Which HD is faster?

[NavyIntel007]

I have an ibook 500 with 20 GB hard drive. I plan to get a 15" powerbook this summer with the 40 GB drive. I saw an ad in Macworld for a 5400 RPM 60 GB drive with a 16 mb buffer. I know that this third drive will be faster than both and is why I'm thinking about buying it.

My question is since the rotation speeds, buffers, and bus speed would be the same is there anyway the 40 GB powerbook drive will out perform the 20 GB HD if I put it in the iBook?

Thanks.

 

[Sun Baked]

Re: Which HD is faster?

Originally posted by NavyIntel007
My question is since the rotation speeds, buffers, and bus speed would be the same is there anyway the 40 GB powerbook drive will out perform the 20 GB HD if I put it in the iBook?

You actually have to look up the specs at the manufacturers website, and even then the software of one drive over the other may interact better with your computer than another.

But even if all the drives are close in performance, or even if one stands out above the rest, the power consumption of the drive may still play a part in deciding which drive to use.

Or plainly, you haven't given near enough info for anyone to make a reasonable guess.

---

If they were all the same manufacturer and the same drive family, you'd be able to make a guess maybe.

But different drive families and drive manufacturers drives are all a bit different. They are sometimes optimized for different types of read/write streams. The specs don't include this info, but some of the drive performance test may shed light on it.

 

[Stike]

this belongs NOT to current events

 

[ddtlm]

NavyIntel007:

The density of data on the disk has a large impact on how fast it can transfer data, so often higher capacity disks are also faster. However this is not always the case, because sometimes a disk simply has more platters and therefore the densitty isn't really higher. Of course that isn't an issue on laptops because as far as I know all laptop drives are single platter.

The 60gig should crush the 20gig easy and should also be faster than the 40gig.

 

[caveman_uk]

The rotational speed of the drive seems to be the biggest guide to the speed of the drive in real world situations. The interface and buffer size give extra oomph but the rotational speed is critical. So a 7200 rpm is faster than an 5400rpm and that's faster than a 4800rpm. I believe the ibooks is a 4800rpm (I've got one and they're pretty damn slow drives). You'll need to check the drives will fit as the ibook one is pretty thin - and also requires pretty much a complete take apart.

 

[gotohamish]

Re: Which HD is faster?

Originally posted by NavyIntel007
I have an ibook 500 with 20 GB hard drive. I plan to get a 15" powerbook this summer with the 40 GB drive. I saw an ad in Macworld for a 5400 RPM 60 GB drive with a 16 mb buffer. I know that this third drive will be faster than both and is why I'm thinking about buying it.

My question is since the rotation speeds, buffers, and bus speed would be the same is there anyway the 40 GB powerbook drive will out perform the 20 GB HD if I put it in the iBook?

Thanks.

It's pretty likely, that if they're stock config models, that both are 4800 speed. The 5400 speed driver were only ever BTO from Apple.

I've just got a 5400 IBM 40GB with 8MB cache, should add a little something to my Ti500!

 

[ddtlm]

caveman_uk:

There are plenty of new 5400rpm disks that are faster than old 7200rpm disks.