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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: 5400rpm vs. 7200rpm Hard Drive

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General question from people's experiences on here. I have always used a 7200 rpm but I am thinking of getting a new mac with a 320gb 5400rpm internal hard drive. Am I going to experience a huge difference for audio? I won't be using the internal for video (but could I if I chose to?).

Just wondering what people's experiences are. I love the idea of 320gb on an internal drive (less wires), but I just want to make sure that will work.

Thanks for your input.
 
Posted Fri 21 Mar 08 @ 12:23 pm
Yes it will work, but will access the data at a slower rate. My math is a little fuzzy, but I think it's about 30% slower.
 
I installed the WD 320 gb in my Macbook Pro ($200). It was very easy to do. I haven't noticed a difference in speed at all.
 
I've been using a 5400 rpm internal with no problems. You should be just fine.
 
A Man and His Music wrote :
Yes it will work, but will access the data at a slower rate. My math is a little fuzzy, but I think it's about 30% slower.


Aren't u just a little fuzzy period ??


looool :-)

Kaoz
 
from a technical standpoint, the main purpose of faster hard drives is to either improve boot times or for servers that have to dole out lots of files to different people. Even a 4200RPM drive would be fast enough for loading files into VDJ. Consider that your CD-ROM drive is MUCH slower than your hard drive, and it's fast enough to load music or even video files.
Of course, there might be other good reasons why you want a faster drive, and bootup speed would probably be the best reason, but you have to weigh that against how many music/video files you need to have on your laptop.
 
Thanks for everyone for your responses. I really appreciate the feedback.
 
Data transfer rate increases as platter data storage density increases. Pack more stuff into the same size platter at the same speed and you’ve got to move the data faster. Save money and buy a larger, not faster drive…
 
your spinrate is dependant on what you do. for realtime activities it is an important factor. for instance, if you spin with 320kbps mp3 files it will be handled. but if you record that stream at the same time in WAV then you may encounter a problem. if you do any kind of video production then you already know that under 10k spinrate is non-optimal.
 
The only reason I could see a need for a 7200RPM drive would be if your computer BSODed while running Virtual DJ and you needed a quick reboot. You would still probably be booed off stage and dead by the time you got the music back on. That's why it's always good to have that IPOD handy. 5400RPM is all you need.

But we all know that Virtual DJ never causes a BSOD!! :p
 
It was years ago since I've experienced the latest BSOD, back in the win95/98/2000 era... More stable with XP/Vista these days. I'd go for a 7200 rpm drive containing a tweaked OS and VDJ for faster performance, and an external storage device for your music.
 


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