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i need a 7200rpm HD for my 667 TiBook.

Judging by the specifications listed from IBM, the 60GB (5400 rpm) drive has a faster Latency (average ms) then the 4200 rpm drive. The 5400 drive shows 5.5ms where the 4200 drive shows 7.1ms. Max. media transfer rate (Mb/sec) is faster, showing 262 on the 5400 and 245 on the 4200 drive. The recommended power-on hours for both drives are listed at 333, which comes out to about 11-12 hours per day. I am not certain if that is constant on, or cumulative on hours.

The acoustics of the drives are very close in both idle and operational ratings.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks!

Do you think that,that adds up to the 25 percent speed increase IBM talks about.

Didyou get those noise numbers off the pdf. how close were they?

I am trying to figure out if the extra speed if there is any is worth the extra noise and loss in battery time!
 
I did pull the numbers from the pdf file. Both the drive inside my TiBook and the 60GB outside are the ATCS05 models, not the other ones. I don't know if the difference adds up to 25%. I do know that the IBM drive WAS significantly faster then the 20GB Toshiba that was in my old TiBook.

I still don't know if I want to go through the effort of putting the 60GB drive inside my TiBook at this time. I am inclined to wait to get an enclosure first. Considering that the spec's are not all that far apart.

I'd say, if you want more storage space, get the 60GB drive. You get the bonus of the faster spec's with that drive. It would also help with drive intense functions, where the faster drive will give you more benefits/speed. Since there are not any 60GB drives offered in 4200 rpm, it would be almost impossible to get solid number differences.
 
Re: Thanks!

Originally posted by Grokgod
Do you think that,that adds up to the 25 percent speed increase IBM talks about.

Didyou get those noise numbers off the pdf. how close were they?

I am trying to figure out if the extra speed if there is any is worth the extra noise and loss in battery time!
Click to expand...

It doesn't look like the battery time will be impacted all that much. I would say (judging by the spec's) the difference would be in minutes.
 
Onyxx, heres the answer to your question.
i originally thought i needed the faster HD because everything was running really slow. but then i shut down last night. when i started up this morning everything was running normally. but i hate shutting down, because it takes so long to startup again. this week i'm going to try putting it in sleep whenever i'm not using it, and i'm going to make sure that i log out at the end of every day. this should solve my problems.

i'm also going to get another 512MB of RAM sooner or later. i'm waiting for the prices to come down a bit.

are there problems with the 1GB of RAM? that was one of the main things i was looking forward to with my TiBook. whoever says that has to be wrong! i will get 1GB of RAM to work!!
 
wow, i kept expecting alpha to lay down the facts for everyone but he never did. lets see if i can help.

cb911 - the slow down you are experiencing is due to RAM. when osx uses up all the available ram it starts using virtual memory (hard drive space). This will cause osx to come toa screeching halt. 512MB would be the minimum i would suggest for running osx, as you will still start using virtual memory after a few days. OSX eats ram up in no time. i think (although i am not certain) that this is because osx caches lots of information to RAM. you will notice the first time you open a window it will be slow, but the second time is instant. same with app launches. the first launch is slow the rest are very fast. The problem that i see is that after running for a few days you run out of RAM. Logging out WILL NOT fix this. Only a restart will. on restart you will notice os uses about 128MB RAM. once you launch a few apps (mozilla, adium, mail, itunes) you will liley be up to 256. After a few days of running those apps and nothing else you will notice you now use roughly twice the ram 512mb. this is why you want tons of ram, so your apps can be free to use it rather than Virtual memory. virtual memory (especially on a laptop) is very slow because it is accessing your hard drive.

2.5" laptop hard drives come in two speeds 4200rpm and 5400rpm. IBM was the first to make a 5400rpm hard drive but now toshiba also offers 5400rpm hard drives. ibm 5400rpm hard drives are available in 32gb, 48gb, and 60gb. i do not know toshiba's specs. ibm is also now offering smaller 5400rpm hard drives (read some articles about it) i do not know of these have hit retail yet though but they were from 10-30gb.

