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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > new faster hard drive for 17inch

new faster hard drive for 17inch
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Apr 11, 2003, 02:21 PM
 
http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produ...ductCode=101670

with this hard drive that should help out with the firewire 800 epsicially target disk mode etc. Tell me what you think. It is crtinaly faster than the one in it now. with 5400 rpm and a bigget bus.
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 02:37 PM
 
Originally posted by yoyoman:
http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produ...ductCode=101670

with this hard drive that should help out with the firewire 800 epsicially target disk mode etc. Tell me what you think. It is crtinaly faster than the one in it now. with 5400 rpm and a bigget bus.
That link redirects to http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Home.jsp

What drive specifically?
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 11, 2003, 02:53 PM
 
Originally posted by JakBeatZ:
That link redirects to http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Home.jsp

What drive specifically?

http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=101670

there. It should work now.
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 11, 2003, 02:54 PM
 
Originally posted by yoyoman:
http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=101670

there. It should work now.
Toshiba "GAX" 5400rpm 2.5 inch 9mm drive (16MB buffer) in both If you can't get the link that is the hard drive.
http://barefeats.com/#quick
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 03:02 PM
 
Ahh, that appears to be a very nice drive. Fluid bearings (will keep it quiet), 16 MB cache (you will notice a huge improvement here) and 5400 RPM (this will be helpful if you move/copy large files). Seems like a good deal to me.
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 11, 2003, 03:33 PM
 
Originally posted by CheesePuff:
Ahh, that appears to be a very nice drive. Fluid bearings (will keep it quiet), 16 MB cache (you will notice a huge improvement here) and 5400 RPM (this will be helpful if you move/copy large files). Seems like a good deal to me.
also it will actually make the firewire 800 woth more than it is. Because right now its not as fast as people would like it to from threads. Also 5400 is a big improvement but will it fit in the case. If so I will just sell the one in side and pay the difference. I was told pretty soon a 7400 rpm one will come out but with 40 gigs starting. that will help with fire wire 800 with target disk mode etc. Pluse for games etc loading speeds will be slightly faster I hope. For the price it is worth it I think. if you see any hd's for better please let me know. 16mb is nice. i have a western with 8mb it is fast at fetching info.
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 03:45 PM
 
Even though it only has eight megabytes of disk cache, the IBM TravelStar 40GXP is faster.

http://www.barefeats.com/fire32.html
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 11, 2003, 03:51 PM
 
Originally posted by seanyepez:
Even though it only has eight megabytes of disk cache, the IBM TravelStar 40GXP is faster.

http://www.barefeats.com/fire32.html
hummm sounds like better but IBM has recently recalled there hd's with defects and I like toshiba a lot. I hope soon they releåse a 7400 rpm so that by the time i get my 17" I will be able to swap.

So IBM is faster. They need to do a test with using the buffer the 16mb vs the 8mb some how. see if its really worth it. 8mb is nice bug 16 seems nicer. price witch one is cheeper as of now. Also I don't mind going with a 40 gig hd if i can get 7400 rpm possibly
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 03:52 PM
 
For sheer performance, get the brand new 7200rpm drives that are supposed to be out. Anyone have a link to those?
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 11, 2003, 03:53 PM
 
Originally posted by yoyoman:
hummm sounds like better but IBM has recently recalled there hd's with defects and I like toshiba a lot. I hope soon they releåse a 7400 rpm so that by the time i get my 17" I will be able to swap.

So IBM is faster. They need to do a test with using the buffer the 16mb vs the 8mb some how. see if its really worth it. 8mb is nice bug 16 seems nicer. price witch one is cheeper as of now. Also I don't mind going with a 40 gig hd if i can get 7400 rpm possibly


Caveat: all tests were run with the drives installed in an Oxford 911 FireWire case kit (Cutie from FWDepot). When time and opportunity permits, I will test both "winning" drives inside both a Pismo and a TiBook, but don't expect the results to be significantly different. Although, I've seen a case where the internal Ultra ATA interface was able to utilize the drive's cache more effectively than the FireWire bridge.
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 04:32 PM
 
Originally posted by yoyoman:
hummm sounds like better but IBM has recently recalled there hd's with defects and I like toshiba a lot. I hope soon they releåse a 7400 rpm so that by the time i get my 17" I will be able to swap.

So IBM is faster. They need to do a test with using the buffer the 16mb vs the 8mb some how. see if its really worth it. 8mb is nice bug 16 seems nicer. price witch one is cheeper as of now. Also I don't mind going with a 40 gig hd if i can get 7400 rpm possibly
Which drives did IBM recall? I haven't had a single IBM TravelStar drive fail on me. Then again, I have never had a Toshiba drive die, either. I've had several IBM drives, but the only Toshiba drive I have is 12-gigabyte one that came with my Pismo. It is incredibly noisy. The new Toshiba notebook drives are very loud when reading or writing data, but they're almost silent at idle.
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 05:07 PM
 
I like toshiba better myself as well.

Ming
A Proud Mac User Since: 03/24/03
Apple Computer: MacBook 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB Memory, 120 GB HD
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 11, 2003, 07:35 PM
 
Originally posted by nobitacu:
I like toshiba better myself as well.

Ming

If i find the article on the the ibm I will let u know. so toshiba u think even though the ibm is faster for some reason.
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 08:49 PM
 
I believe that the IBM HDs that were recalled would be the desktop drives.

The notebook drives are high quality IMO ... not many can do better.
"It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got."
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 11:30 PM
 
I don't care how fast it is, or how much cache there is - i will never give up my silent Fujitsu HD. My 12" PowerBook is inaudible. Fluid bearings or not, Toshiba makes loud HDs.
     
