80GB vs 100GB Powerbook Drives

[ecosse011172]

Hi,

Does anyone know if there are any performance differences between these 2 drives?
Are they from the same manufacturer?

Thanks in advance
Denis (Imminent Switcher)

 

[Eevee]

Based on recent threads, the 100 GB is very noisy.

My PB has the 80GB, and it's nice and quiet. The only problem is when making DVDs from my camcord. iMovie and iDVD takes about 30 GB of hard drive.

So 80 GB might not be a bad idea to have unless you really need the extra 20GB. Even then, an external hard drive will be useful

 

[CanadaRAM]

Which two, which manufacturer??

For my money, go with the smaller drive and invest the difference towards an external Firewire drive. Having a convenient way to backup is WAY more important than internally having 20 Gb more....

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

[PlaceofDis]

Which two, which manufacturer??

For my money, go with the smaller drive and invest the difference towards an external Firewire drive. Having a convenient way to backup is WAY more important than internally having 20 Gb more....

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

agreed, an external backup/sratch disk is always more useful than haveing the extra 20gigs internally, unless for some reason you KNOW that you will have over 80gigs always on your drive.....which is a bit much for me to ever have at any given time personally

 

[Alex AMG]

My 1.67G 100G PB is just as quiet as the old one (12" 867Ghz 40G)

 

[minimax]

A 100 gb harddisk vs the 80gb harddisk should be 25% faster at the same rpm since it has 25% more information on the same area.

 

[CaptainCaveMann]

A 100 gb harddisk vs the 80gb harddisk should be 25% faster at the same rpm since it has 25% more information on the same area.

Hmm. Thats an interesting theory. Care to elaborate on that?

 

[wide]

A 100 gb harddisk vs the 80gb harddisk should be 25% faster at the same rpm since it has 25% more information on the same area.

That's an interesting theory, can anyone verify this? I suppose it also has to do with how Mac OS X write to the hard drive

 

[CaptainCaveMann]

That's an interesting theory, can anyone verify this? I suppose it also has to do with how Mac OS X write to the hard drive

Jinx!

 

[evilernie]

100

You can never have enough HD space IMO. I went with the 100gb and I have no regrets, it's not loud at all. However it does have the odd harmless pencil eraser thud sound that has been mentioned in other threads.

 

[minimax]

No it's just basic math. There are always either two or one discs in a 2.5" harddrive. So a 100 GB will be 2 x 50 GB. If you have one disc with 50 GB of data, that means data on the disc will be twice as dense as on a 25 GB disc and twice as many dots passing by the head with every cycle. Of course there is also the factor of acces time and I'm sure thee will be others that will make the actual usage performance less then the hypothetical 100% between a 25 GB and 50 GB disc.

 

[ibilly]

No it's just basic math. There are always either two or one discs in a 2.5" harddrive. So a 100 GB will be 2 x 50 GB. If you have one disc with 50 GB of data, that means data on the disc will be twice as dense as on a 25 GB disc and twice as many dots passing by the head with every cycle. Of course there is also the factor of acces time and I'm sure thee will be others that will make the actual usage performance less then the hypothetical 100% between a 25 GB and 50 GB disc.

Not so much. The 100 GB will be equally fast, if not slower. The ultra ATA-100 format used in Powerbooks maxes out at 100 MB/sec. The media is capable of almost 5 times that, but the interface is too slow. The 100 GB drive might be lower because of the greater areal density, and by slower, i am reverring to things like seek time, and random read/write, though they might be exactly the same. Sorry to quash your theory, but I have substantiation. Hitatchi's Travelstar datasheet (5400 RPM 40 thru 100 GB)

BTW, I reccomend the 5K series. The standard load/unload cycle rating is either 200 or 300,000. the Hitatchi 5K's are rated for 600,000! Unfortunately, the snappy 7k60 (here)
is only rated @ 300,000 cycles...

 

[minimax]

Don't know where you get those numbers...most notebook hard drives perform between 33 - 10 MB/s so that's well below the 100 MB ceiling of the interface. Wouldnt make much sense to have an interface that limits the harddisk if you ask me.

