Drive Speed

[gwest]

I'm looking to purchase a new MacBook and I'm considering a 200GB drive- but I'm unsure about the drive being slower (4200 vs 5400). I use a lot of Keynote prsentations with embedded movie clips- would this drive slow playback performance assuming I load it with 2GB RAM? Any other negatives I'm not considering?

Thanks

 

[panoz7]

Rotational speed is just one of many factors that determines how quickly a harddrive can read and write data. Another significant factor is the data density of the harddrive.

That 200 GB drive stores much more data in the same area as your current harddrive. Every revolution more data passes under the read/write heads meaning that even though it may be spinning slower it is still quite possible that he actual read/write speed is higher.

 

[grapes911]

For things like presentations, even with video, drive speed will do little to increase performance (especially 4200 vs 5400. 4200 vs 7200 might make a difference). You might shave a couple of seconds off boot time or a faction of a second off application load, but that's about it. Someone doing video/sound editing or rendering of some type will notice a difference, but the average user generally won't. RAM is definitely more important.

 

[livingfortoday]

Here's a good rundown of different speeds and sizes in a MBP:
http://barefeats.com/mbcd7.html

Hope that helps you some.