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Increase Harddrive Space = Faster Computer?

T

TitanVex

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2010
18
0
I am thinking of buying a MBP, and I want to do my research correctly :).

I want to get the base model (the 2.66ghz seems like a ripoff...), but upgrade the harddrive space. If I increased it from the 240gb to the 500gb, would that make my computer faster? Or what would the effects of it be? I am just wondering to see whether I should go for he 500gb or the 320gb...I do not want to get the SSD since they are pretty expensive at this point. Thanks in advanced!

-TitanVex
 
TitanVex said:
I am thinking of buying a MBP, and I want to do my research correctly :).

I want to get the base model (the 2.66ghz seems like a ripoff...), but upgrade the harddrive space. If I increased it from the 240gb to the 500gb, would that make my computer faster? Or what would the effects of it be? I am just wondering to see whether I should go for he 500gb or the 320gb...I do not want to get the SSD since they are pretty expensive at this point. Thanks in advanced!

-TitanVex
Click to expand...

Don't get it upgraded from Apple, you can get a better, cheaper and faster hard drive elsewhere. In fact you should think about Momentus XT if you want faster speed and much better option if you can't afford to get an SSD.

Getting bigger hard drive does not automatically increase speed at all. Getting bigger drives with increased platter size does increase some speed but I don't think the 2.5" has been increasing the platter size yet like the latest 3.5" drives.

I still recommend getting the Momentus XT.
 
It will not make your machine faster. If you don't have a lot of music or movies on your machine 240gb should be plenty. If you have a lot of music and movies then 500gb might not even be enough. The two best upgrades you can do to your mbp yourself are more disk space and more memory. Apple rips you off if you upgrade your disk drive through them. For the same money you can buy your own larger drive and have the stock drive that came with the machine as a spare that you can put in an external enclosure.
 
No.

To increase the speed, you have to assess what you're going to use the MBP for. Is your usage going to be more intensive on the RAM, CPU, HD or a combination of any of them? If its just for surfing and writing the odd document then a bump on any of them will not make a difference.
 
TitanVex said:
I am thinking of buying a MBP, and I want to do my research correctly :).

I want to get the base model (the 2.66ghz seems like a ripoff...), but upgrade the harddrive space. If I increased it from the 240gb to the 500gb, would that make my computer faster? Or what would the effects of it be? I am just wondering to see whether I should go for he 500gb or the 320gb...I do not want to get the SSD since they are pretty expensive at this point. Thanks in advanced!

-TitanVex
Click to expand...

If you put a faster hard drive in you might get a 10% boost in read and write speeds...like going from a 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm...but your battery life will suffer...but in general it won't make the computer any faster in a real sense no....unless you get an SSD then there is a huge boost in read times but a detriment in write times...but a 500Gb SSD would cost you about $1500?
 
Actually if you get the 250GB HDD and use up 245GB the 500GB machine will run faster at that point because even though Apple's file system defragments itself it doesn't make it immune to fragmentation.

But out of the box both will be the same speed, and as long as you don't fill your HDD to capacity you will experience the same performance.
 
Yes. Larger hard drives have higher density, which makes them faster in general. Of course, you should read reviews to be sure.
 
Plus the higher density usually leads to less mechanic head movement when the same amount of data is put on the larger drive and the extra space leaves more room for write-operations and the automatic defragging runs.
 
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