7200RPM Hard drives in a Powerbook?

N

Nosh

Registered
I've noticed Hitachi has released a 60GB 7200RPM 2.5" notebook hard disk. I was wondering what anyones thoughts (or experiences if you've already tried this) are about sticking one into a 17" Powerbook. It's something I'd like to do, because 4200RPM dosen't seem to do it for me. If no one has tried those new drives yet, could someone elaborate about how a 5400RPM drive affects a Powerbook, performance and battery wise? Thanks a lot.

Nosh
 
Well, as the disk spins faster, the computer sucks more power and generates more heat, basically. If you stuck a 15,000 RPM hard drive into your 17" PB, your legs would turn to PB and J in a matter of minutes. What do you need the speed for? If you're doing video editing, get as fast a hard drive as possible. For most other applications, the 5400 should work pretty well.
 
Well i'm a technophile. If it's new and fast, I want it. How much power does a 5400rpm drive consume over a 4200?

Nosh
 
The new Hitachi hard drive supposedly consumes as much or a little more than typical 5400 RPM drives. So it might not be so bad in terms of battery life and heat. It is possible to install OSX on an external firewire hard drive. So get one that's 7200 RPMs and plug it in when you boot. I think it's kinda cool, especially with pocket sized external drives. I can leave it in my pocket, if my laptop gets stolen or lost my data is still with me.

Chances are you'll have to buy the drive then take it to an Apple store for them to do the upgrade. I don't think the hard drive is user accesible and if you wanna be adventurous you're risking voiding the warrenty.
 
You need to open screws with a special pattern. Impossible to do without messing up with them. So, better check out at your Apple store. Btw, higher spin doesn't necessarily mean more performance. Some discs have a much higher byte-density and they perform even better than a 7200rpm disc with lower density. So, better first check out some benchmarks before you start messing with your powerbook! ;)
 
But the Hitachi HD also has 8 MB cache right? That'll more than compensate even if the 4200 drives have higher byte-density :)
 
That cache is between the disk and the bus. It can improve small file-transfers, but when it comes to a huge file the only thing matters are bus-bandwidt, rpm and data-density. I had a cache-controler for my pc and it was not really it, if you ask me...
 
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