Macbook Pro Unibody Startup Times? - 13vs15

[mobiletaylor]

I have two Macbook Pros - 15 inch 2.4Ghz with 4Gigs of ram and a 13 inch 2.26Ghz with 4Gigs of ram. The 13 has a slower 500Gig WD and the 15 has the faster 7200rpm 320Gig WD drive in it. Why does the 13inch start up so much faster? over 20 seconds faster? I just installed the 7200 drive last night in the 15inch and it is a fresh copy of SL with all the updates. The 13inch is also running SL. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

JT

 

[DivineEvil]

The 5400rpm HDD could be faster, due to the more dense cylinders.

 

[Niiro13]

Well, speed is also dependent on where the data is on the hard drive. Most operating systems write to the outer parts of the disc because it's faster on the outer parts of a circle than the inner part. Since the 500GB can fit more on it, naturally it takes more to fill the outer edge than say a 320GB hard drive. Add to the time it takes to spin up. If it takes 5 seconds for a 5400rpm to reach full speed, it doesn't mean 7200 rpm has to do the same as that would require more power, and there's only so much power it naturally draws (because nowadays, most hard drives can be powered from the USB port). 7200 rpm might use the same power but take longer to spin up to full speed.

This is why SSDs are a lot faster in sequential writes, because it doesn't take time to spin up and spin down. But it's also the same reason why hard drives are more reliable for longer writes cause it's more consistent (it spins pretty much the same rpm after a while).

 

[mobiletaylor]

Thanks for the replies - I was hoping I had a setting checked that was possible slowing the start time down.

JT

 

[NC MacGuy]

Maybe the dual GPU funkiness?

I wonder if a single GPU 15" starts any quicker?

You could always swap drives and see if there's still the difference. That'd eliminate software/disk anyway.