5400rpm hard drives WILL boost performance. big time. i would not even use a laptop witha 4200rpm drive after using a 5400rpm drive. the speed difference (especially in osx) is VERY noticable. i read a number of reviews about the 32gb drive (the first 5400rpm drive to hit market) when it first came out. the benchmarks were VERY impressive. I have a 32gb ibm 5400rpm drive in my lombard and i can tell you 100% that that computer is so slow that osx would not be usable if i didnt have that nice fast drive in it (that and i upped the speed of the system cache). i think onyxx is probably confused about the benchmarks. all the reviews i read back in 1999 showed a considerable speed boost, and i also noticed this my self as soon as i installed it. the 48gb and 60gb drives employ new technology (i think this is why you cant buy the 32gb anymore) that makes them slightly faster and quieter. The drives are virtually silient (compared to desktop drives, or toshiba drives) but every once in awhile (as alpha mentioned) there is a fairly loud and distinct clicking sound. i have been told that it is quieter in the 60gb models but i have yet to hear the sound in a side by side comparison (its a fairly rare to hear).

since these drives are very expensive compared to the 4200rpm drives i usually suggest to peopel looking to buy a laptop that they buy the smallest 4200rpm drive they can (usually 20gb in apples) and if they feel it is slow or when they are ready to expand then consider a 5400rpm drive (this is when money is a big issue, otherwise just grab that 60gb drive now!). you can still find people selling 32gb drives and teh price is low, but i would avoid them as they are likely to be refubs which generally have dimished lives and run louder. also avoid drives that have been taken out of another computer. many of the ibm travel stars that have low low prices on the web have been pulled out of dells. for some reason they have more problems. ask for the serial number and you can tell if it is a dell or ibm. the ones pulled out of the dell will not have an ibm serial number but a dell serial number that corresponds to the computer it was taken from.

[sidenote, its 3am i woke up for a minight snack so i might be groggy, sorry if some of the above sounds weird. i get rambly when tired]
 
Originally posted by Onyxx
AlphaTech: depending on the transfer rate of the new tibook's (hopefully revised) firewire, I would go with an external 7200 rpm firewire drive.
Click to expand...
Originally posted by Grokgod
They SPEED data up, NOT slow it down. ~Onyx!
I want to see where you managed to read your data incorrectly.
The imacs have fast drives in them <7200, i think. Of course Onyx will say that the 4200 are faster. But i wll disagree again!> and their noise doesnt bother me, so i should be ok, <crossing fingers>
Click to expand...
Grokgod: you seemed to have skewed my logic to the point of no return. You odviously don't know what the number of rpm's in a hard drive do in relation to the drive's read/write times. Well, to clarify for you, the rpm's are the speed at which the platters in the drive turn. The dirve's heads then move back and forth on top(or bottom) of these disks and erase/write/reat the info off of the platter. Usually, the faster they turn, the faster they can be accessed. In the case of 7200 vs. 5400, the 7200 will always kick the 5400's @ss. However there are many cases in which the design of the drive makes a lower rpm drive faster than a high rpm drive. An example is the western digital "jumbo buffer" drives. Because of their large buffer, these ata 100 drives rip right through enourmously expensive scsi 10k and 15k rpm drives.

Back to the issue at hand. Well i couldn't find my original article, but i did find one on the new 60 and 48 gig drives. My original info was based on the tests of the first (or second) generation 5400 48 gig from ibm. The noise was reported to be a low "fan-like sound" (from the newly developed fluid bearings) and constant. It seems that IBM has fixed their original design and ironed out a couple of bugs. However, the new tests show http://www.barefeats.com/fire24.html that the 4200's did write faster and the 5400's read faster. considering that the 40 gig 4200 rpm ibm is a little over half the price of the 48 gig 5400 and less than half the prive of the 60 gig 5400 I will sticke with 4200 internal and 7200 external in a firewire enclosure.

AlphaTech: looking forward to seeing some trial results from your drive(s).
 
Hey AmbitiousLemon... looks like you made a oopsi with "2.5" laptop hard drives come in two speeds 7200rpm and 5400rpm." Don't you really mean 4200 and 5400???

