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7200 HDD in the Ultraportable?

S

sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
998
66
I was wondering if there is a chance that when the ultraportable MBP comes out if there could possibly be a 7200 HDD in it. The reason I ask, is because I do audio recording, and that is the most important thing to me in a computer. I dont know if the current 7200 HDDs would be small enough for the ultraportable, or if there will be some other kind of technology for a small hard drive.

Thanks!
 
sushi said:
Many believe that the ultra portable will have a non-movable type HD (solid state/flash).
Click to expand...

That is what I thought I heard. And I assume these are not near as fast compared to the 7200 HD.

Also, how big can these solid state drives be?
 
Other than pure speculation, I think that we will have to wait and see how it is implemented.

HD speed is only one part of how fast you can access (read/save) your information. Other factors such as the FSB, processor, chip set, etc. are important as well.
 
sammyman said:
That is what I thought I heard. And I assume these are not near as fast compared to the 7200 HD.

Also, how big can these solid state drives be?
Click to expand...

Typically, solid state drives would be faster than their mechanical counterparts. This may or may not be true with the first generation of SSDs, but in theory that is the direction they'll take us. Capacity for SSDs is currently limited to 64 GB, I believe.

I have to say I think this is kind of a crazy thread...you're asking people to speculate about imaginary drives for a machine that doesn't even exist. How you can actually bring yourself to make a decision based on discussion like this is beyond me. What's wrong with waiting and seeing?
 
sushi said:
Other than pure speculation, I think that we will have to wait and see how it is implemented.

HD speed is only one part of how fast you can access (read/save) your information. Other factors such as the FSB, processor, chip set, etc. are important as well.
Click to expand...

Dang! You are right. I am just going to have to get the current MBP with a 7200 hd :( I love the machine, but I think that they have used that design for too many years (like 7 years now). Ultraportable would be nice, but chances are it would not do well for audio recording and would be way too expensive.
 
mrogers said:
I have to say I think this is kind of a crazy thread...you're asking people to speculate about imaginary drives for a machine that doesn't even exist.
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Yes but the drives do currently exist. And I think I read somewhere that they are quite a bit bigger than 64GB.

Speculating about future products helps us make decisions on current models. That is what this forum is all about.
 
i hear ya on the 7200 RPM hard drive bro. i do audio production too. i dont know if i should get the macbook pro now or wait until leopard comes out. does anyone think they will bump the cpu speed on the macbook when leopard drops. if not when do you think they will. i really want the quad processor in that baby. i dream about that every night.
 
sammyman said:
Yes but the drives do currently exist. And I think I read somewhere that they are quite a bit bigger than 64GB.
Click to expand...

Quite a bit bigger? Please show me where. The next step after 64GB is 128GB, which a few companies have announced but not actually brought to market AFAIK, and even on the few laptops you can order with SSDs, that size is not available yet. The 64GB version alone is hugely expensive; currently around $1000 at the retailers I checked (like NewEgg). So you're going to give up a lot of coin and a lot of space to get a SSD in the near future. I don't expect them to really be feasible for most people for another 2 to 3 years.
 
sammyman said:
That is what I thought I heard. And I assume these are not near as fast compared to the 7200 HD.

Also, how big can these solid state drives be?
Click to expand...

I think you suffer from some misconceptions.

First, RPM is not everything in harddisk speed. Other very important factors are data density (higher on bigger drives) and the percentage to which the harddisk is filled. If you compare 100GB 7200rpm vs. 250GB 5400rpm, the 5400 rpm drive will win by a large margin.

Second, the 32GB and 64GB solid state drives that are available have transfer speeds that keep up with any 2.5" hard disk, and they have the same high speed no matter what the file size is, unlike harddisks.
 
sammyman said:
SimpleTech has announced a 64GB SSD that is only 9.5mm thick, half the size of competing SSDs. On April 18, 2007 SimpleTech announced 256GB capacity enterprise level drives available immediately and 512GB capacity drives available late 2007.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/18/simpletech-announces-512gb-and-256gb-3-5-inch-ssd-drives/
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Um, weren't you asking about mobile drives? Those 256/512GB ones are 3.5". Those have nothing to do with this conversation about laptop drives. The biggest laptop drives you can get right now are only 64GB and are $1000+, as we've said. The point is, practical size/cost point of mobile SSDs is still years off.
 
Just to add:

- Usually 2.5" HDs are used in laptops.

- Generally 1.8" HDs are used in ultra portables.

