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5400rpm vs. 7200rpm day to day use

Anuba said:
My understanding is that there's virtually no performance gain from a 7200 rpm drive when doing quick, random reads and writes. The boot time may be a fraction faster, but that's about it. The real difference happens when you're working with very large files, for example if you're doing audio recording on multiple tracks or working with large video files (or large file transfers in general).
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Agreed

The difference is highly subjective as the user installing a 7200 RPM drive is looking for a difference in speed. That new speed is usually felt more because they have a fresh install of OS X (or whatever operating system they use), and lots of free space offering more VM for the system to use.

For most users on here (surfing the web, working on documents, iphoto, and light iMovie work), the time savings may only be a few seconds during your workflow.


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Anuba said:
My understanding is that there's virtually no performance gain from a 7200 rpm drive when doing quick, random reads and writes.
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That's not really true. A fast 7200rpm drive like WD3200BEKT has much faster random reads and writes than a 5400rpm drive with the same density.

Anuba said:
The real difference happens when you're working with very large files, for example if you're doing audio recording on multiple tracks or working with large video files (or large file transfers in general).
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That's true in general.

When you get down to the specifics there can be 5400rpm drives that outperform 7200rpm drives, even with large files.
 
Philflow said:
That's not really true. A fast 7200rpm drive like WD3200BEKT has much faster random reads and writes than a 5400rpm drive with the same density.


That's true in general.

When you get down to the specifics there can be 5400rpm drives that outperform 7200rpm drives, even with large files.
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Right.

Any word on the 5400 stock drive?

I know Apple uses WD on Mac Pro... good ones even (WD Black w/ 32MB cache if you go for the 1 TB option), but the MBP drives could be Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate, whatever... they're pretty agnostic about it.

Edit: Meh, I cancelled my order for an MBP 17" with 7200 RPM drive and ordered the default config with 5400 instead. Shipping within 24 hrs (it was 5-7 business days on the cancelled one).

There has to be something fishy with CTO... if I opted for the DVI adapter (which is obviously not inside the computer) the estimate changed from 24 hrs to 2-4 business days, but if I order the same adapter as a separate item, it ships within 24 hours. They're clearly trying to discourage people from messing with CTO instead of going with the default config.
 
I purchased the "stock" highest-end Macbook Pro 15" (should be arriving today). Comes with 5400 500 GB. I didn't see the point in upgrading to 7200 for a couple of reasons:

1.) Not a huge speed difference.
2.) A 7200 drive will always use more power than a comparable 5400.
3.) Apple won't let you return the machine if you "customize" it. That includes changing the config on their site.

My advice: get whatever machine you want and upgrade through 3rd-party parts. NewEgg sells a 7200 500 GB drive for $130. Given what I've seen from the 13" teardown, assuming the 15" is similar, it should be ludicrously simple to upgrade the drive.
 
covertsurfer said:
So...

7200rpm Seagate 7200.4 vs Hitachi TravelStar 5K500.B

Who wins?
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Speedwise the WD Scorpio Blue wins, and power consumption wise the Hitatchi wins. The seagate will do better with very large transfers but for normal day to day tasks the WD Blue is faster.
 
Philflow said:
They're quite similar in speed:
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17010/7 (about 20 benchmarks)
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Doesn't get any more midrange than that... the Hitachi ends up in the middle in almost every test.

Those Momentus drives sure do suck. The Scorpio Blue is quite the gem... slashes access time in half (5.6 ms vs 12 for all the others).

I noticed that all 5400 drives have 8 MB cache, while 7200 drives have 16 MB. Is it pointless to have 16 MB on 5400 drives? Bigger cache is supposedly one hell of a performance booster on 7200 drives, the ones with 32 MB really fly.
 
So do these 7200 drives really have all the vibrations people report them to? Some reviews I've read say yes and some say no.

I'm going to be going into music business in college, mainly in the recording industry and I want to know what will be better for me. I was thinking of getting the scorpio blue 500, but I'm still questioning whether the 7200 is worth it or not. I don't care about the battery life but is there more noise or any vibrations like some people mention?
 
Traeger2591 said:
So do these 7200 drives really have all the vibrations people report them to? Some reviews I've read say yes and some say no.
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It's also matter of luck, one drive vibrates the other doesn't. You can find Newegg customer reports as examples. But generally speaking 7200rpm drives vibrate more than 5400rpm drives.

I had a WD1600BEKT and it vibrated slightly. No problem though.

Traeger2591 said:
I'm going to be going into music business in college, mainly in the recording industry and I want to know what will be better for me. I was thinking of getting the scorpio blue 500, but I'm still questioning whether the 7200 is worth it or not.
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If you read the review mentioned above you will see that the 5400rpm WD5000BEVT is actually faster than the Seagate 7200.4. Also in Multi media appliactions.
 
I vote Hitachi for battery life and quietness. I think there is a set of serial #s that I got when I had the WD Blue that made this sound when the head was moving. The idle noise was also louder than this Hitachi.
 
Well...

I would invest in as much RAM as you can afford instead of a fast drive...money is much better spend and you WILL notice a difference.

