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Canterbury · Apr 12, 2005, 02:55 PM

Ive had this 40gb hitachi 7k60 in my ibook for a couple weeks now and i thought Id post a benchmark comparison real quick. The original drive was a 30gb toshiba 4200rpm that came in my 1ghz 12".

I did notice a slight decrease in battery life, I lost about 15-20min. I think the sacrifice is more than worth it. As for heat, if it is any hotter i havent noticed. The installation was pretty simple. I had heard that it wasnt necessary to remove the bottom cover but i found it was easier to remove the upper plastic after the bottom was off. Heres a link to some disassembly instructions: http://aberco.free.fr/ibook/demontage1.html

If anybody has and questions feel free to ask.

Here are some screen shots of xbench.
First the old hard drive:

Second is the new drive.

StonedRose · Apr 12, 2005, 05:01 PM

Thanks for putting this up. Did you notice a increase in speed during GUI operations (ie windows opening faster etc..). Just wondering if the 7200rpm is more responsive in the OS compared to the 4200 due to virtual memory access theoretically being faster.

Aloha.

tae667 · Apr 12, 2005, 05:14 PM

How difficult it was to replace the drive? Can a technically challenged political scientist like me do it(I've built some PCs but that's it)? And to repeat the another queston: does it fell in everyday use(Office, Mail and Safari) ?

I'm seriously considering this because I hate beachballs and my iBooks warranty just went out.

Canterbury · Apr 12, 2005, 05:28 PM

The notebook feels faster in general. The OS boots much faster (I have not timed it), program installs, copying files, imovie, photoshop are all faster. Regular things like web browsing and word are no different though.

I thought this was a relatively easy install. But then again I work on notebooks all the time. If you take your time and follow the instructions I dont see why anyone couldnt do it. Just clear a big space on your desk/table and go at it. Something that i do that helps is, I get a white piece of paper to set all of the screws on. After removing all of the screws from a certain area I draw a circle around those screws on the paper and make a note of where they came from.

I was David B. · Apr 13, 2005, 12:04 PM

Very interesting.

I put the 7K60 in my 12 inch powerbook. I did not take benchmarks but I clocked some every day tasks. That was disappointing. I removed the drive in the meantime and stay with my old one.

I found out that my old Hitachi drive is one of the fastest 4200rpm drives out here (due to a very high data density). The iBooks Toshiba drives are indeed slower.

Aren't you annoyed by the noise? My original drive was unaudible. The 7K60 produced a very high frequent sound. That was the reason why I removed it again.

7K60 in powerbook

Canterbury · Apr 13, 2005, 12:33 PM

hmm, i think you may have gotten a bad drive. I have installed the 7k60 in almost 10 laptops now, and I have never noticed any excessive noise. I am not dissapointed at all.

siMac · Apr 15, 2005, 02:27 AM

I have just installed the 60GB 7K60 in my Dual USB iBook and can also report a speed boost on VM intensive apps etc...

I found a very good disassembly guide here:

http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/

Complete with pics and a screw guide! They also have guides for Powerbook models. The whole procedure took about an hour, not including reinstalling the OS. Next upgrade, more RAM...