How do I discover the speed of my drives?

[betsbillabong]

I'm in the market for a couple of new external firewire drives for archival purposes -- I'm a composer and visual artist and want to keep one backup of everything at home, one in a safe deposit box. I'm going to get a couple of new external drives, and I should be able to repurpose one of the ones I'm using now (probably the 120G). If one of them is 7200 rpm, I'd like to repurpose it as a media drive.

Does anyone know how I can figure out whether my external drives are 4200, 5400 or 7200 rpm?

Thanks!

 

[vniow]

Open them up and google the model number?

 

[yippy]

Go into Apple System Profiler and find your hard drives model number. Google it. If you can't find your answer then post it here and maybe someone can help you.

The other option is to take the drive out and read the label. Not all say their speed right on the label but some do. If it doesn't you at least have the model number and some more information to try and look up its specs online.

 

[betsbillabong]

Good idea... but confused on the model number...

Here's what Apple System Profiler gives me -- can anyone parse the model numbers? Thanks...

Manufacturer: DMI
Model: 0x0
GUID: 0x63A2800030D61
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
22GUC0 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x473
Product Revision Level: 4.73
Sub-units:
22GUC0 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 149.05 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk3
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Archive & Go Through:
Capacity: 148.92 GB
Available: 2.94 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk3s3
Mount Point: /Volumes/Archive & Go Through

0:

Manufacturer: DMI
Model: 0x340
GUID: 0x63A27D40847FF
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
0 Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x438
Product Revision Level: 4.38
Sub-units:
0 SBP-LUN:
Capacity: 115.04 GB
Removable Media: Yes
BSD Name: disk2
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
BB Clone:
Capacity: 79.88 GB
Available: 19.3 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk2s3
Mount Point: /Volumes/BB Clone
MusicShare:
Capacity: 34.91 GB
Available: 124 KB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk2s5
Mount Point: /Volumes/MusicShare

 

[vniow]

The first one's a Western Digital 160GB, thast's all I can get from one of the numbers. The second one is unknown as it doesn't show any sort of identifier that I can see. Your best bet is to actually take a screwdriver and open it up, like I mentioned above.

 

[yippy]

Shoot, I assumed it was internal where one of the lines is model number. I also forgot external cases hide that. Was it pre-assembled or did you put a drive in a case yourself?

If it is pre-assembled check for model number on the drive case.

If you put the drive in the case you are going to have to open it up to get the model number directly off of the drive.

 

[betsbillabong]

Got it!

Thanks so much for your help... it's weird I had tried googling them before but i think I left off the -72's at the end. Anyhow, I got my answers:

#1 = Acomdata (HD160FE5-72) - 160GB, 7200 rpm.

#2 = Acomdata (HD120U2FE-72) - 120GB, 7200 rpm.

Which means that I can use either one as a backup drive, which is helpful. Yes, they're both prepackaged external drives.

And now to find reasonably priced 300 and 400GB drives... any suggestions? One will get moved around (I'll move it monthly or so from a safe deposit box to home and back again) and the other will never move from my desk.