[Meövv]

I am going to upgrade my 700 MHz iBook from the 20 GB drive to something larger. Thinking of 40 or 60 GB. I see that IBM and Toshiba are making 4200 rpm as well as a faster 5400 rpm. Does anyone have any information about these in iBooks? Does the extra rpm really make it faster? Does the battery consumption differ? Some drives have 2 MB cache while others come with 8 or 16 MB. Does it matter? Are they equally difficult to put in?

What are your experiences?

Peter

[carnagex2000]

im guessing it would take more power to run the faster drive. (i know it takes more power to spin a 7200RPM drive than a 5400RPM drive on my firewire drive dock)

[TomHMeredith]

The faster rpm drives will use more power, so this has to be a consideration when choosing. You may notice slightly faster read/write times with the higher rpm, but for normal use it's likely to make much difference.

Go for the largest drive you can afford, no matter how much storage you have, you will always need more!

Not sure about cache, but I assume that more cache just means faster read/write, but again will use more power, but don't quote me on this!

The drives should all be the same difficulty to put in. Just make sure you have the right tools, try and find some instructions from somewhere, they are bound to be floating around the place.

Tom

[GRAHAMUK]

Upgrading from 10GB to 40GB 5400rpm drive in my iBook 500 almost DOUBLED disk I/O performance. In OS X you really do notice that, every little thing is a damn file. I've since also overclocked it to 600 MHz and 100MHz bus, now it really flies!

[audvidsvs]

I just replaced the original 10 gig 4200 rpm drive in a TiBook-400 with the IBM/Hitachi 5400rpm/8meg cache drive.
I have no benchmarks to run but it is not a subtle difference as far as speed goes. The new drive is faster doing everything and also much quieter,a nice surprise.
I have not noticed any difference in battery life since the change.

Good luck
Ed