Ableton Forum

Hey guys,

I'm upgrading the drive on my Macbook, and I'm trying to decide between 7200 RPM and 5400 RPM for my new drive. Is there a big performance difference, especially with Ableton? Is there a big battery drain difference?

Please let me know! Thanks!

I can't speak for battery drain personally (although I have heard that 7200s do drain more, but the amount varies by system), but the performance increase is huge. I plan to go with 7200s until I can afford SSDs, because the difference is just that great for me.

Damn, really?

SSDs fail more often than spinning drives.

some poster recently did a nice writeup on the details of that mess.

agent314 wrote:I can't speak for battery drain personally (although I have heard that 7200s do drain more, but the amount varies by system), but the performance increase is huge. I plan to go with 7200s until I can afford SSDs, because the difference is just that great for me.

Others will say the performance increase is negligible, including myself. I also wouldn't know about the battery drain because my MBP is almost always plugged into the wall.

Personally I would choose drive capacity over RPM because drive space has always been more of an issue for me.

It's only a $20 difference between 500GB 7200 RPM and 500GB 5400 RPM. So the price is really neglgible. I'm not choosing between speed vs. capacity. I'm choosing "battery and heat impact vs.speed"

Punky921 wrote:It's only a $20 difference between 500GB 7200 RPM and 500GB 5400 RPM. So the price is really neglgible. I'm not choosing between speed vs. capacity. I'm choosing "battery and heat impact vs.speed"

But you can also get 640GB drives. Dunno if they have those in 7200 RPM, been awhile since I checked. I've already outgrown the 500GB. I like having everything on my internal drive if possible, especially a laptop.

I believe the order of what is important with performance is RAM amount, drive size (including free space available), and then RPM.

i went from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm drive, the difference is noticeable but tiny, i only discovered a small change when starting the system, or applications... did not made any track count tests yet, that might have increased a bit too, but if, i reckon it is as tiny as the other increase.

and even the difference is small, i recommend going 7200rpm.

It just works a little faster

SubFunk wrote:i went from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm drive, the difference is noticeable but tiny, i only discovered a small change when starting the system, or applications... did not made any track count tests yet, that might have increased a bit too, but if, i reckon it is as tiny as the other increase.

and even the difference is small, i recommend going 7200rpm.

this ^

it should help with some load times, nothing to call all your friends about, but nice none the less. After you're going though, the difference should be slight if even noticeable. For example it may shave a few secs of loading Live and maybe render a sample (that's stored on the that drive) a little faster, but once thats done it won't make any real difference. still, for 20 bucks I'd go that route. if heat was that big of an issue then they wouldn't off the option in the first place.

little faster? 33% faster. I'd call that significant.

drives are cheap, go 7200. it's not worth the annoying as feck hard drive blinking and crapping on your session.

^ its significant yes, but that doesn't mean your computer is going to be 33% faster at everything it does, just what it reads off the hard drive and just those things that are dependent on the hard drive. so if the bottle neck was the hard drive then you'll see an improvement. if the bottleneck was RAM or CPU then no change.

still, I agree. go for it. 100%

true. only time I get HD glitches is when I have a bunch of long samples. it makes placing warp markers sound all funky while it fetches the new data.

Absolutely worths. Battery and heat did not changed so much for me.

Tone Deft wrote:little faster? 33% faster. I'd call that significant.

drives are cheap, go 7200. it's not worth the annoying as feck hard drive blinking and crapping on your session.

33% ???

i don't know, it's technical measurement bullshit, i know you love that!

if at all, i say 5-10% in reality.

a SSD is significant faster, that you fell instantly, i know one that has a SSD and there apps and the comp start so fast it's unbelievable... you click on an apps item and the program starts in less then a second!