There is quite a good review on tomshardware.com regarding notebook harddisk performance: http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20041213/notebook_hd-01.html

And to highlight a quote from there:
Fujitsu's largest hard drive has now hit 100 GB. As this is the first hard drive of that capacity, Fujitsu decided to stick to 4,200 RPM speeds. Due to the conservative spindle speed, the MHU2100AT is practically inaudible when installed into a notebook. At 99.8 g (3.5 oz) the new top model has the same weight as its 80 GB predecessor.

Data transfer rates between 31 and 16 MB/s make pretty clear that the storage density of this drive must be considerably higher than that of its direct competitors, the Toshiba MK1031GAS and Hitachi 4K80. The minimum transfer rate was quite impressive, in particular. When taking a look at access times, the Fujitsu drive is one of the slowest models. Yet that does not have too much impact on the application benchmark

 

[ibilly]

I'm not sure where he gets off saying those speeds are all that extraordinary. Ther 7k60 had something like 40/20, and the 4k60 (i think it was 60) has something like 30/15 MBps. Not sure how one megabyte per second in performance shows how a drive whose areal density is specified by the manufacturer makes it "pretty clear that the storage density of this drive must be considerably higher than that of its direct competitors, the Toshiba MK1031GAS and Hitachi 4K80". I read the review, and did not find it to be a very good escource. IF minimax is unclear as to where I got my numbers (it could have been another poster, it is unclear from the post), he/she should look at the link I posted. it's where I said I got the numbers. They're under "performance".

 

[stcanard]

Based on recent threads, the 100 GB is very noisy.

This is actually untrue.

The 100GB has a specific noise that is different from the 80GB drives and as such has spawned a lot of threads asking what that specific noise is.

The drive itself, and the specific noise characteristic spawning these threads, is no louder than the 80GB drive and I in fact find the "clicking" access noise to be quieter than the 80's.

 

[minimax]

Thanks for the thumbs down hothead.

Anyways if ibilly would read it carefully it states 493 Mbits/s which would make it a theoretical maximum speed of 62 Mbytes/s. Minimax would not be surprised if the drive isnt able to live up to that performance as it seems unlikely the drive is twice as fast as any of the other tested harddrives from Tomshardware.
Oh, and if the test didnt live up to ibillys expectations, it would be very much appreciated if he showed minimax a comprehensive test that is considered a good source by his standards.

And another thing: the performance information is relevant for ALL those harddrives from 40GB - 100 GB. Does ibilly really think all of them have the exact same performance? The maximum transferrate says absolutely nothing about the real performance of the individual drives.

 

[ibilly]

Thanks for the thumbs down hothead.

Anyways if ibilly would read it carefully it states 493 Mbits/s which would make it a theoretical maximum speed of 62 Mbytes/s. Minimax would not be surprised if the drive isnt able to live up to that performance as it seems unlikely the drive is twice as fast as any of the other tested harddrives from Tomshardware.
Oh, and if the test didnt live up to ibillys expectations, it would be very much appreciated if he showed minimax a comprehensive test that is considered a good source by his standards.

And another thing: the performance information is relevant for ALL those harddrives from 40GB - 100 GB. Does ibilly really think all of them have the exact same performance? The maximum transferrate says absolutely nothing about the real performance of the individual drives.

Sorry about the tone of my post (though yours was similar). Guess I was just frustrated in general at that point. Appologies. Very good point about the Mb vs MB part of the data sheet. I should be more vigilant! About the review. He makes references and draws conclusions without giving much substantiation. Seriously. A 1 MB/s diff clearly shows a published stat????? And no, I don't have a better one. I don't care enough to search for one.

About the orig question: Go with as much capacity as you can afford. The performance should be identical in practical terms, and it's much more expensive later to buy an entirely new drive (if you run out of space), and a case that lets you transfer your data. An external drive kinda defeats the whole portability thing. If you can shell out what ever extra is asked for the 100 GB dirve, go for it.

 

[CanadaRAM]

A 100 gb harddisk vs the 80gb harddisk should be 25% faster at the same rpm since it has 25% more information on the same area.

This statement relies on some unsupportable assumptions.

