Ableton Forum

i'm buying a new macbook pro soon and i was wondering which HD to get:

200GB 7200rpm
or
250GB 5400rpm


is 7200 really a lot faster than the 5400 ?

would you recommend a 7200rpm internal and an external HD for storage, perhaps?

5400 will save you some power and heat.

7200 will get a higher track count and possibly a "snappier" system.

That said. I'm doing quite fine with my 5400 internal on the Mac Mini. Have an exernal 7200 FW drive to complement it.

.m

7200rpm is considered the minimum for doing any streaming audio work...
DJs could get by with 5400rpm as they'd only be streaming 2 tracks a time generally.

If you get an external make sure it's 7200 and FW800, as the Mac Pros have FW800.

kaffein wrote:7200rpm is considered the minimum for doing any streaming audio work...

I respectfully disagree. I've succesfully played songs with 12-16 tracks out of a 5400 laptop drive (on an old Pentium M with a gig of RAM, for that matter) for a long time. No disk hits what so ever.

But of course 7200 is faster and can handle considerably more. It's a trade-off with heat and power consumption, though.

.m

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:

kaffein wrote:7200rpm is considered the minimum for doing any streaming audio work...

I respectfully disagree. I've succesfully played songs with 12-16 tracks out of a 5400 laptop drive (on an old Pentium M with a gig of RAM, for that matter) for a long time. No disk hits what so ever.

But of course 7200 is faster and can handle considerably more. It's a trade-off with heat and power consumption, though.

.m

You can... But I'm a firm believer in overhead.

Heat could be problematic... Hell they don't even give you the option to have one for the regular macbooks. Temped to rip my 5400rpm out and put a 7200 in though.

Overhead is good.

.m

I'm using a 5400rpm wintel laptop. I'm occassionally having problems with the 'D' light flashing and some drop outs. It's nothing that can't be addressed by using RAM mode, changing samples to mono etc etc. Probably would really annoy me if I was using massive pro-sample libraries to create drill and bass.

overhead? què?

fstfrwrd wrote:overhead? què?

More power than you actually need. A safety margin.

.m

I just tossed a new Hitachi Travelstar 200/7200 into my Mac Book, and it seems to run quieter and cooler than the stock 100/5400.

the_planet wrote:I just tossed a new Hitachi Travelstar 200/7200 into my Mac Book, and it seems to run quieter and cooler than the stock 100/5400.

i heard the MBP hard drives aren't user-replacable, though.
so if i make the wrong decision now, i'm stuck to it until i get rid of the thing

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:

kaffein wrote:7200rpm is considered the minimum for doing any streaming audio work...

I respectfully disagree. I've succesfully played songs with 12-16 tracks out of a 5400 laptop drive (on an old Pentium M with a gig of RAM, for that matter) for a long time. No disk hits what so ever.

But of course 7200 is faster and can handle considerably more. It's a trade-off with heat and power consumption, though.

.m

Hi man,

Did you were using a rendered Audio stereo track for Drums and multi-Sampled instruments or impulse/Drum Racks/Sampler natively (this would have increased the track count)?
I ask this because lately when using Drum Racks on my MacBook drive sometimes jitters when complicated Drum parts or Samples, like EIC Piano are there...

- Best
- Pasha

fstfrwrd wrote:i heard the MBP hard drives aren't user-replacable, though.
so if i make the wrong decision now, i'm stuck to it until i get rid of the thing

Oops, good point. Well you can replace them, but it violates warranty and it's a real pain in the ass.

If you're just doing multitracking, the Mac Book is plenty powerful. I'm currently recording my band (about 14-20 channels with EQ8s and some effects), and it works great. If you really need the horsepower for your 15 instances of a convo reverb, then get a MBP and an external 7200 firewire drive with an Oxford chipset. Or even an external sata drive and a sata expresscard.

@ Pasha,

This was before drum racks. But when talking streaming audio tracks I do not include VSTs, instruments Devices, Samplers or racks in any form. Just pure stereo .wav data.

I think that jitter could occur on large sample libraries 'cause there's no way to "predict" what sample is needed next. When using plain continous audio files they just play linearily (is that a word?). Unless your drive is really fragmented. But we do take care of that - don't we?

.m