Ableton Forum

I'm thinking of making the change to a Macbook but was wondering, is there much difference between the two drive speeds? Is it even possible to get the 7200RPM 100GB HD option with non Pro Macbooks?

i have the 5400 drive in my new mbp.

when at home, and i'm running off a 7200 external firewire. (I plan on getting an external firewire800, now that i have a port for it.)

but on stage i don't bother with an exernal drive... 5400 does the trick just fine.

7200rpm makes a big difference (especially for load times of things). though i don't know about the availability of them in macs.

Well the MBP has the option of a 100GB 7200RPM but the MB doesn't. If 5400RPM is ok for Live then I'll just stick with that. Maybe get an external drive at a later date..

there was a thread recently with some interesting results of a HD test between different speeds and capacities.

Upgrading a HDD in a macbook is VERY easy if you have the slightest tech skills. If you go and buy one of those USB-to-SATA/IDE laptop HDD adaptors, you can clone your HDD to a new HDD using SuperDuper, then just swap them out. Easy as anything. I've upgraded/cloned hard disks in macs quite a few times without problems.

5400 works just fine for me. didn't the macbooks have an issue with excessive heat? 7200 rpm = more heat too.

Want pretty graphs of it all? These guys got one of each HDD that the new MBP comes with and tried them all out:

http://www.barefeats.com/mbcd7.html

i changed mine to 7200 but it was too loud so i went back to 5400

dru wrote:I'm thinking of making the change to a Macbook but was wondering, is there much difference between the two drive speeds? Is it even possible to get the 7200RPM 100GB HD option with non Pro Macbooks?

I've just taken delivery of a stock black macbook (stock so that i can take it to the store and swap it out easily in case of hw probs).

My plan is to go for the 200GB 7200 rpm pmr drive that hitachi is releasing in about 6 months. It's a DIY thing on a macbook. The 120GB 5400 drive will do til then.

the new macbooks use sata.

this is fine, because data with sata goes both ways "syncrhonious"

with the ide interface, 5400 was too slow, but modern 540 drives are just fine.

forgie wrote:Upgrading a HDD in a macbook is VERY easy if you have the slightest tech skills. If you go and buy one of those USB-to-SATA/IDE laptop HDD adaptors, you can clone your HDD to a new HDD using SuperDuper, then just swap them out. Easy as anything. I've upgraded/cloned hard disks in macs quite a few times without problems.

hey, i'd love to know which adapter you've found that has worked well. i've been testing several diffferent Sata adapters and they all blow! so far i've had great repeatable success with only one model and it's $300.

If you already have an external firewire drive if might be easier to image you drive to that, then restore that image back onto the new drive after the upgrade.

bencodec wrote:

forgie wrote:Upgrading a HDD in a macbook is VERY easy if you have the slightest tech skills. If you go and buy one of those USB-to-SATA/IDE laptop HDD adaptors, you can clone your HDD to a new HDD using SuperDuper, then just swap them out. Easy as anything. I've upgraded/cloned hard disks in macs quite a few times without problems.

hey, i'd love to know which adapter you've found that has worked well. i've been testing several diffferent Sata adapters and they all blow! so far i've had great repeatable success with only one model and it's $300.

If you already have an external firewire drive if might be easier to image you drive to that, then restore that image back onto the new drive after the upgrade.

I think what he was saying is that Hitachi makes a replacement HDD for your laptop, but in the package comes a USB cord, and a housing for the old drive. What you do is clone the old HDD via USB, then you can swap out the old for the new, but it isn't like reformatting your computer, it will start up just as before. Then you can put the old drive in the housing, and use it for backup.

Rogue Scrunt wrote:the new macbooks use sata.

this is fine, because data with sata goes both ways "syncrhonious"

with the ide interface, 5400 was too slow, but modern 540 drives are just fine.

That is wrong on so many levels it's hilarious. SATA is Serial ATA. With a single drive attached ATA133 and SATA150 present almost identical performance.

The theoretical difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM drives is an increase in sustained read/write and seek because the data is moving under the head faster. That means when you seek to a random sector on the 7200RPM disk if it happens to be on the other side of the platter when the command comes it will appear under the head faster than a 5400RPM drive would. It also means that if you request a sequential sequence of sectors you'll get more of them moving under the head of the 7200 in the same amount of time.

The real performance boost SATA can provide comes from NCQ, Native Command Queuing. This is where the controller is allowed to bundle requests, and the drive is allowed to resort them to better match it's physical layout. NCQ is dependent on controller, driver, and drive support. Most of the recent stuff does it though.

To know what performance gain you'll get isn't simply a matter of "SATA better than PATA" or "7200 always beats 5400", it's a matter of knowing exactly what drives, controllers, OS, drivers, apps and load you're using. You need to actually measure these metrics and make your decision then. I chose 5400/160Gb simply because I got 60% more space for minimal performance loss.

and er...please dont ignore me...7200 drives are louder!