Ableton Forum

For those interested in MacBook Pro's and
the relative speeds of 5400 vs. 7200 rpm,
external FW400 vs. FW800, here's a succinct
and straightforward summary of one guy's
benchmark testing:

http://www.barefeats.com/5472.html

Some nice little charts there. His conclusions:

>>>>>
1. The 7200rpm internal drive is NOT significantly faster than the stock 5400rpm when doing small RANDOM reads and writes. That implies that it won't give you much advantage for booting and normal operations.

2. If you work on audio or video where large blocks are captured or played back, the 7200rpm internal drive of the MacBook has a clear advantage over the stock 5400rpm internal drive.

3. Internal drives exhibited higher random write rates than external FireWire drives.

4. If you plan to connect a fast 3.5 inch 7200rpm hard drive to the FireWire 400 port of the MacBook Pro, you will lose a lot of speed compared to using the FireWire 800 port of the Powerbook G4. Thankfully, I know of at least two companies who will soon release ExpresCard/34 SATA and/or FireWire 800 products that will allow your MacBook Pro to enjoy truly fast external storage.
<<<<<

Hope this is useful...

-- Kid B

This is very useful indeed ! Thank you!

Are you already working with a MacBook at this early stage? And how satisfied are you?

=( dont make me feel bad about getting the 5400rpm drive.


actually screw that i dont feel bad.


the 7200rpm is pointless for me considering it is only 100gb.

i dont want to swamp my computer while i'm on the road for other stuff.


i need that expres card to come out so i can purchase a big fat external harddrive to keep all my samples and such on it.


filling up your internal harddrive to the max is asking for crashses.

Digi V wrote:

filling up your internal harddrive to the max is asking for crashses.

True.... but the stuff for live shows has to be on there, and on that it may help to have the faster drive.......

FORMAT wrote:This is very useful indeed ! Thank you!

Are you already working with a MacBook at this early stage? And how satisfied are you?

Nope, I'm sorta waiting for...

1) the speedstepping issue to be resolved
2) my crucial VSTs to come out as Universal Binaries

and maybe by then there'll be...

3) a slightly newer MacBook Pro available,
with some of the little kinks worked out.

-- Kid B

kidbeyond wrote:

FORMAT wrote:This is very useful indeed ! Thank you!

Are you already working with a MacBook at this early stage? And how satisfied are you?

Nope, I'm sorta waiting for...

1) the speedstepping issue to be resolved
2) my crucial VSTs to come out as Universal Binaries

and maybe by then there'll be...

3) a slightly newer MacBook Pro available,
with some of the little kinks worked out.

-- Kid B

I'm doing the same. Here's to hoping that'll happen soon.

Hmm...so your saying that storing everything on the internal drive is waaay faster? My roommate, an audio engineer (that actually works in the industry), advised me to use one external firewire drive for sessions (songs) and one external firewire drive for data (samples, loops, etc.). He says that's how most studios are run and that there really isn't a speed issue. If your trying to access date and sessions from a single drive that should slow things down.

Disagree?

I figure it would be a bit different loading a song/audio into RAM (most DAWs) instead of Streaming (Live)... that is where the bottleneck happens. You need a TON of throughput to stream effectively. FW800 or internals have that throughput.

IMO

I like that Kramerica.
Also the speed test info i have seen on various posts could be less than real world.
Its my understanding that my macbook pro drive(laptop drives in general) are 2.5 inch as opposed to standard 3.5 inch drives . Am I wrong in assuming that given the same conditions the larger 3.5 inch drives will always outperform the smaller 2.5 inch drives.
I also have a Glyph GT050 firewire rack drive left over from my G4 897mhz (firewire400) set up , Is it pointless using this as a BFD/Audio drive because my internal 5400rpm 2.5 inch drive will perform better (or the 2.5 7200rpm upgrade for that matter) cant see that.
[/b]

kidbeyond wrote:

FORMAT wrote:This is very useful indeed ! Thank you!

Are you already working with a MacBook at this early stage? And how satisfied are you?

Nope, I'm sorta waiting for...

1) the speedstepping issue to be resolved
2) my crucial VSTs to come out as Universal Binaries

and maybe by then there'll be...

3) a slightly newer MacBook Pro available,
with some of the little kinks worked out.

-- Kid B

Same here.
for now i will tolerate this HP beat of a laptop.
it ain't elegant but it's cpu is huge.
still, i can't wait for the Macbook with SATA.
maybe end of year?

kramerica wrote:Hmm...so your saying that storing everything on the internal drive is waaay faster? My roommate, an audio engineer (that actually works in the industry), advised me to use one external firewire drive for sessions (songs) and one external firewire drive for data (samples, loops, etc.). He says that's how most studios are run and that there really isn't a speed issue. If your trying to access date and sessions from a single drive that should slow things down.

Disagree?

the only way the 3.5 inch drive will outperform the 2.5 inch internal drive on the macbook at 7200rpm is if it's a SATA drive. internal macbook vs. external firewire 400 drive - macbook drive is faster (mainly because of the speed of FW400). if you put that 3.5 inch drive on a SATA bus, then the 3.5 will beat the 2.5.

yea....

internal macbook SATA bus = 150MB/sec
firewire400 bus = 50MB/sec

I got the 100GB 7200 rpm SATA with my MBP, but I'm feeling the space cruch more than anything. I look forward to the upcoming Fujitsu 200 GB internal, even if it's only 4200 rpm.

http://www.computerworld.com/hardwareto ... 46,00.html

For external storage, I think these quad interface drives will be perfect once there are SATA cards for the ExpressCard slot:

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVEQ.cfm

I have a spare 300 GB SATA drive, but they don't sell empty enclosures. Does anyone know of a quad-interface enclosure?

jason

All good stuff , am respecting the information.
Are we saying that my internal standard Macbook drive(5400rpm) could record stereo audio at 24bit/44.1khz whilst playing back 24 tracks of 24bit/44.1khz , and be fast enough to run eq/dynamics/reverbs/EXS24 sampler/ etc in Logic / And BFD as well as the OS? .
I know this is subjective stuff . Ime surprised people are saying the standard internal(5400rpm) is faster than my Glyph GT050 firewire 400 (External 3.5 7200).
Also will it improve internal 100 gb drive performance by partitioning it , any sugestions for partition size for OS(+Logic/Ableton/Apps etc) and the audio partition.
Ime a bit stuffed really because Ime waiting for Logic crossgrade CD and dont want to upgrade Live until I decide if I will upgrade the internal drive to a 7200rpm.
Opinions welcome.
Anybody having good results with Novation25SL Remote .
Any thoughts on using internal audio?
Enough , thanks guys.