programs take forever to open! HELP!

[Batman1121]

hello everyone,i was just wondering is a 5400rpm hdd really this crappy .My 2 month old laptop has one and everything takes forever to open.Programs like microsoft word,vlc,windows media player ,chrome take 10+ seconds to open sometimes even longer.Search from the charms bar even takes 5 seconds to open .Computer and folders open a little faster though.i'm only asking because my ancient desktop with pentium 4 and a 7200rpm hdd runs butter smooth,everything opens instantly,but it has windows 7.So does 5400rpm hdd take this much time to open things or is my hdd bad or is it that windows 8 is slower than windows 7.
PS. i tried defragmenting it didn't help.And crystaldisk and hd sentinal show 100% hdd health
thanks

 

[royalcrown]

Yes, 5400 rpm laptop drives suck. Even the 7200 rpm drives suck because they are designed for power saving and not speed. My wife has an alienware 17 and I bought her an SSD when she got it, night and day difference. Even a budget SSD is a huge improvement in almost all situations.

 

[royalcrown]

You know what, I have right on top of my computer a laptop drive from my wifes previous Sony Vaio. I needed to hook it up to get her copy of office off it and it is dog slow even hooked up to my comp. ( in my sig.). So yeah, i'd still say yes...they suck no matter what.

 

[Batman1121]

Yes, 5400 rpm laptop drives suck. Even the 7200 rpm drives suck because they are designed for power saving and not speed. My wife has an alienware 17 and I bought her an SSD when she got it, night and day difference. Even a budget SSD is a huge improvement in almost all situations.

hmm, so 10+ seconds loading time is normal?That really does suck.

 

[Batman1121]

You know what, I have right on top of my computer a laptop drive from my wifes previous Sony Vaio. I needed to hook it up to get her copy of office off it and it is dog slow even hooked up to my comp. ( in my sig.). So yeah, i'd still say yes...they suck no matter what.

It's surprising that most laptop manufacturers use 5400rpm hdd only.I had never used one before and it's painfully slow.

 

[royalcrown]

Yeah, it's normal. I actually booted off the laptop hard drive so I could run magicjellybean key finder for her office key. It's a 5400 and the one in her Alienware was 7200 in case that's not clear. Just get any SSD that has enough space and it will be at least twice as fast, even the budget ones.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Laptop manufacturer's use 5400rpm drives because they produce less heat. In a confined space like a laptop, keeping temps down is necessary. Between the CPU, GPU, hard drives, battery, and other hardware, temps can add up quick.

If you think the drive is slower than normal, than run a chkdsk on it. If that passes, then check to see how full your drive is. Winows has less room to cache stuff in it's pagefile once the drive starts to fill up.

 

[jsmithepa]

IMO, a little bit of everything contributes. Wanna immediate fix? Switch to SSD.

 

[royalcrown]

Hawekeye22 is right, but that is relative, nothing will actually make them speedy just "speedier" LOL