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Quicker hard drive worth it??

P

pmac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2004
16
0
NZ
Hi all,
I am on the verge of finally switching from my PC laptop and getting a new 15" 1.33 powerbook but am trying to decide on some of the finer details. Specifically I am wondering whether it is worth upgrading to the faster hard drive or is this money better spent on extra ram? I am currently doing a PhD in biochemistry and will be doing the usual student stuff but with some 3-d molecular modelling thrown in there. I know there will be some improvements but will the faster hard drive give me a noticeable performance boost for everyday uses??
 
there is a noticeable difference in speed of hard drives. its obvious... a slower hard drive will load things slower and a faster hard drive will load things faster. It will also mean it will do main stream seeking with minimal pauses.

experiment. I run UT2003 on my 1 GHz G4 laptop and the way the game loads when i join a game is soooooo choppy. when i put it on my lacie drive that is twice as fast, theres barely any lag.

hope this helps
 
3-D Biochemistry stuff ehh? Well honestly I'd get the hard drive first and then upgrade the RAM. RAM is way more important for speed, RAM will give you a significant increase in speed. The hard drive'll be good for saving and loading times but other than that 4200 is as good as 5400 (but faster is better). Thats my 2 cents, hope it helps.
 
Look, get the 5400rpm 80GB Apple Hard Drive option with the 1.5GHz Powerbook 15".

It is so much faster than the 4200rpm base model drive and it uses no more battery!

May 17th, 2004 -- Will the optional 5400rpm drive on the new PowerBook use more battery power than the standard 4200rpm drive? According to the specs published by Toshiba, the 5400rpm "GAX" uses 9% more watts for reading/writing and 15% more watts for startup compared to the 4200rpm "GAS." We ran a battery life test suggested by a reader. We looped the playback of a 30 minute QuickTime movie. At 6GB, the movie was too big for the PowerBooks' 1GB memory, so it forced regular access of the hard drive. We ran the test on our two new Aluminum G4/1.5GHz PowerBooks, one with 80GB 4200rpm drive, one with 80GB 5400rpm drive. They both lasted the same length of time until the "reserve power" message came on: 2.25 hours.
Click to expand...

If you can afford it, go for the 128MB Video Memory - all these upgrades are at very low price for Apple and will make a big difference to OS X performance, but the Hard Drive most of all!

Look here for more details:

http://www.barefeats.com/pb11.html

http://www.barefeats.com/pb12.html
 
You will recieve a around 10-20% increase in performance on hard drive intensive task with the upgrade. i would also recommed and ram upgrade. both upgrades will increase 3D rendering performance. i image the models you are rendering take up quite a bit of RAM, more RAM than you have. Your hard drive contains a file called the swap file. (its in /private/var/vm) OS X swaps information between your RAM and your hard disk, when dealing with large files in memory. increases your hard drive speed will increases this process not only increasing your 3D capability with large files but on the over all operating system performance. the bottle for your laptop performance is the hard drive. always going for the fastest hard drive will always save you time in the long run because the use of the swap file.

http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031031/index.html
 
virividox said:
get the faster hard drive; depending on tasks you may see a difference in performance; it all depends on the intensity your hard drive will be needing to access data; something like video or photo or audio editing needs faster drives.
Click to expand...

Very true, sometimes when working on projects in iMovie i will get a message saying that the HD isn't fast enough to handle what I am doing, or something like that, needless to say, it's sad times when that happens!
 
i say that if you are spending that much money on a laptop, why not spend a bit more for something that will greatly increase your performance? i am sure there will be one night two years from now that you will waste like $70 in a bar somewhere or a drunken bet, and this money could have been spent on something that will last you much longer. just get the upgrade. also up the RAM from a place like crucial
 
I would agree with those who say go for it. It is something that cannot be added after the fact (without voiding the warranty) is relatively inexpensive, adds significantly to performance, etc. I'd also agree with upgrading the video card--for the money, why not? I've got a 1.5 PB with both, so am perhaps a bit biased....

And RAM is a great addition, but it is something that can be added later.

Best,

Bob
 
Thanks for your helpful replies.
I think you have all convinced me to go with the hard drive upgrade.

i am sure there will be one night two years from now that you will waste like $70 in a bar somewhere or a drunken bet, and this money could have been spent on something that will last you much longer.
Click to expand...

I like it, but it would be funnier for me if it wasn't so true!!

From what I can find here in NZ the apple ram (at Education prices) does not seem to be much more expensive than importing through crucial or buying locally so I will probably just go with apple, unless anyone in this part of the world has any good suggestions for ram suppliers?
 
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