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iMac hard drive

G

goglamosh

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 7, 2002
89
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I am thinking about getting a 17" iMac, but the hard drive speed is only 5400 rpm. I figured that the new iMac's would have better hard drive speed than that.

If you own one of the new iMacs, could you please tell me what you think about the hard drive speed? I.e., how would you compare it to a 7200 rpm hard drive.
 
Where did you get the hard drive rotational speed from?? I have done some light searching, and none of the pdf's have the drive speeds listed. Then again, it is late, so I might just be not seeing it there...

As for the difference in performance, there are more factors involved then just the rpm of a hard drive. I have seen 5400 rpm drive go neck and neck with 7200 rpm drives (same sized drives too).

I DO know that the 5400 rpm hard drives are a lot quieter than the 7200 rpm drives.
 
Egads, people are equating RPMs to speed.

And I thought data transfer rate and buffer sizes were more important than average seek times.
 
Originally posted by goglamosh
rpm is a measure of speed.
Click to expand...

RPM=Revolutions Per Minute... THAT is the only speed it is a measure of. :rolleyes:

Seriously, there are more factors involved in a hard drive's performance then JUST the rpm speed.
 
yeah, i know there are other factors involved in hard drive performance. i just find it unusual that apple doesn't display the hard drive specs in their iMac manuals and what not, but they definitely display their Power Mac hard drive rpm speeds. it seems as though apple is trying to hide this important spec from the iMac crowd.
 
Alpha, do you know which one has the 8mb buffer? I want to get one of those puppies and throw it in the iMac. he.he. 160GB with 8mb buffer, and 7,200 rpm. Yee Haw!
 
We have a new 15 inch imac in the family and I've never really noticed a big difference between it and the 7200 drive in my G4, odds are if your not doing anything too intensive(and if you were you'd prolly have a powermac tower already) the imac 5400(if that is what it is) will do you just fine. My cent and half anyway.

-alex-
 
Re: iMac hard drive

Originally posted by goglamosh
I am thinking about getting a 17" iMac, but the hard drive speed is only 5400 rpm. I figured that the new iMac's would have better hard drive speed than that.

If you own one of the new iMacs, could you please tell me what you think about the hard drive speed? I.e., how would you compare it to a 7200 rpm hard drive.
Click to expand...

This isn't a perfect example, but I replaced the 5400 rpm drive in my rev A iMAc with a 7200 rpm drive (I needed mroe space, I wasn't looking for more speed). The only places where the speed is noticeable is during startup (save about 20 seconds). While it certainly does speed up a few things here and there, nothing mindboggling. now, I know this is an old computer with only an ATA 33 interface, so maybe newr machiens would see a bigger speed difference, but I honestly don't see it as a big deal at all. Maybe if you're doing a lot of high end, hard drive intensive stuff. I don't know. I just thought I'd throw out my experience.
 
well, I will use the Mac for a lot of things. i am a college student, and I use the computer for writing papers, logging in to unix servers, games, and other things. i am coming from the PC world where i had built my own computer, using high performance components such as 7200 rpm hard drives. i guess i am worried that i will miss the hard drive speed. but i am willing to accept the 5400 rpm hard drive speed to have OS X as the operating system. that is the main reason i am going to a mac--to have OS X.
 
I seriously doubt you'll notice any big difference going to the 5400 HD, Ahhhh the good old collage unix servers, nothing like checking your email via the command line.
 
Originally posted by kaltsasa
I seriously doubt you'll notice any big difference going to the 5400 HD, Ahhhh the good old collage unix servers, nothing like checking your email via the command line.
Click to expand...
whoa quite a long time ago..da memories :D
 
Not for me, I'm smack dab in the middle of my collage career. So many classes I'll never use. But I work on campus as a network consultant so its not so bad, pays pretty good and the works not hard(usually)
 
Originally posted by kaltsasa
I seriously doubt you'll notice any big difference going to the 5400 HD, Ahhhh the good old collage unix servers, nothing like checking your email via the command line.
Click to expand...

The command line sucks for email. All of those links in plain text, ick. You can never find any of the good information in those emails.

Draft
 
iMac HD

I upgraded my daughter's iMac to a 7200 rpm IBM Deskstar and I noticed a definite improvement in startup similar to one of the previous posts. I would think it might help also in OS X swap, assuming you had a separate partition or drive for swap.:cool:
 
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