7200 RPM laptop drives

edIT · Post by **edIT** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 10:44 pm

We all know that 7200 RPM firewire drives are the way to for running sessions via firewire. However would it be worth it to get a 7200RPM 2.5" laptop drive? Would it really increase performance? This is assuming that you still ran sessions off an external firewire drive.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 4:19 am

Well the benefits of a faster Internal drive are loading applications, and loading OS. from powerbutton to desktop, your OS will load much faster with a 5400rpm or 7200rpm internal HD.

If you were to get a faster internal HD though, you would get better disk performance by using the internal HD rather than a Firewire400 7200rpm drive, and the Same performance as using a Firewire800 7200rpm drive.

I know alot of folks think that running Live from an internal drive and running your Samples from an external is the best bet. Kind of like spreading the operations over 2 disks. But they forget that Live AND the OS are loaded into ram. Live is performing from memory, so there's no benefit in playing your samples from a 7200rpm external drive instead of a 7200rpm internal drive. In fact unless you are using FW800, the internal option will give you better bandwidth.

Unless Capacity is an issue and you need more than 60GB, there's no reason to run from an external drive once you have an internal 7200rpm drive. So, the benefit would be running your sessions from that drive INSTEAD of the external.

tribalogical · Post by **tribalogical** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 9:20 am

edIT wrote:We all know that 7200 RPM firewire drives are the way to for running sessions via firewire. However would it be worth it to get a 7200RPM 2.5" laptop drive? Would it really increase performance? This is assuming that you still ran sessions off an external firewire drive.

I picked up one of those Hitachi 2.5" 60Gb/7200rpm/8Mb cache drives, threw it in a combo FW400/800 enclosure and it rips right along... I get about 30Mb/sec throughput in FW800, and about 20Mb/sec via FW400... either is plenty for streaming a lot of clips at once (I haven't hit the limit yet, but tend not to have more than about 16 tracks or so running at any given time... and usually much less than that).

I can't recommend using the internal drive as an "all-in-one" solution (at least, not on a Mac) as there are other things going on that can slow or interrupt performance... not least of which is, if you don't have enough RAM to cover all the bases, you'll start "virtual swappng" off that internal drive which can severely impede disk streaming....

I am quite happy with the small external drive. It powers off the FW bus, and weighs about a 1/2 pound... I'm even considering getting a second!

It's well recommended from my experience...

peace,
tribalogical

pulse · Post by **pulse** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 12:41 pm

Hi

I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 with the hitachi 60 GB 7200 rpm

no probs at all ... I dont need external drives ...

I was a bit nervous about buying my notebook from the net ... also with my special requirment of 7200 drive but everything went fine

the first thing I did when receiving it was to pick up the HD to read what is read on it and "ouf" it was the hitachi 7200 rpm

it really works !
bye
Pulse

::mic-minimal:: · Post by **::mic-minimal::** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 6:38 pm

so whats the best place to get these drives, least amount of money?

7200 RPM laptop drives

7200 RPM laptop drives

Re: 7200 RPM laptop drives