[I was David B.]

Hi all,

today I have installed a new Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 in my 12 inch/rev b Powerbook replacing my old Hitachi 60GB/4200 rpm drive (IC25N060ATMR04 - 60GN).

The result: I am disappointed!
Why? Tests at barefeats tell us that the 7k60 is the fastest drive on the market. But what does this mean?

Copy a 100 MB file:
7k60: 8sec
4200: 15 sec

This is definitely faster.

Startup Photoshop (including classic)
7k60: 15.8 sec
4200: 16 sec

Startup BBedit:
7k60: 3.7sec
4200: 3.8 sec

Startup jedit:
7K60: 7.9 sec
4200: 7.9 sec

Startup OS X (until the login window appears):
7k60: 30 sec
4200: 37 sec

Although the 7K60 copies files definitely faster than my old hitachi drive, the startup times of applications are more or less not affected by the higher speed of the 7k60. Overall boot time on the other hand is faster.

My hope was that the 7k60 would perform as good as my external 3.5 inch Samsung spinpoint (160GB/7200rpm) that I use in a sarotech firewire case. It does not. Whereas the Samsung speeds up the system noticibly, the 7k60 does not give me the impression of a snappier system at all. Looking at the specs of the samsung drive I find MUCH higher data transfer rates (741Mbits/sec vs 518 and 15% faster seek times)
But the 7k60 is definitely noisier than the old 60GN. It has a constant hum and a very metalic read/write sound. I can also hear a constant high frequency beep that is very annoying.

Bottom line: the 7k60 will be sold soon. I will go on using my old drive because the nearly unaudible operation is great compared to the unnoticible speed increase of the 7k60 in everyday use.

But: if you copy a lot of files or have to reboot very often the 7K60 will be an advantage. But be aware of the noise level. In a quiet room it is bad!

[freakboy2]

not sure if this is true with your drive, but i got an ibm (now hitachi) drive once that had some kind of thing running for the first 10 drive boots.. wtf it was doing i can't remember.

after those 10 bootups the drive ran MUCH faster.

it might be worthwhile just rebooting the box a bunch of times, and then testing again.

fb

[I was David B.]

Originally posted by freakboy2:
not sure if this is true with your drive, but i got an ibm (now hitachi) drive once that had some kind of thing running for the first 10 drive boots.. wtf it was doing i can't remember.

after those 10 bootups the drive ran MUCH faster.

it might be worthwhile just rebooting the box a bunch of times, and then testing again.

fb

I rebooted several times, but that did not change anything.

How are the experiences of other people with the 7k60?

The latest alubooks with the 4200/80Gb drives that use Hitachi have a pretty fast hd performance compared to the other Powerbooks and iBooks (I found a test).

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by I was David B.:
I rebooted several times, but that did not change anything.

How are the experiences of other people with the 7k60?

The latest alubooks with the 4200/80Gb drives that use Hitachi have a pretty fast hd performance compared to the other Powerbooks and iBooks (I found a test).

the latest ALUs are 5400

Hard disk drive (1)
60GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm
80GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm
100GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm

http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html

[I was David B.]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
the latest ALUs are 5400

Hard disk drive (1)
60GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm
80GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm
100GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm

http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specs.html

ok, you are right. I meant the generation before that with the 4200 rpm drives.