Onyxx, did you check out the spec's of the 60GB vs the 40GB (5400 and 4200rpm respectively)?? I put a link to where you can get the data sheet. Read it before making statements about drives where all you have is a dated article that applies to drives that have had revisions since then.

Check the performance spec's on page three of the pdf...

Oh an Onyxx, we are NOT looking at external drives here, but all internal. Your posted link holds about as much water as a sieve. Considering how it was using the previous generation TiBook (not the one I have, or anyone getting a new unit, such as Grokgod). He also pretty much admits to hamstringing the TiBook in his tests, which WILL effect performance. He also has to be using it under OS 9 since he shows "The test "mule" was an Apple Titanium G4 PowerBook (667MHz) with disk cache set to 512K (to diminish effect of system caching), AppleTalk OFF, Virtual Memory OFF, and Extensions set to minimal (BASE)." I am running OS X 99% of the time, how about you Grokgod? Also, who the f*ck uses third party utilities to format/initialize drives??? I ALWAYS use the Apple utility. That alone could account for the internal being f*cked in his tests.

I will be running Norton's system check utility before pulling the 40GB drive out of my TiBook and installing the 60GB drive. After that, I will run the test again to see what it comes up with for a difference. It might be negligible, but then again, it might just surprise you.
 
Hello everyone. This is my first post to this forum.

I've been following you all for a while now, and have been very impressed with the quality of the discussions. There's some smart people here!

I have to pipe in about the fast drive issue with the PowerBook. I have the G4 400 that originally came with the huge 10 GB 4200 RMP drive. Unfortunatly, I have to use Virtual PC for some of my structural engineering applications. Getting VPC to run well is important to me. VPC is the benchmark for performance on my PowerBook.

I installed the 48 GB 5400 RPM IBM Travelstar drive recently. Let me just tell you I've noticed a speed increase. Navigating through folders in Windows is noticeably more smooth. Scrolling through long files is faster. I have also noticed a hit on my battery though, but not too bad--I'm talking minutes here. It was well worth it to me. Yeah, that extra few GBs comes in handy too.

This new drive is silent except when she's read/writing; idle, it's hard to tell which is which: the drive or the fan. I put the old drive in the OWC FireWire enclosure. Having them side by side you can tell the difference in acoustics

In my opinion however, the single most important thing you can do to speed up applications like VPC, is to install as much RAM as you can afford into that PowerBook. I first tried to run VPC Test Drive on OS X 10.0 with the stock 128 MB RAM. I was not too impressed with the performance. I spent about $300 and got myself two 512 MB sticks of RAM. Wow. Windows 2000 is actually usable.

Get that faster drive, but don't forget about the RAM!
 
Mucho thanks for the help, Alpha tech and Ambitious Lemon!

~Alpha, I run OSX 99 percent of the time!

~Ambitious Lemon. That was a great slew of fantastic information

I am rereading it to make certain that I understand it.
This generation of ibm drives have Tech that makes then quieter and faster?
And that the 60 gig which is the newest version may infact be quieter than the 48 or the 40 4200 drive.?

Did i get that right?

~Onyx Sorry if you feel that I have skewed your information, but it seems
to be dated and out of context. Using OS9 or older drives with different machines or not laptop drives isnt applicable.
Or at least i am hoping that it is!

I called Apple today and spoke to various tech till I got one that I thought was competent.

This is the information I was able to gather from various sources.
A: 5400 drives are VERY important for OSX! The operating system goes to the drive often. A 5400 drive will create VERY noticeable speed increases.
B: The new 60 gig has a larger Cache which obviously is important.
C: Yes the 5400 HD will take a bit more juice, yet they claimed that it was negligable. I think I believe that.
D: As for noise, which is a prime concern of mine. well, he said that any higher revved drive will create more sound but he felt that it was comparative to the 4200. And went on to state the obvous facts that noise is subjective.

Well Duh~ We all know that, but is it louder than the 4200!
Well, he skirted the issue and restated the obvious.

