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difference between two internal laptop hard drives- what one should I use? (amp rating is lower on one)

Hi, my laptop drive is old (over 30,000 hours on it) and last night every 20 minutes or so I would hear it click once or twice. Still works fine but I shut it right down so I can back up my data since I have not done so in about 2 weeks.

I have a few spare brand new hard drives I was going to replace my old one with the new one but I was wondering if one is better then the other. They have visably different circuit boards on them and one has a higher amperage rating then the other one. So I was wondering what one is best to use?

left side- momentus 500gb, manufactured july, 2012, 5 volts, 0.7 amps
right side- momentus 500gb (also says 5400.6) manufactured august 2012, 5 volts, 0.451 amps

I know both drives are only a 5200 rpm but my original was also 5200 and original ran fine

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agonza07

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nobus

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hydrive1902

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agonza07- very intresting, I was not aware that some of the ones I have are the 7200 version. These were purchased as external drives (mybackup plus drives) and it seems as the external drives were manufactured, they were manufactured with the 7200 rpm drives originally (from May or earlier till July) Then in August they switched over to the 5400 drives. I would have figured they would have atleast changed the model number on the external drives to differentiate the two types. But they didnt, they manufactured both types of drives as model number STBU500100 (on the external drive boxes).

Nobus- great idea, I am going to look into them SSD drives for the future. I was looking them up online to read about them and it seems the only downside is when the drives fail, data recovery is much harder, and sometimes can not be done at all. But I guess no worries if the system is backed up often.

So does the 7200 RPM drive have any advantage over the 5400 RPM drive or vise versa (other then speed)? For example I would think the failure rate would be a bit higher on the 7200 rpm drives, just cus of the extra speed. Any opinons?

nobus

>> when the drives fail, data recovery is much harder, and sometimes can not be done at all. << i agree, that's why i suggest to use trusted manufacturers - and of course - regularly backup ( = what you should do with ANY drives..)

i don't think there's a noticeable downside to the 7200 rpm drives - you only gain from the increased speed

agonza07

Use the links I provided above for comparison. As far as failure rate both have an annualized failure rate of .5%, so they are the same in that respect.

nobus

and note that SSD drives have a much lower power consumption too

hydrive1902

ASKER

thanks for the info!

nobus

glad to help