Will there be any issues swapping a 160GB 5400rpm (wd1600 bevs 22rsto) hard drive for a 750GB Western Digital WD7500BPKT Scorpio Black 7200rpm drive. I'm thinking along the lines of heat and/or power consumption. Her hdd is almost full (photos/videos etc) so could do with an upgrade. Failing that I assume this one would be OK 750GB Western Digital WD7500BPVT Scorpio Blue 5400rpm?
the only problem i forsee is the height of the drive, but looking at wdc.com, it looks like the height for both maybe the same.
Really, your only issue is that the faster drive will be more vulnerable to being knocked around while in use.
Do you mean in an anti shock sort of way? If so that shouldn't be much of a problem as her laptop rarely moves.
Yeah, if it's not being carried around while you're using it then you'll have absolutely no problems in that regard. There shouldn't be much difference in sensitivity between the speeds in real terms anyway, but it is something that the manufacturers have mentioned before.
A 7200 RPM HDD will consume more power... it might or might not affect you, based on your usage, and what you run. A faster HDD will perform the task faster and spin down sooner, than a 5400RPM drive. But a 7200 RPM consumes more power. The impact on your battery will depend on your system. A "time" less, can't be given as it depends on your battery life. My Core 2 Duo P series laptop has 10 hours of battery life with a 5400RPM HDD (23sec boot from Windows boot to account fully loaded - using Win7 64-bit, 4GB of RAM). If I put a 7200RPM HDD in my laptop, if it's 10min less.. it might be not visible on your 5 hours (I am guessing) battery life system. But if it's 2 hours less for me (huge exaggeration, it might be a lot of visible for you).
Acronis is highly recommend from me and most of the forum. It was really simple for me BTW you can always use the drive you pull out as an external one, try finding a enclosure that will power the HDD without a wall wart, they come in really handy
Power varies between drives. Some 7200rpm drives will consume the same or less power than some 5400rpm drives. One thing you will probably notice is slightly more vibration (due to the higher rotation), and depending on the models, slightly more of a humming noise.
For a desktop HDD, you need at least 2x USB 2.0 to provide power... they are adapter, but expect compatibility issue due to different power requirement of different HDD model. If you are going with USB, and really want USB and nothing else, then go with a laptop SATA HDD.
Thinking of doing the same thing with my laptop. Would a 7200 rpm drive make a noticeable difference to boot times e.c.t. The drive in there is a wd 160gb from around three years ago.
No, unfortunately no. 7200RPM laptop drives are waste of money in my opinion. If you really want a difference in speed, get a SSD. I know, they are pricy - but 5400->7200RPM upgrade is a waste of money. The problem with the 2.5" mechanical hard drives is not the transfer speed (which is pretty much the only parameter you change by going from 5400 to 7200RPM), but access time. And that will not change much (~15ms) unless you buy a SSD (<0.1ms).
I only paid 50 quid for the laptop (good deal at work) so I kinda resent paying nearly double that for an ssd but you are very much correct ssd is the only way!!
The Seagate Momentus XT drive is quite popular -- it runs at 7200rpm and so gives the benefits of that as well as a high capacity, but also includes a small SSD for caching, giving very noticeable performance benefits.
