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bluedoggiant

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 13, 2007
2,548
25
MD & ATL,GA
i have a 4g ipod without a color screen, it obviously is hard drive, will the iphone have a slow song load time?? if you more songs on it will that effect anything? and do u think going from 18.5 gb (hd) to 7.3gb (flash) is a good idea?? my library is 5gb, my worry is space :(
 

macduke

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,104
19,603
It depends what speed the flash based hard drive is rated, but in general, professional hard drives (eg 2 x 15,000rpm raid 0 over a SCSI ultra320) have higher sustained data rates than flash based drives. However, flash based drives have higher random access rates for retrieving smaller files. The hard drives in the iPod are much slower then most desktop drives, probably 3600-4200rpm, since it would take a lot of power to get a high speed drive going, they have a lot more heat and potential for damage when being moved around, and 1.8 inch form factors have always been slower due to the confined space for the head / platters to move.

I believe that hard drive based iPods use small flash memory (ram) chips to buffer the songs anyway, as they have to be sent through the audio codec chips and output to the headphones. Either way, songs are such small files that they instantaneously load. Even movie files on my iPhone load up right away. There will be no problem having songs quickly load on the iPhone.

As for space, what's the problem? 7.3gb - 5gb = 2.3gb. You will have 2.3 extra gigabytes of space left after you transfer your library. What's to ask? You could even rip a few movies on there and copy over a couple hundred pictures. I've got about 2.5gb of music, 9 movies, and about 300 pictures on mine. Again, I'm not sure what you're asking here since you state that you have less space in your library then the iPhone holds?
 

D1G1T4L

macrumors 68000
Jun 26, 2007
1,724
99
Raleigh, NC
I believe that hard drive based iPods use small flash memory (ram) chips to buffer the songs anyway, as they have to be sent through the audio codec chips and output to the headphones. Either way, songs are such small files that they instantaneously load.

Songs on Hard Drive based iPods don't instantaneously load. There is a delay as the drive spins up and the file is located. I used to use an 80gb iPod in my truck with an Alpine IVA-W200 but the delay bothered me. Started using Nano's and have been much happier.
 

bluedoggiant

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 13, 2007
2,548
25
MD & ATL,GA
It depends what speed the flash based hard drive is rated, but in general, professional hard drives (eg 2 x 15,000rpm raid 0 over a SCSI ultra320) have higher sustained data rates than flash based drives. However, flash based drives have higher random access rates for retrieving smaller files. The hard drives in the iPod are much slower then most desktop drives, probably 3600-4200rpm, since it would take a lot of power to get a high speed drive going, they have a lot more heat and potential for damage when being moved around, and 1.8 inch form factors have always been slower due to the confined space for the head / platters to move.

I believe that hard drive based iPods use small flash memory (ram) chips to buffer the songs anyway, as they have to be sent through the audio codec chips and output to the headphones. Either way, songs are such small files that they instantaneously load. Even movie files on my iPhone load up right away. There will be no problem having songs quickly load on the iPhone.

As for space, what's the problem? 7.3gb - 5gb = 2.3gb. You will have 2.3 extra gigabytes of space left after you transfer your library. What's to ask? You could even rip a few movies on there and copy over a couple hundred pictures. I've got about 2.5gb of music, 9 movies, and about 300 pictures on mine. Again, I'm not sure what you're asking here since you state that you have less space in your library then the iPhone holds?

five gigabytes is close to 7.3, my library will continue to grow :(
 

KittyToy

macrumors 6502
Sep 6, 2007
441
23
Davenport
Your iphone is not supposed to replace your ipod, people fail to realize that. It All depends on how much music you need with you at a given time. I have 300 songs on my iphone which computes to 19 hours of listening pleasure, that is all I need.....But I have my nano as a back up if needed and their both little enough to fit in my purse so I could carry both.
 
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