Initial impression of 7200rpm 100GB Seagate drive; not good

Question

I installed the Seagate Momentus 100GB 7200rpm drive into my 1.83Ghz MacBook, which has 2GB of GigaRam RAM from NewEgg. My MacBook came with the 60GB 5400rpm FUJITSU MHV2060BHPL.
The first thing I noticed about the Seagate drive was how much vibration I was feeling in the areas to the left and right of the trackpad. With the Fujitsu you cannot even feel it spinning. The Seagate was annoying.
I decided to take it out and re-install the Fujitsu just to make certain my memory of that drive was not playing tricks on me. But before that, I decided to try a few simple tests of the Seagate that might tell me how fast it was in comparison the to pokey 5400 Fujitsu.
Using iMovie and the iSight camera I recorded a 3 minute clip of me sitting in front of the camera. I then exported this movie into a Quicktime broadband low movie. It took the 7200 Seagate 2 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the task.
Next I pulled in a previous podcast that was edited in GarageBand. It took the 7200 drive 28 seconds to send it to iTunes.
After re-installing the 60GB drive I knew my memory was good. You cannot even feel this drive spinning.
It took the 5400 drive 2 minutes and 7 seconds to convert the 3 minute I movie of me in front of the iSight into a Quicktime broadband low file. That could't be right, so I recorded it again and got the same results.
Next I pulled in the same podcast into GarageBand. It took the 5400 drive 24 seconds to send it to iTunes. By comparison my dual 1.85Ghz G5 takes between 12 and 13 seconds to send this podcast into iTunes.
Needless to say I'm sending this drive back and rethinking what to get instead. I'm pretty shocked by these simple little tests, which duplicates the kind of tasks I would perform on this MacBook.
Maybe I got a bad drive? I did have two kernel panics on the 7200 when trying to install OS X before my successful third attempt.
As always, YMMV.
Dual G5 tower ~ MacBook   Mac OS X (10.4)  

Answer 1

When you install a new HD with a fresh install of Mac OS X you will be subject to Spotlight whirring away in background in order to build its data base holding file meta data. This could be part of your performancei ssue you raise.
Also, it could be that a new drive requires some sanity checking of all of its data space - again, this could interfer with your performance measurements.
The vibration issue is another thing altogether. Of course it's spinning faster than the stock 5400 rpm HD, but if it's balanced it should not cause vibration to the degree you've reported. Others here report no such vibration so it could be you have a bad HD and should have it replaced. Then check again for vibrartion. If vibration persists then it's a function of your install procedure or your MacBook construction. The HD in laptops typically have small rubber supports to reduce/eliminate vibrations - maybe one of those rubber bushings has become dislodged during replacing your HD.
Good luck and post back what happens next.