So either his subjective evaluation of the noise is nil, or huge. I couldnt figure that out. I think the final point is if OSX runs much better on a 5400 which I believe it does! Then is that worth the trade in sound irritation.

Oh the pain!

If only I could find someone with a 5400 TI .
Apple told me to drive toa store and listen.
Hell, If I could do that I would have bought the dame thing already!

~Jimmy Mac <cool handle> thanks for the info! there are rumors about 1 gig ram problems in the Ti , you experience any of that?

I just read that Barefeat article. the firelite 40 is a toshiba that was faster in some issues was aided by some software or bridgeboard. Not sure if Apple is using the Toshiba 40 any more, i though it was all IBM
 
I had problems with the 1 GB Ram

Grokgod,

Funny you should ask about problems with 1 GB of RAM in the PowerBook. Or as I like to say "1.24 'jigga-bytes" (said like Dr. Brown in "Back to the Future") When I first tried to update about a year ago, I got two 512s from OWC. I talked to the tech rep, and he told me first that there was a fit problem, that they would not fit perfectly. He also mentioned that there might be other problems too. At least they were honest. They said just try it, return it if it doesn't work for you.

When I first installed both sticks, my Mac wouldn't boot. I pulled the top stick out, then it booted ok. I switched the two sticks, still booted ok. OWC agreed with me that their two 512 stick combo just didn't work right yet for some people. They took one of em back and gave me a 256 stick. That was a year ago. Now they have smaller, thinner PC 133 jobs that work perfectly. I got the new PC 133 stick and put it in the top slot. It fits better that the 256 did.

Everything works great! Everything seems "snappier":D Yeah, I know you guys don't like it when people use that term--I couldn't resist.

Now here's a question: why would I see such a drastic increase in VPC perfomance when I upgraded to 1 GB? I used to have 768 GB, but VPC only needed like 300 or so. There was plenty of RAM left over, and no pageouts. I KNOW I'm not just imagining things--everything runs better.
 
~ Jimmy Mac Jimmy Mac Jimmy Mac

Say it fast three more times!

Thats weird about the 1 gig issue. that what i heard also about the bad fit.
But why does a 256 fit ok. its still a stick of ram, isnt it.
Is the 512 a bigger stick, i mean i know its bigger ram wise but stick wise , fit wise?
Who is OWc, not familair with them.

Also may I , Puhlease ask, Is your 5400 drive noisey or noisier than the 4200.
You said you could tell the difference in acoustics, uhh and they are?
Did I misread your post?

I gots to know!

About VPC, its all about ram baby, the more the better, its that simple and the longer your running the appz the more ram you need for windows and such. So time and appz equals the need for more ram.
 
IBM Travelstar is so quiet

OK, OWC is a huge Mac parts supplier here in Chicago. Check them out at otherworldcomputing.com. Sorry for not being more clear.

The 256 stick that they sold me was thicker than the new 512 stick. It would not lay flat once it was installed. And you could tell that the two chips were touching each other. If you're going to get a few 512s, be sure and measure their depth. At least in my PB 400, there's about 1.6 inches of room behind the little keyboard support member for the TOP piece. You can go deeper in the bottom slot--you just have to slip out the support member. My new 512 is like 1.25 inches deep and thin enough as to not touch the bottom piece.

The new IBM drive is very silent when it's idle. When she read/writes, it makes kind of soft jingle crunchy sound. Yeah, I know, that sounds funny. But it's true. You hardly notice it.

I put the old 4200 drive in a FireWire enclosure. When it's fired up right next to my PB, you can HEAR it. It makes a grinding sound while idle. That's mainly due to the type of bearings used in the old Toshiba compared to the fluid bearings in the IBM.

I would suggest you look at the drive specs as presented on the OWC page or each mgf's site. They both give you pages and pages of technical data on the drives. You'll be able to quantify the acoustics of each drive. Maybe you can quantify what a jingle-crunchy sound is:)

PS,
I like the interface of this forum. Can you spell check stuff?
 
Good ram stick story!

Thanks for the travel star noise evaluation.

