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Which hard drive should I get for my MacBook Pro?

S

styxfan

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2006
31
0
My friends 2.0 ghz iMac (with the intel integrated graphics) starts and loads applications so much faster than my 2.33 ghz MacBook Pro. I've narrowed the problem down to the 5400 RPM hard drive.

Anywho, I've narrowed my choices down to two hard drives...

Momentus 120 gb hdd

http://www.buy.com/prod/seagate-mom...m-150mbps-serial-ata/q/loc/101/204383669.html

Momentus 160 gb hdd

http://www.buy.com/prod/seagate-mom...00mbps-serial-ata-ii/q/loc/101/204383665.html


Is there any difference in these two hard drives besides the size? I curently have a 120 gig hard drive and have over 50 gigs free. I'll never use the extra space in the 160 gig, but if it's faster, I would go with it anyway.

Which one should I choose?

Thanks
 
well a 120Gb drive with 70gb used is 58% full.

a 160gb drive with 70gb used is only 43% full. the less on the drive, the faster you can get to it (drives get slower as they fill up due to the change in data density)


this is all based on theory (for me at least) and i can only offer this advice as being a) logical and b) reported in many other places
 
Just so you know not everyone agrees with the higher RPM = better performance understanding of HDD. For a very informed and well reasoned explanation of why higher RPM might not accomplish what you hope take a look at this article How higher RPM hard drives rip you off by George Ou. I'm not saying don't go for it, that's your decision to make, but I just wanted you t have the whole picture before you made a decision you were later not pleased with.
 
Aniej said:
Just so you know not everyone agrees with the higher RPM = better performance understanding of HDD. For a very informed and well reasoned explanation of why higher RPM might not accomplish what you hope take a look at this article How higher RPM hard drives rip you off by George Ou. I'm not saying don't go for it, that's your decision to make, but I just wanted you t have the whole picture before you made a decision you were later not pleased with.
Click to expand...

Great Article! thanks for linking to that!
 
When I was an AIX admin in a former life, we used to do this all the time on the AIX machines when setting up the logical drives. When the logical partition was made, there was an option as to where the arm would rest, and how far it would travel, for that particular logical volume (stroking).

When drives start up, the head/arm will rest on the outer edge of the drive, and when parked, the inner part of the platter. For faster access to the data, you would put the logical partition on the edge of the stroke, and data would be put at the longest point of the stroke.

Enough tech mombo jumbo, where can you do that on a PC? All the years I worked on PC's I never saw that option, not that it does not exist, I just never saw it.

Is it possible on OS X?
 
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