:cool:
 
In regards to the 7200.4 vs the Hitachi on the high end 15" MBP, would the 7200.4 show more benefit when loading and recording large software instruments such as Spectrasonics Omnisphere in Logic Pro? I read that 7200 rpm is very important for music production (no live recording as of now, just software instruments), but if I can order a standard config without losing much speed, I'd just get the 5400 rpm drive (which is the Hitachi in the 2.8, right?)
 
mike1123 said:
In regards to the 7200.4 vs the Hitachi on the high end 15" MBP, would the 7200.4 show more benefit when loading and recording large software instruments such as Spectrasonics Omnisphere in Logic Pro? I read that 7200 rpm is very important for music production (no live recording as of now, just software instruments), but if I can order a standard config without losing much speed, I'd just get the 5400 rpm drive (which is the Hitachi in the 2.8, right?)
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Depends on whether Omnisphere uses disk streaming or keeps all the samples in RAM, but I'm guessing it's RAM, in which case the only benefit from a 7200 rpm drive is marginally faster load timed for large patches.
 
Anuba said:
Depends on whether Omnisphere uses disk streaming or keeps all the samples in RAM, but I'm guessing it's RAM, in which case the only benefit from a 7200 rpm drive is marginally faster load timed for large patches.
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Okay, I think you're right about that, and that makes sense, but what about when I play back or record a song that already has many tracks (say 25) with software instruments playing (I guess if they are archived they will run off the HDD vs if they were in RAM)? I just don't want the song to slow down because the HDD isn't fast enough.

Right now on my 2.4 GHz iMac (4GB RAM), it would seem the bottleneck for number of simultaneous tracks is the CPU and RAM. Anyone with more insight on this?
 
mike1123 said:
Okay, I think you're right about that, and that makes sense, but what about when I play back or record a song that already has many tracks (say 25) with software instruments playing (I guess if they are archived they will run off the HDD vs if they were in RAM)? I just don't want the song to slow down because the HDD isn't fast enough.

Right now on my 2.4 GHz iMac (4GB RAM), it would seem the bottleneck for number of simultaneous tracks is the CPU and RAM. Anyone with more insight on this?
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Well, generally it's not a good idea to do multitrack audio recording on your boot drive, especially on a laptop. It's better to use an external firewire 800 drive. The problem is, the unibodies only have a single FW port. The older ones used to have both FW400 and 800, so you could plug your audio interface into the 400 port and your external drive into the 800 port.

Anyway, if you were to use the internal drive then a 7200 one might be more suitable. 7200 rpm drives shine when you're reading and writing very large files, and audio tracks tend to be large(ish). But I wouldn't worry about the hard drive choking with 25 tracks and a few virtual instruments playing, unless the settings are extreme (e.g. tiny audio buffer, 96 kHz etc).
 
Anuba said:
Well, generally it's not a good idea to do multitrack audio recording on your boot drive, especially on a laptop. It's better to use an external firewire 800 drive. The problem is, the unibodies only have a single FW port. The older ones used to have both FW400 and 800, so you could plug your audio interface into the 400 port and your external drive into the 800 port.

Anyway, if you were to use the internal drive then a 7200 one might be more suitable. 7200 rpm drives shine when you're reading and writing very large files, and audio tracks tend to be large(ish). But I wouldn't worry about the hard drive choking with 25 tracks and a few virtual instruments playing, unless the settings are extreme (e.g. tiny audio buffer, 96 kHz etc).
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Well, I've always run Logic/Omni off my boot drive (some of the Logic files need to be installed on it), and seeing that I'm heading into college, I'd rather not have to splurge on a 2nd external (I have to buy a bigger backup drive first). In terms of the 5400 Hitachi vs the 7200.4 Seagate, the extra $45 isn't what concerns me, but if I ever have to exchange it if something doesn't work, am I screwed if it's CTO?
 
gfrancetich said:
Will I really notice a difference between a 5400rpm drive and a 7200rpm one? I'm not going to be using my laptop for anything that demanding, but are 7200 drives really that much faster? Is it worth 80 bucks?
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To be honest with you, not really. I previously had the Western Digital 500GB 5400RPM on my MacBook Pro but decided to switch to the 500GB 7200RPM Seagate.

You will notice a difference on the startup, it loads up much faster and that's the main reason why I got it since I turn off my computer quite often. After the computer is loaded up, you won't notice much difference unless you are doing lots of dragging and dropping.
 
my situation

hi I'm a college student and I'm going to buy a mbp but my question now is, should I get the 5400 or the 7200?
I've read this and a couple of other thread's and its a bit confusing :p
I'm not in the music or something I'm actually in ITC (programming)
now I handle a lot of video files (700 MB) for transfer and conversion (I'm a bit the teck wiz for all my friends :p)
I also like the occasional (rather latest) game to play.
As its a mpb for around 2000€ I dont really care about the extra 45€ but I was wondering if it:
1. would make much difference?
2. how much the battery consumption would be affected? (battery is handy in class)
3. would I notice the difference in noise?

thanks for you're patience with another post with this question on this forum and btw the link for the benchmark wont work for me
 
The only 500GB 7200rpm drive available is the Seagate 7200.4. In real life it is not faster than the 500GB 5400rpm drives from WD and Hitachi. So there's no point in getting it.

Kristalghost said:
btw the link for the benchmark wont work for me
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Techreport seems to be down at the moment. It will be back.
 
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