new Powerbook hard drive performance

[shadowfax]

Did you guys notice this?

The PowerBook G4 uses the latest in portable hard drive technology, enabling video professionals to quickly transfer large video files in real time directly from a DV camcorder. Data is packed even more densely onto this new generation of hard drives, enabling both the 4200RPM 40GB and 60GB hard drives to have fast raw transfers of up to 298 Mbps (megabits per second) which is equivalent to an average of 26MB/sec sustained transfer rate at the OD. This is a performance increase over the older generation 5400RPM hard drives which have a lower data density and thus had a raw data rate of only 262Mbps (22 MB/sec sustained transfer rate at the OD).

Here of course.

i only just saw that tonight; i should read more carefully. it makes pretty good sense. not really much of a speed increase, and nothing near my good ol' 37 MB/sec 7200 RPM IBM drive, but better than i was afraid of.

any thoughts? i am still planning on getting a 7200 rpm drive when they become at least a little affordable... but until then, this is better than i had thought

 

[Over Achiever]

Yes, but what is the buffer size? The reason the IBM Travelstar 40GNX is so appealing is that it has a 8 MB buffer. Wouldn't that make a difference also?

 

[vniow]

Originally posted by Over Achiever
Yes, but what is the buffer size? The reason the IBM Travelstar 40GNX is so appealing is that it has a 8 MB buffer. Wouldn't that make a difference also?

I would think so.
Whwn I get my iBook next week, I'm going to upgrade the stock 6GB 4200 HDD to this one so I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Rower_CPU]

I'm going to do some informal testing on one of those new drives in the next week or so. I'm about to order a maxed out PB from Backtothemac at General Cybernetics and I still have my rev A 400MHz PB with a 40GNX in it.

I'll be able to see if the rest of the system makes a difference in read/write speed on those HDs.