Are the 7200 RPM hard drives reliables?

[fontace]

I am going to buy the new MacBook Pro 15" next week. I will choose the 2,4GHz model with a non-glossy screen.

 

What is the best option for a 200 GB hard drive? 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM?? I plan to use the laptop as a desktop replacement for software/web development and will do movie editing/encoding sometimes. What concern me the most is the reliability because I am not going to buy the Apple Care stuff.

 

I know that a 7200 RPM drive will give an improvement in term of system responsiveness but also in heat, and maybe noise... what are your advises on this??

[theotherone]

I too build a 320 GB Drive in my new MacBook this week. I considered the 200 GB as well but decided against it because the macbook is my secondary machine, so i bought a wd 320 GB scorpio. This drive iworks very well for me, performance-/price- and GB-wise. If you depend on a little zippier response then you should go with the 7200.

 

In case of reliability no one can guaratee you something, especially when it comes to harddrives, so i recommend buying a external case for the drive which gets replaced and use a god backup-software (like SuperDuper) to do regularly backup of your projects.

 

If you buy a new MacBook Pro then you have several month to consider APPLE Care. It's always good to have if your original warranty runs out because it could get very expensive if the motherboard or display dies, but i would consider this only in the last month before the original-warranty runs out. Normally, if something fails it fails in the first few months. It depends alot on usage too.