Posted by: mcomb
Recommend Laptop Hard Drive - 16/09/2004 16:29
I'm a little out of the loop on hard drives these days, but I'd like to upgrade the drive in my PowerBook. Speed is the key requirement. 6 months ago the Hitachi 7k60 series where about the fastest laptop drives out there (and I think the only 7200 rpm laptop drives?). Are these still the fastest available drives? Is there something faster/cheaper on the immediate horizon? Any other thoughts on these drives?
Thanks,
-Mike
Posted by: drakino
Re: Recommend Laptop Hard Drive - 16/09/2004 17:26
60 gig is still the largest 7200 drive for laptops. Though soon, a 100gb 5400 drive should be out, and that will probably be what I upgrade my Powerbook to, from an 80gb 4200 drive.
Some benchmarks of different drives in a Powerbook are
here.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Recommend Laptop Hard Drive - 16/09/2004 18:53
Nothing fast and new anyhow. I've been waiting for rumored 7200 80 gig drives since I bought my Powerbook a year ago. I'm finally giving up and will just get the 100 gig 5400. I figure a speed bump and space bump will make me happy enough.
Posted by: hybrid8
Re: Recommend Laptop Hard Drive - 16/09/2004 23:08
I'll ask Mike over at XLR8 if he plans on doing an update to the PB drive comparison.
I'd be concerned with a 7200rpm drive in the PB if it generates more heat as do the faster desktop models. The PB already gets flame-hot as it is. And I don't do anything outside the finder on it right now - though I suppose mpeg4 decoding gets the CPU going pretty good sometimes. But I notice the incredible heat even just using a browser and connected to the wireless network.
I've got the same 4200rpm 80GB drive in my machine, 1.5GHz with 512MB of RAM and the 128MB Radeon Mobility 9700.
I dropped it off at the shop today. Not that impressed with the shop. Not when I found out they don't do any component-level repair work (ie. soldering). Though maybe I should be glad about this on a warranty issue. It means they'll just swap out whole boards as they're available from Apple.
Incidentally, a new version of our graphics control panel, ATI Displays, will be released next week which now supports all OEM ATI installations. This means easy access to per-application settings for things like FSAA and Anisotropic filtering - great if you do any gaming.
Bruno
Posted by: drakino
Re: Recommend Laptop Hard Drive - 17/09/2004 16:30
Apple ships the Powerbook with a 5400 option, and when mine was first out, 7200 was also an option.
Most of the heat in a Powerbook is in the rear area towards the middle due to the CPU and GPU being near there. The hard drive is up front, under the trackpad.