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tramahound · Oct 11, 2004, 10:03 PM

I'm thinking of upgrading my tibook's 30 gig original drive (i'm guessing it's a 4200rpm drive...I'm not certain) with a 40 gig 7200 rpm 8MB cache Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 from OWC but I'm wondering if it's a good deal? It seems like a lot for not so much space. I'm also wondering if I should put so much into this old dog

also, the ti400 didn't take anthing special in the way of drives right? it's just a standard 2.5 inch?
AND, would I even see much of a performance improvement given that the ata/66 drive type?
thanks

LORL · Oct 11, 2004, 10:10 PM

Well, I don't claim to know much, but I bet you would defentitly notice a difference. Whether that is worth the money on an older mac, I'm not sure; I have never had an older one. But, I think the general rule with hard drives is: you will always notice a better hard drive, as I feel they are generally the bottleneck to your system, and that is defentitly true of laptops.

You might notice a lesser battery life though with a 7200rpm, anyone else confirm this?

shabbasuraj · Oct 11, 2004, 10:20 PM

I too am suspect of the upgrade worthiness of that machine. Maybe save your money for a newer machine? As I am not sure if the upgrade will give you the performance boost you are looking for. Maybe an iBook G4 would do you better (with regards to performance) if you are on a budget. It all depends on what you define as 'performance' and what exactly you are using your machine for.

tramahound · Oct 12, 2004, 08:11 AM

I do a lot of video stuff, but mosty surfing, downloads, music listening, etc. It just seems to me that I notice my hard drive spinning an awful lot, and my system bogging down giving me the spinning beach ball while it ticks away. i don't do any heavy lifting, but maybe that bog down is more a result of my slow system in general? i'm just not sure. again though, would the ata/66 drive type be more of a bottleneck?
Thanks

Mithras · Oct 12, 2004, 08:53 AM

I would install MenuMeters for awhile, and keep an eye on the disk, CPU, and memory usage. Might give you a sense for which of those things is under the most strain.

cenutrio · Oct 12, 2004, 11:20 AM

I upgraded the original 10 GB 4,200 rpm HD on my tiPB 400 for a 40 GB IBM travel star 5,400 rpm.

Very significant speed improvement that was confirmed when running XBench (like a 10-15% increase). This was during the Jag days.

Later I upgraded memory to 768 MB, installed panther and bought a new battery. Still a quite capable system.

tramahound · Oct 12, 2004, 11:38 AM

thanks for the real world opinion. I don't have all that much memory in here either just 384mb, so that might be something to look into too. i think it's more than capable right now, but the hdd churning made me wonder and really what else could be upgraded to make it last longer? the hdd, the memory...maybe, MAYBE the optical drive, but not even...
i think i'll try it.
how are hitachi's though? should i look for a specific drive? have benchmarks been done?
thanks

romeosc · Oct 12, 2004, 04:49 PM

Memory first then storage to increse speed!

tramahound · Oct 12, 2004, 04:52 PM

how about both?!
more snappy then?

SEkker · Oct 12, 2004, 05:02 PM

I just replaced my Apple stock 4200 rpm HD with a 7200 rpm Hitachi. This is a terrific real-world speed increase, even with 2 GB RAM.

Go for both, if you can!

Snake · Oct 12, 2004, 05:56 PM

Originally posted by LORL:
Well, I don't claim to know much, but I bet you would defentitly notice a difference. Whether that is worth the money on an older mac, I'm not sure; I have never had an older one. But, I think the general rule with hard drives is: you will always notice a better hard drive, as I feel they are generally the bottleneck to your system, and that is defentitly true of laptops.

You might notice a lesser battery life though with a 7200rpm, anyone else confirm this?

Power consuption is negligible, in the area of 3 minutes. Noise is almost non-existent if you buy the Hitachi. There is no gyration of the chassis either, works like a champ.

System dependent operations are very quick, like dragging and dropping files within the system. Internet browsing is quicker to say the least. I am happy with the drive.

tramahound · Oct 12, 2004, 09:37 PM

yeah, I'm sold I think. I use iPulse and can vouche for the heavy hdd use. the processor is pretty overwhelmed too, but not much I can do about that. snappier every day use is enough for me for now though. i can afford $300 in a new hdd and some ram, but a $700 more than that for a new ibook or $2000 more than even that for a dreamy G5 is a bit too much for me right now...
any tips on installing it? i tried popping the bottom cover off, but it didn't come off as easily as I expected so i left it on figuring i'd take it off if i ever needed to, not when i didn't have a reason to. i'll find out soon enough i guess, but i'm wondering if there is a trick to it. the service manual just says to pull it down towards you and that's it. didn't work that easily when i tried...