Macbook HD Compatibility 3 Gb/s

[jeffc7373]

Hi,

I have a macbook first gen. I found the right size and speed HD I want, the Hitachi TravelStar 7K320. 7000rpm

What I do not know is whether my MacBook will support the 3 gb/s or if I am wasting money there for performance I wont be able to use.

Thanks in advance!

-Jeff

 

[alphaod]

It's backwards compatible.

 

[jeffc7373]

Understood that it will work, but will it take full advantage of the speed?

 

[gnasher729]

Understood that it will work, but will it take full advantage of the speed?

You don't get 3 Gigabit per second anyway.

First, because every SATA connector in the world transmits 8 bits of data + 2 bits of overhead, which means 3 Gigabit turns out to be 300 Gigabyte per second, 1.5 Gigabit turns out to be 150 Gigabyte per second.

Second, because the "3 Gigabit" is the speed at which data can go through the connector. The hard drive cannot actually read or write data that quickly. Laptop hard drives are nowhere near the 150 Gigabyte per second of the 1.5 Gigabit connector. This is like having two motorways, one with a 150 mph speed limit and one with a 300 mph speed limit. You won't be any faster on the second one.

On the other hand, the 3 Gigabit won't cost any money, so just go with it.

 

[jeffc7373]

Update

All,

I bought the Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 after all. I read some great things about it, and most important, is that it was rated by most reviewers as QUIET, FAST and actually uses LESS power than the harddrive that came with the MacBook. My battery does seem to be lasting longer on those flights. (could be a placebo effect though)

I couldnt be happier!!!

Only complaint, since this is the first time I ever did something like this, I had to learn the hard way that you dont actually have all the memory that the HD manufacturer lists. I thought I had 250G, and was shocked to find after format that it only had 232G. Ugh, that is the size of my music library!!

Mac could not have made this easier for me to change out!! How can you NOT love a Mac!?

 

[Bengt77]

Only complaint, since this is the first time I ever did something like this, I had to learn the hard way that you dont actually have all the memory that the HD manufacturer lists. I thought I had 250G, and was shocked to find after format that it only had 232G. Ugh, that is the size of my music library!!

Yeah, that's a bummer. All hard drive manufacturers (all memory manufacturers, actually) wrongfully count 1000 kB as 1 MB and 1000 MB as 1 GB. Therefore, a drive with 250.000.000 kB is listed as a 250 GB drive, while it's really only holds 250.000.000 / (1024 * 1024) ≈ 238 GB.

 

[cube]

Yeah, that's a bummer. All hard drive manufacturers (all memory manufacturers, actually) wrongfully count 1000 kB as 1 MB and 1000 MB as 1 GB. Therefore, a drive with 250.000.000 kB is listed as a 250 GB drive, while it's really only holds 250.000.000 / (1024 * 1024) ≈ 238 MB.

No. The HD manufacturers use the right base 10 convention. It's Apple that if it want to use a base 2 convention should label the numbers as kibibyte (KiB), mebibyte (MiB), gibibyte (GiB), etc.

 

[Bengt77]

No. The HD manufacturers use the right base 10 convention. It's Apple that if it want to use a base 2 convention should label the numbers as kibibyte (KiB), mebibyte (MiB), gibibyte (GiB), etc.

That's weird. Why do all the software engineers (developers of operating systems like Mac OS, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) count with IEC-based numbers, but all the hardware engineers with SI-based data? Where does that difference come from? Did both parties use to be on the same side, or have they always done things their own different ways? And why don't software developers indeed list file sizes in the right units?

 

[cube]

The SI prefixes were wrongly used many years ago to denote binary units. The confusion was fixed not so long ago by the IEC, and most people still don't abide by it.

Very few software people use the IEC units. Most still continue with the confusion.
The hardware camp is divided. Not only do HD manufacturers talk with the right decimal units, but RAM manufacturers talk in the wrong binary units, while networking has it right, as mbps has always meant 1000000 bits per second, for example.