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Apr 11, 2003, 11:36 PM
 
Originally posted by StiZeven:
I don't care how fast it is, or how much cache there is - i will never give up my silent Fujitsu HD. My 12" PowerBook is inaudible. Fluid bearings or not, Toshiba makes loud HDs.
are you sure the toshiba is louder. Its probely louder because its running at faster rpm's probely. If it helps it helps. Speed is what counts. Not how loud it is.
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 04:08 AM
 
" If it helps it helps. Speed is what counts. Not how loud it is."

Not for everyone.

     
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Apr 12, 2003, 05:44 AM
 
Originally posted by yoyoman:
are you sure the toshiba is louder. Its probely louder because its running at faster rpm's probely. If it helps it helps. Speed is what counts. Not how loud it is.
Do you work for Toshiba?

Both drives spin at the same speed. Even though the Toshiba hard drive has more cache, tests show that the IBM TravelStar 40GXP outperforms it.
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 05:52 AM
 
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 12, 2003, 08:16 AM
 
Originally posted by yoyoman:
are you sure the toshiba is louder. Its probely louder because its running at faster rpm's probely. If it helps it helps. Speed is what counts. Not how loud it is.

If you do several tests reboot and to the same test and then post your results then you will get a more accurate result. There fore getting better results.
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 09:29 AM
 
how will these affect battery life? the 5400 and 7200 drives will suck more juice won't they?
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 09:55 AM
 
Originally posted by StiZeven:
I don't care how fast it is, or how much cache there is - i will never give up my silent Fujitsu HD. My 12" PowerBook is inaudible. Fluid bearings or not, Toshiba makes loud HDs.
My Fujitsu 60 GB (in my TiBook) is super quiet. My Toshiba 60 GB (in a Cutie Firewire enclosure) is very quiet too, although I think the Fujitsu is slightly quieter.

Both are 4200 rpm, and fast enough for my purposes. For what it's worth, The Fujitsu can hit 26 MB/s with Xbench for sequential transfers. Even the random transfer speeds are not too bad.
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 07:42 PM
 
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Eug:
[B]My Fujitsu 60 GB (in my TiBook) is super quiet. My Toshiba 60 GB (in a Cutie Firewire enclosure) is very quiet too, although I think the Fujitsu is slightly quieter.
Both are 4200 rpm, and fast enough for my purposes. For what it's worth, The Fujitsu can hit 26 MB/s with Xbench for sequential transfers. Even the random transfer speeds are not too bad.

For doing tests like this check out the dd command.
A test like this :
sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk0 bs=1048576 count=50 > /dev/null
Will give you the read throughput for your startup disk (/dev/rdisk0).
You see the problem with testing through the Finder, is that it goes through
the file system's buffer. Testing pure drive performance is much more
accurate by reading raw bytes from the raw device file, since there is no
buffering going on.
For more information on dd, checkout man dd
So, when running "dd if=/dev/rdisk3 bs=1048576 count=100 > /dev/null" on my
notebook drive in a FireWire enclosure, I get about 16.2 MB/s. This makes
sense, since it is within the drive specifications of 16.6 MB/s. I would
usually check the manufacturer's drive specifications before making any
assumptions about a drive.
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 07:58 PM
 
Honestly, the difference in performance between the lateset drives from Toshiba, Fujitsu, and IBM doesn't matter. Buy whichever drive is cheapest.
     
yoyoman  (op)
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Apr 12, 2003, 10:28 PM
 
Originally posted by seanyepez:
Honestly, the difference in performance between the lateset drives from Toshiba, Fujitsu, and IBM doesn't matter. Buy whichever drive is cheapest.
If some one can do a bench mark test based on what i posted. we will see the true side of the speeds of hd's.
     
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Apr 12, 2003, 10:49 PM
 
Originally posted by seanyepez:
Honestly, the difference in performance between the lateset drives from Toshiba, Fujitsu, and IBM doesn't matter. Buy whichever drive is cheapest.
Cheapest rarely means highest performance. Until the benchmarks can be posted the "correct" answer is not available...
     
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Apr 13, 2003, 04:24 PM
 
Originally posted by Karim:
Cheapest rarely means highest performance. Until the benchmarks can be posted the "correct" answer is not available...
some one do tests and see if its wroth the swap.
     
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May 2, 2003, 11:24 AM
 
the ibm and fujitsu are the most silent drives

get one of those and then something like the Cutie, or eDrive or Speedzter2 or Cutter enclosures from FireWire Depot (http://www.fwdepot.com)
     
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May 2, 2003, 12:39 PM
 
I heard the Toshiba GAX is not that quiet, at least compared to the IBM.

By the way, IBM has cleaned up their act as far as HDs are concerned, in fact they recently sold their entire hard drive line to Hitachi so now "IBM" hard drives are actually Hitachi. I have an IBM/Hitachi 40GN (40 GB, 4200 RPM) in an external firewire case and it's super quiet.

"That's Mama Luigi to you, Mario!" *wheeze*
     
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May 2, 2003, 08:19 PM
 
Well, like I said before, even the 'new' Toshiba's are loud (at least IMO). It's noticeable when you read/write data, which is pretty much whenever you use the drive!

My 60GB Fujitsu HD is silent. I have to put my ear next to my 12" Albook's chassis to hear it read/write data. I love that when I launch a program, or logout/login you don't hear that dreadful hard drive grind (faint or not, it drives me insane). It's also very quiet at idle as well. As a side note, my fan almost never comes on this little guy, so I have become truly spoiled by how silent my PowerBook is!

When I had my TiBook and the 60GB Toshiba HD you knew exactly when it was grinding. It was no secret! Quieter than they used to be, but I certainly wouldn't call them quiet. Then of course you had the two blowers loudly blowing out air 5min after you turned the sucker on!
     
   
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