Imagine you were going to buy a desktop and it had a 4200 drive in it.
I would say no way, thats way to slow, what is this prehistoric days.
And grab the 7200 hd quick and run.
Well, there are none for laptops, SO~

If a freakin Toshiba can have a 5400 drive then my Ti most certainly will!

I think that IBM may have another winner here with the 60 gig hd and that
the sound may be comparible to the 40 gig 4200. Hopefully.
I think that any additional battery depletion probably counts in minutes, thats single digits.
I also think that OSX wants HD speed and for that always wanted speedy osx experience, the 5400 is a must.
I know that i would feel slighted if my Ti experience was hindered by a slow HD. yet, It would also be by excess noise, so I am going for the BTO, that I ordered and if the thing is way to loud and i cant sleep it, as a Apple Tech described, then I will install a quieter drive.
I will do what has to be done to get the best Ti/osx experince that is possible whatever the cost, whatever the time, whatever it takes.

I am a dedicated bastard!

Now about that RAm issue.
Crucial should be ok, to buy from, right? :)
 
Grokgod: I have your machine

I just got a 800Mhz TiBook with 1GB of ram and a 60GB 5400rpm drive. It's my first laptop so I can't compare it to anything I've owned previously but it is fast. I've mostly been installing software so there has been a fair amount of writing to the drive and it seems plenty speedy.

The audio applications I use need to constantly load sounds into ram from the hd and I've had no problems in the tests I've done. "Test" in this case means, "does this work like it's supposed to?" This is all in OS 9, by the way. I haven't installed any video apps yet and I don't use Photoshop so I can't say anything about performance in those areas.

I had some concern about the 1GB ram issue but I haven't noticed any problems. What was supposed to happen?

One other thing, the computer has gotten pretty warm a couple of times but I thought they fixed the heat issue. Has anyone with a new TiBook experienced this?
 
Jumping jesus ,bonehead!

YOU GOT MY TI BOOK!

gimme, I am still waiting for mine.
So puhlease tell me!!

Does the HD make a lot of noise? Does it whirr and spit and chime?
Or is it a little clicking like others say?
Or worst is there a loud high pitched drone from the intense 5400 spinning?
I really appreciate the information , gimme all you got~!

The higher rpm hd is really supposed to make a difference in OSX, which I mostly use.
The Ram issue isnt actually an issue if you get the 1 gig set from APple as far as I understand it. So you should be fine.
I opted for the better HD but settled on the 512 thinking that in the future I can get another stick at perhaps cheaper prices.

The heat issue was supposed to be dealt with to a degree but will still heat up using high end appz like audio and video editing. Is your fan or fans coming on alot.

I would say that the noise issue on the 5400 hd is my main concern, so spill the beans, Mr Bonehead!
 
Alright peeps and freaks... I have installed the 60GB drive into my new TiBook and ran NSW's system info (only test that I have readily available to me). The 40GB drive pulled a 1908 where the 60GB pulled a 2056. Those are the overall disk numbers (I didn't break them down deeper). I have updated OS X on the 60GB drive, since the old install didn't boot the new system. I intend to use the 60GB drive inside now, since it is in here and has most of the software I want/need already installed.
 
hey alpha thanks for pointing out that rather important oopsie. hope i didnt confuse anyone with that.

in my experience toshiba drives are louder than ibm. even when comparing 4200rpm drives to 5400rpm drives. by louder in this case i mean the whirling sound. my laptop is silient most of the time. i get a quiet whirl and occasional clicking under very heavy use. but the toshiba that was originally in the machine was a louder whirler (but no clicking).

i would compare the toshiba to the sound created by a desktop hard drive, while the ibm as i said is virtually silient most of the time. and i have sensitive ears. i sleep in the room that i have my computers in (never log out never shut down never put to sleep) and its the lcd imac that is loud while i sleep. but my laptop (lombard) was built in 1999 so the toshiba in it originally was probably not the same as the one in your computer now. although the ibm i have is also supposed to be louder than the new ibms as well.

grokgod: sounds like you understood correctly. the new drives are supposed to have better bearings, i guess that makes them run silient. also the 60gb has some more features but i read about them awhile ago so i dont recall the details; but it basically meant faster quieter.

