I'm getting a laptop for the express purpose of capturing video on location plugged into a power source. It comes with a 250g/5400rpm hard drive I'm thinking of upgrading it to a 500gb drive and trying to decide on 5400 vs 7200. The 7200 is only a little more expensive. Like I said battery life isn't an issue, how about noise and heat. I'm assuming performance wise 7200 would be better... any opinions?

If the sole purpose is to capture and later transfer to a desktop for editing, a 5400 RPM disk is enough. But leave search index and compression off.

I use a five year old laptop for capturing HDV direct to disk from my Sony HDR-HC9 all the time - it frees me from having to worry about the limitations of a 60 minute tape.

I agree with Mr. Millaard - even the lowliest 5400 rpm drive is good for 30+MB/sec., about 10 times the bandwidth that you need. Where the faster drive might payoff is speed of copying to something else, but it's likely the connection (USB2 ?) will impose its own limits.

Even good old 4200 rpm external/USB laptop drives will work fine if all you need is capturing. Just make sure NOTHING else is running on that laptop while capturing.

We all think you're talking about capturing DV or HDV though... and not uncompressed HD or DVCPROHD...

Yeah I'm capturing DV, and its not that I think 5400 won't do the job, its that I'd like more space and there isn't a big price difference between 7200 and 5400, now a days like there used to be.

Pete,

Also take into consideration heat, noise and battery life. The faster the RPM's, the more heat and noise and the less battery life.