My 17" MBP with 5400RPM HD appears to perform faster than the old 15" w/7200RPM HD...

[thermodynamic]

Should I buy a 7200RPM drive for my new MBP and move the drive image onto the new drive? Or just keep what I have?

OS X seems to boot faster and my timing tests were done after transferring apps and data from the 15" unit.

I do photography (50MB .PSD files) and web development (oodles of itty-bitty JPG, PNG, HTML, and FLA and SWF files).

Will performance really be boosted to worthy levels? I know that, in raw benchmarks, a Velociraptor (not for a MBP, ROTFL) looks nice but in the real world, apart from doing a disk wipe, there's no worthy increase in performance...

Thx!

 

[GGJstudios]

The speed of the drive isn't the only issue. What are the capacities? A higher-density 5400 drive will sometimes outperform a lower-density 7200 drive.

 

[Gabriel GR]

Platter density is as important as the rotational speed of the drive. In the last two years platter density has doubled whereas speed has been the same. It's what drives disk performance these days.

 

[thermodynamic]

The speed of the drive isn't the only issue. What are the capacities? A higher-density 5400 drive will sometimes outperform a lower-density 7200 drive.

You and Gabriel are correct; I should have realized...

Maybe I will look at a 7200RPM 500GB drive after all...
5400RPM drive =500GB
7200RPM drive = 320GB

 

[3121]

surprised to find that its not always the rpm that makes a difference. didnt realize that platter made a difference.