So SSD for ultra portables will probably be 1.8" in size due to space constraints.
 
mrogers said:
Um, weren't you asking about mobile drives? The biggest laptop drives you can get right now are only 64GB and are $1000+, as we've said. The point is, practical size/cost point of mobile SSDs is still years off.
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well if those are a few years off, then why are we discussing them? This thread was about hard drives for the ultraportable. Those dont sound like an option at $1000, and the ultraportable is right around the corner.
 
SSDs are fast. We put a 4GB one in the mail department at my uni for their database. Basically they have to export from this app everyday. It was a 3 hours process, it now takes under 20 minutes.

Once the cost comes down and the drives get bigger I would be one of the first to make the transition. It won't be long before all computers have these. It is inevitable.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064&p=1
 
Current SSD disks (32gb, 64gb) are actually pretty slow compared to mechanical hard drives. Gonna be awhile before we see comparable speeds to a 7200rpm hard disk in the 2.5" notebook size.
 
feelthefire said:
Current SSD disks (32gb, 64gb) are actually pretty slow compared to mechanical hard drives. Gonna be awhile before we see comparable speeds to a 7200rpm hard disk in the 2.5" notebook size.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I was waiting for this type of response.
 
sammyman said:
Thank you. I was waiting for this type of response.
Click to expand...

Did you actually look at the benchmarks from anandtech i posted. Instead of waiting for a response from someone that may very well be wrong. Try researching it a bit.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064&p=7 said:
Our limited testing shows both the strengths and weaknesses of this particular drive when comparing it to one of the best performing consumer desktop drives. The read and write speeds are incredible for an SSD and its vastly superior access and random read rates generate very competitive scores in our application tests. Add to this the fact that the drive is completely silent, offers greatly improved thermals relative to pretty much any mechanical drive, and the ability to withstand extreme vibration and shock, and you have an absolute winner on your hands. Well, almost.


Why almost? The two major weaknesses of this drive are its limited capacity and the very expensive price tag. Opening up your pocketbook for the current introductory price of $1499 will buy you one of the fastest drives for the desktop and certainly the fastest drive available in a 2.5" format for the portable market based upon our current test results. However, $1500 is the cost of a complete midrange notebook with 160GB of storage, and it's tough to look beyond that fact
Click to expand...

And this compared to a 150GB Raptor. Compared to notebook drives (even 7200RPM) I imagine it would be similar or the SSD might perform better than it did against the raptor.
 
sushi said:
Yes.

Not sure they all do, but the one I have and some others that I have looked at, have 1.8 inch HDs.
Click to expand...

Yeah - there are a few that still use 2.5" drives -- but every sub-note I've seen has used a 1.8". Most users of ultra-portable machines are willing to sacrifice some speed for size. At this point, it really is a trade-off because SSD are just too expensive. In a few years, they will be the best option for this sort of thing.

As it stands, I don't think a 7200 RPM drive would even be a good idea in a subnotebook - because the heat/power would really, really be a bad combination in such a small space (which is one reason most of them use 1.8" drives -- not only to save room internally, but because they give off less heat and require less power).
 
sammyman said:
and the ultraportable is right around the corner.
Click to expand...

I don’t think it is accurate to say that an ultraportable will come in the near future at all. I mean there are only a few rumors that point in this direction and I bet if there is one anytime soon it will be different from what you expect.
I’d say if there is an ultraportable it will be like a bigger iPhone or a smaller MacBook (not Pro). It will definitely have no dedicated graphics card, super fast CPU or extreme fast and big HDD/SSD.
 
suneohair said:
Did you actually look at the benchmarks from anandtech i posted. Instead of waiting for a response from someone that may very well be wrong. Try researching it a bit.



And this compared to a 150GB Raptor. Compared to notebook drives (even 7200RPM) I imagine it would be similar or the SSD might perform better than it did against the raptor.
Click to expand...

Benchmarks are meaningless unless you understand how the drive works. Wear levelling means that the data is distributed differently because flash memory has a finite number of writeable segments each with a finite number of erasures before failure. Wear levelling writes to different segments in sequence and purges the "dirty" sectors in an effort to extend disk life, BUT conventional file systems repeatedly write in place. This means that the disk SLOWS DOWN as data is written and the drive microcontroller has to organize and purge dirty sectors to make room in the sequence. They are not necessarily "slower" than a mechanical hard drive (though really, they're comparable to the fastest hard drives available in about 2004) but that also depends a lot on the underlying memory architecture.

You don't notice it on something like an SD card because you don't constantly read and write from it like you would a boot disk. Files that are tracked by last access are especially problematic for SSD, and those are way more common in use with an operating system.
 
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