops and it has to read all that data within a very small disk

On the contrary, because the disk is smaller, the head won't need to travel much larger distance everytime it needs to pick up data.

And the data on the same sector won't need to travel as long because of the shorter diameter.

If the disk is the same speed (7200rpm) and same power, it should be faster than 3.5 inch drive.

But again, the speed and power is reduced for efficiency.

Posted

its one simple question thats killing me and i think i know the answer but i want to make sure, why are laptop mechanical hard drives so slow, its killing me, i have to wait like 3 minutes for my laptop disk activity to go down to at least 60% after opening it from sleep, yes sleep not boot up, its a hitachi 700gb hard drive and its gettin slow, looking for a ssd but for now i just want to know why.

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2 minutes ago, just that pc guy said:

its a hitachi 700gb hard drive

What RPM? 

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Laptop Hard drives run at 5400 RPMs. This is much slower than the already slow 7200 RPM. Laptop manufactorers won't put the 7200 RPM hard drives in their laptops because laptops are portable, and can be moved around. A 7200 RPM hard drive will fail very quickly (1 year or 2) if it's moved around frequently. Also 7200 RPM Hard drives consume much more power compared to 5400 rpm hard drives

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platter is physically smaller so less data passes by the head every time it spins around

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1 minute ago, Wufflez said:

Laptop Hard drives run at 5400 RPMs. This is much slower than the already slow 7200 RPM. Laptop manufactorers won't put the 7200 RPM hard drives in their laptops because laptops are portable, and can be moved around. A 7200 RPM hard drive will fail very quickly (1 year or 2). Also 7200 RPM Hard drives consume much more power compared to 5400 rpm hard drives

i thought it was because that the disk is smaller than normal desktops and it has to read all that data within a very small disk

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Just now, just that pc guy said:

i thought it was because that the disk is smaller than normal desktops and it has to read all that data within a very small disk

Yeah that's true too. I forgot to add that. Laptop HDD's disks are 2.5" in diameter compared to a desktop HDD's disk at 3.5" in diameter.

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HDD’s are just in general .... slow. 

 

 

 

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Just now, Stormseeker9 said:

HDD’s are just in general .... slow. 

 

 

true but mine is on a whole level of slow, i actually have to use the derangement to keep it up to speed, thats how bad its gotten

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1 minute ago, just that pc guy said:

true but mine is on a whole level of slow, i actually have to use the derangement to keep it up to speed, thats how bad its gotten

How old is it?

 

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Just now, Stormseeker9 said:

How old is it?

from 2012, its got a 3rd gen i5 and 8gb ram, its a good laptop, its just the hard drive is really holding it back

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Simple answer, most of it are 5400rpm, which is slow by design and to keep power consumption lower than regular 7200rpm, but there are some 7200rpm laptop drive.

With the reduced power consumption it comes with reduced responsiveness / higher seek time.

 

7 minutes ago, just that pc guy said:

i thought it was because that the disk is smaller than normal desktops and it has to read all that data within a very small disk

On the contrary, because the disk is smaller, the head won't need to travel much larger distance everytime it needs to pick up data.

And the data on the same sector won't need to travel as long because of the shorter diameter.

If the disk is the same speed (7200rpm) and same power, it should be faster than 3.5 inch drive.

But again, the speed and power is reduced for efficiency.

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26 minutes ago, just that pc guy said:

its one simple question thats killing me and i think i know the answer but i want to make sure, why are laptop mechanical hard drives so slow, its killing me, i have to wait like 3 minutes for my laptop disk activity to go down to at least 60% after opening it from sleep, yes sleep not boot up, its a hitachi 700gb hard drive and its gettin slow, looking for a ssd but for now i just want to know why.

700gb means it's old as f***

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1 hour ago, just that pc guy said:

from 2012, its got a 3rd gen i5 and 8gb ram, its a good laptop, its just the hard drive is really holding it back

Yeah that’s pretty old mate... NVMe m.2 drives push up to 3.5GB/s nowadays 

 

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