as i understand it if you buy a laptop from apple you get a toshiba unless you buy a 5400rpm drive (i could be wrong about this, its just based on observation).

as far as ram goes, i dont know the problems people are having (although it seems very common) but i do know that some sites sell 1gb ram kits specifically designed for the tipowerbook. also the ram that you are speaking of that is smaller is called low profile ram and i had to use it in my lombard as well. it is more expensive because it is smaller. low profile ram is also required by the lcd imac if you use a airport card because withe the airport card in place there isnt room for full sized ram. the low profile ram is about 1/2 the size of a normal 512mb chip.

hope that helps out. its finals time here at CAL, which means ill be in the computer room all day, so if you have any quetsions you can always you can always email me or instant message me (aolsn=ambitiouslemon).

o and one more thing (sorry for the second long post) osx should see a considerable speed boost from a high speed drive as others have noticed. this is because of the unix layer. im not a unix geek, but as i understand it osx will access the drive often because of the file system used. unix uses lots of various files all over the drive. if you have invisible files shown you will notice they are always moving around. this is also why optimizing your drive (defraging) provides such a big performance boost. dont ask me to explain this because i dont understand it. maybe someone with a unix background can clean up what im trying to say.
 
AmbitiousLemon, it appears that Apple is using IBM drives in the TiBooks now. I pulled my 40GB out (when I installed the 60GB) and it is an IBM Travelstar. Actually, it's the same as listed in the pdf that you can get from the IBM site about the 60GB drive. I guess enough people were complaining about the Toshiba drives, so they switched to the IBM drives.

The fluid dynamic bearings make the drives virtually silent. All you really hear are the drives being accessed by the heads, not any spinning sounds. When the drive is not in use, you cannot tell the difference.

As for memory issues, as long as you get good memory, you should have no issue going to 1GB. I had that in my rev. a TiBook. I did have to put a PC100 (normal size) on the bottom, and a PC133 (low profile) in the top slot to get the keyboard to seat properly. The low profile memory does cost more, since it is a smaller chip.
 
Grokgod:

I have only had the computer for a few days and haven't had much time to mess with it. The HD is pretty quiet to my ears. I think I heard the fan come on once but couldn't be sure. The loudest thing by far is the CD drive. I've mostly been installing software and hooking up the Airport so I can transfer files from the desktop computer. I plan on using the TiBook for audio but haven't recorded anything into it yet. When I do, I'll post to let you know if the mic picks up HD noise. Sorry I don't have much more info. Noise is a concern for me too so I'll let you know when I've had more time on the machine.
 
One more thing:

I did notice a very high pitched whine last night but only after I plugged my MIDI keyboard into the USB port. When I unplugged it, the whine seemed to disappear. The level of the whine was very low so the HD couldn't have been making much, if any, noise at all.
 
All this glorious info!

Well Bonehed~ I think that a whine caused by a USB midi keyboard is strange indeed. But I am happy to hear that the drive was virtually silent.

Ambitious Lemon~ now! thats good news about the IBMs. This is really restoring my faith in the 5400 drive that I will be getting.
I was worried for a moment that perhaps Apple was using the toshiba's but thanks to AlphaTechs endevors we now know for certain that its a Ibm thats being used for the 40 gig which makes it almost certain that the 60 is IBM because i dont think there is another company that makes a 60 gig.

All this delicious Fluid Drive talk is great, I cant wait to NOT hear the noise that this drive makes!

My information on OSX's methods of accessing the HD frequently is siimliar to Ambitious Lemons. I am certain that this will prove to be very useful in creating a good Hardware scenario for OSX.

~alphatech Those numbers really look amazing, I mean its double the rate.
That should put a crimp in all the misleading information posted by Onyz.
Imagine when Quartz Extreme is out, this Ti will be SICK fast!

I am quoting the Apple tech.
" With the 5400 drive your OSX experience will be SICK fast!"
We both snickered, it was a ZEN moment!

So was the install hard, it does void the warrenty, doesnt it?
I have never been so excited about a hard drive before...:p
 
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