First is that there is actually an increase in areal density. That is reasonably safe to say if you are comparing drives with the same platter size and the same number of platters and heads. We could actually accept this in the case of notebook drives, (which are mainly 2.5", single platter, 2 heads), but not in the case of desktop drives.

Second is the assumption that the entire constraint on the throughput of a hard drive is the rate at which the head reads data from the platter surface. Unfortunately it is not. In typical use only about 10-20% of a drive's time is spent transferring data. The rest of the time is spent transiting the head to the track (seek) and waiting for the sector to rotate around into position (latency). If the mechanical performance of the drive (RPM, seek, latency) is the same, then a 25% increase in areal density might mean a 5% improvement in data throughput (20% x 25%)

This varies considerably with the way the data is being accessed by the OS: Situations where sustained reads are made on large blocks of contiguous data (like putting the needle down on a record player and letting it play through to the end) will show the greatest improvement. But, data is almost never contiguous, large or required in an uninterrupted stream. Random reads of chopped up small data are the norm.

The final mitigator of speed improvement is everything downstream of the drive head; error correction, cache management, drive interface speed, controller efficiency, motherboard bus speed, memory speed. Each one conspires to slow the data down, and mute the effect of the higher density. A drive outputting data at 30 - 50% of the theoretical maximum is doing very well indeed.

Here's the ever-popular Car analogy: Does upping the speed limit in downtown from 30 to 60 MPH mean that everyone will get to work twice as fast? No, because stoplights, corners, traffic and parking mean that you may be able to measure peak speeds of 60 MPH for brief moments between red lights, but that speed cannot be sustained across the whole journey.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

[minimax]

@CanadaRAM indeed i should have been more specific about mentioning this kind of performance increase should only theoretically apply to sustained data transfer, which is only part of the total performance of a disk. I think I mentioned that in a follow up post as well. I was just charging a bit in my original post...

@ibilly I did find your follow-up pretty offensive yes but i'm glad misunderstandings are solved now

So in short: a larger harddisk should be faster but there are many factors that will prevent a lineair 1:1 increase between disk size and performance.

*ducks for new possible flames*

 

[Bern]

This is actually untrue.

The 100GB has a specific noise that is different from the 80GB drives and as such has spawned a lot of threads asking what that specific noise is.

The drive itself, and the specific noise characteristic spawning these threads, is no louder than the 80GB drive and I in fact find the "clicking" access noise to be quieter than the 80's.

The "noise" that some people have referred to in certain forums is "STIR" Seek To Increase Reliability. a technology built into the drive controller that randomly seeks when the drive is idle in order to keep the drive head from sitting in one place too long (which creates heat that can potentially harm the integrity of the media). This is a patented Seagate technology which helps to protect your HDD from excess heat (hence one reason why this PowerBook seems to be cooler then the previous model I owned). The Seagate 5400rpm HDD also uses less power, similar to a 4200rpm drive. On my PowerBook I get about 4.5 hours battery life.

 

[ecosse011172]

The "noise" that some people have referred to in certain forums is "STIR" Seek To Increase Reliability. a technology built into the drive controller that randomly seeks when the drive is idle in order to keep the drive head from sitting in one place too long (which creates heat that can potentially harm the integrity of the media). This is a patented Seagate technology which helps to protect your HDD from excess heat (hence one reason why this PowerBook seems to be cooler then the previous model I owned). The Seagate 5400rpm HDD also uses less power, similar to a 4200rpm drive. On my PowerBook I get about 4.5 hours battery life.

Hi Bern,

WHat drive do you have, 80 or 100GB?

Cheers

 

[Bern]

Hi Bern,

WHat drive do you have, 80 or 100GB?

Cheers

It's in my signature. I have the 100GB.

 

[Sutekidane]

I have the 100gb seagate HD installed in my powerbook and I'm really happy overall with it. I wish it was 7200rpm but I guess you don't always get what you want.

 

[ecosse011172]

Thanks for your help. Looks like I'll go for the 100GB drive. Just to wait till April 1st to see if Tiger is announced..

 

[smada]

I just put a the 100 gb seagate drive into my rev. a 1.25 ghz aluminum powerbook. I barely ever hear it, except during the widely noted STIR seek thingy. Very fast, tons of storage, good battery usage.

I couldn't be happier.