Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How can you lookup the speed of your HDD?

MowingDevil

MowingDevil

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 30, 2008
1,588
7
Vancouver, BC & Sydney, NSW
Seriously, for the life of me I cannot find it. I've looked in System Profiler and Disk Utility to no avail....am I overlooking something here? I thought it would be obvious; I simply want to know what the RPMs of my installed drive are.
thanks

ps Amazing how a 320gb drive only registers about 195 or so...is that right? I know when the drives are formatted they don't register the full capacity but losing 25gb seems a tad much to me.
 
Go to System Profiler, then Serial-ATA, click on your HD and look at the model number.

You'll have to google that in order to find the specs.

And for the 320GB drive, I assume you mean 295GB, right? That's normal. You do lose quite a bit to formatting and overhead at larger capacities.
 
HD Manufacturers Lie

The makers of hard drives measure the capacity in factors of 1000. This is crazy because computers measure them in factors of 1024 or 2^10. So take 320 * 1000 = 320,000 then divide that by 320,000/1024 = 312.5 so you actually have a 312.5 MB hard drive despite what it's called. So then 312.5-295 = 17 MB sounds about right.
As far as the speed goes, I am not aware of anyplace to find that in the OS. You can get the model number from System Profiler and look it up.
 
MowingDevil said:
Seriously, for the life of me I cannot find it. I've looked in System Profiler and Disk Utility to no avail....am I overlooking something here? I thought it would be obvious; I simply want to know what the RPMs of my installed drive are.
thanks

ps Amazing how a 320gb drive only registers about 195 or so...is that right? I know when the drives are formatted they don't register the full capacity but losing 25gb seems a tad much to me.
Click to expand...

i have the same 320gb gard drive and it only registers 298gb. does seem strange. even in disk utility. found this online. looks like another up to scenario just like adsl inernet


He has a 320GB hard drive but only sees around 300GB. That’s due to the decimal vs binary difference. Computers work in binary but hard drive manufacturers prefer to measure their hard drives in decimal because they sound bigger. So, for example a gigabyte in binary is 2^30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes. In decimal it’s only 1,000,000,000. 320GB in decimal is really only 298GB in binary. HP also reserves several gigs as a hidden partition.

http://www.pcguide.com/intro/fun/bindec-c.html
 
rick6502 said:
The makers of hard drives measure the capacity in factors of 1000. This is crazy because computers measure them in factors of 1024 or 2^10. So take 320 * 1000 = 320,000 then divide that by 320,000/1024 = 312.5 so you actually have a 312.5 MB hard drive despite what it's called. So then 312.5-295 = 17 MB sounds about right.
As far as the speed goes, I am not aware of anyplace to find that in the OS. You can get the model number from System Profiler and look it up.
Click to expand...

you beat me to it whilst looking for the webpage
 
Let's try to keep this thread on topic.

The difference between advertised capacity and actual formatted capacity has been discussed to death.
 
Thanks for all the informative replies. Makes sense now in terms of the capacity loss. Wish they'd be more upfront and just call it a 300 drive then. :rolleyes:

Anyways, looked up the model number and I get Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62
which seems consistent with others who ordered the 7200 320 drive.

Curious as to what model numbers others have. If you google that you don't get anything diffinitive, but if you drop the SA62 from it you'll get better information although its still inconclusive. Odd that Hitachi's own site doesn't seem to recognize the model number. In google I did find a similar model number that was the same specs as mine but the number wasn't exact.
 
r.j.s said:
Let's try to keep this thread on topic.

The difference between advertised capacity and actual formatted capacity has been discussed to death.
Click to expand...

I can see your point, but I have two of my own.

1. The person asked so people replied.
2. Why didn't you point the person to one of these "discussed to death" discussions instead of replying?
 
MowingDevil said:
Thanks for all the informative replies. Makes sense now in terms of the capacity loss. Wish they'd be more upfront and just call it a 300 drive then. :rolleyes:

Anyways, looked up the model number and I get Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62
which seems consistent with others who ordered the 7200 320 drive.

Curious as to what model numbers others have. If you google that you don't get anything diffinitive, but if you drop the SA62 from it you'll get better information although its still inconclusive. Odd that Hitachi's own site doesn't seem to recognize the model number. In google I did find a similar model number that was the same specs as mine but the number wasn't exact.
Click to expand...

This seems to be the Hitachi 320GB 7200rpm but the number isn't exactly the same. I have a Seagate 320GB 7200rpm which after formatting is about 297GB which is about right. Is yours saying 195 or 295? 295GB would be about right, 195GB would be the wrong drive.
 
bcaslis said:
This seems to be the Hitachi 320GB 7200rpm but the number isn't exactly the same. I have a Seagate 320GB 7200rpm which after formatting is about 297GB which is about right. Is yours saying 195 or 295? 295GB would be about right, 195GB would be the wrong drive.
Click to expand...

Oops, sorry-type-o: its abo 297 actually.
 
I bought my new MBP 15" 2.8GHz with the 320Gb 7400 HDD, i was looking in System Profiler and was thinking i would check if it was the 7400 and i google'd it and here i am i have the same number "Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62"
 
T10HJS said:
I bought my new MBP 15" 2.8GHz with the 320Gb 7400 HDD, i was looking in System Profiler and was thinking i would check if it was the 7400 and i google'd it and here i am i have the same number "Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62"
Click to expand...

I think you meant 7200 RPM drive. I ordered the exact same system (2.8GHz with 7200 RPM hard drive upgrade. That's the same model number hard drive as mine. It's a Hitachi 7200 RPM 320GB (298GB actual) hard drive with 16MB cache and free-fall sensor.
 
HTS723232L9SA62 speed is 7200

yes , HTS723232L9SA62 has 7200 speed.

H FOR HITACHI
T FOR TRAVELSTAR
S FOR STANDARD
72 FOR 7200 RPM
32 FOR 320GB FULL CAPACITY
32 FOR 320GB CAPACITY FOR THIS MODEL
L FO GENERATION CODE
9 FOR 9.5MM Z-HEIGHT
SA FOR 1.5GB/S
6 FOR "RESERVED"
2 FOR "RESERVED" I GUESS THIS ONE FOR MAC APPLE COMPANY.


go to this web site for the confirmation of my answer post.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/03E516A3C41738C78625743B005AD957/$file/TS7K320_DS.pdf
 
timhood said:
I think you meant 7200 RPM drive. I ordered the exact same system (2.8GHz with 7200 RPM hard drive upgrade. That's the same model number hard drive as mine. It's a Hitachi 7200 RPM 320GB (298GB actual) hard drive with 16MB cache and free-fall sensor.
Click to expand...

There is no free-fall sensor in the drive.
 
Damn mine is a Hitachi HTS723232L9SA62 as well..
So that means we are only getting 1.5GB/s sata instead of 3.0
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back