[headphone_speaker]

From the OP, i will choose the option 7200rpm

 

[Mike Wazowski]

OK, just to throw in, for balance, some - slightly - negative experience with my wife's 7,200 rpm MBP (2.2 GHz) bought 9/2007. Battery life is OK, but what happens is this MBP takes significantly longer to wake up or go to sleep, compared to my old 1.67 GHz PB G4.

 

[spyderx]

See this thread I posed a while back on upgrading my MBP HD:

Comparing Seagate Momentus HDDs before MacBook Pro Upgrade - dslreports.com

 

[milkpowder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steggy /img/forum/go_quote.gif like i said. its dependent on the sizes of both drives where the 5400 can be as fast.

This is very true. Have a look at the THG benchmarks. The newer generation of high capacity (read 320-500GB) 5,400rpm HDDs either come extremely close to or exceed the performance of 7,200rpm HDDs in a multitude of tests, including average read/write transfer, maximum read/write transfer, PCMark file writing, etc... Of course, the 7,200rpm HDDs will be capable of higher I/O per second.

 

[Al4x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkpowder /img/forum/go_quote.gif This is very true. Have a look at the THG benchmarks. The newer generation of high capacity (read 320-500GB) 5,400rpm HDDs either come extremely close to or exceed the performance of 7,200rpm HDDs in a multitude of tests, including average read/write transfer, maximum read/write transfer, PCMark file writing, etc... Of course, the 7,200rpm HDDs will be capable of higher I/O per second.

are the 500gb really expensive? i could do with one of them as a second

 

[Mike Wazowski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkpowder /img/forum/go_quote.gif This is very true. Have a look at the THG benchmarks. The newer generation of high capacity (read 320-500GB) 5,400rpm HDDs either come extremely close to or exceed the performance of 7,200rpm HDDs in a multitude of tests, including average read/write transfer, maximum read/write transfer, PCMark file writing, etc... Of course, the 7,200rpm HDDs will be capable of higher I/O per second.

milkpowder, could you kindly provide a link to those tests, please?

I'll be buying a MBP for myself later this summer and starting to think 5,400rpm option might be good enough, for what I do. Right now at home we have a PB with 5,400rpm and 2007 MBP with 7,200rpm, and the only real difference conceivably related to HD speed is that the MBP takes much longer to wake up and, especially go to sleep. The MBP is of course much faster otherwise, including boot time, but it's a completely different machine.

Also, I imagine 7,200rpm must be harder on the battery?.. And heat more?..
Sure, it all depends on what you do. The "work stuff" I do now on PB and will be doing on MB is 3D image reconstructions (structural biology) that take many hours to complete. Surprisingly (or not?) the HD speed does not seem to matter for this, since the bottleneck is - by far - calculation, not writing.

 

[milkpowder]

I can't seem to find a source for the Samsung Spinpoint M6 500GB. It may not be available yet in the UK. I've read that it'll have a MSRP of $299, so expect it to be around 200 quid in the UK. It's faster than the Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm, but will definitely cost a lot more too. (The Hitachi is around 80-85 quid delivered in the UK)

Is 320GB large enough? The Western Digital 320GBP 5400rpm drive is the fastest in its class and equals/beats the Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm in most benchmarks. I doubt you'd notice the difference unless you're running a server where rpm does matter. You can find it for 70-75 quid delivered (see dabs.co.uk and ebuyer.co.uk).

There's a 7200rpm version of the WD 320GB w/ 16MB cache and it's without a doubt crazy fast. It'll set you back about 125 quid delivered though.



here's the link to the benchmarks:
2.5" Hard Drive Charts - Tom's Hardware

remember to scroll down and click on "View All Products"

 

[Al4x]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkpowder /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can't seem to find a source for the 500GB one. It may not be available yet in the UK. Is 320GB large enough? The Western Digital 320GBP 5400rpm drive is the fastest in its class and equals/beats the Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm in most benchmarks. I doubt you'd notice the difference unless you're running a server where rpm does matter.

thats what ive got now, a 320gb 5400 WD as a 2ndary and a 200gb 7200 seagate as a primary

 

[milkpowder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al4x /img/forum/go_quote.gif thats what ive got now, a 320gb 5400 WD as a 2ndary and a 200gb 7200 seagate as a primary

I see, the best of both worlds. Now the Samsung 500GB will be the no compromise solution.