[daydreamer]

i am going to buy a dual800 and want to lower the price because i want a geforce3 but no dvd writer and want to save money lowering the 80gig drive to 40gigs that has 5400rpm, will i notice much difference between 7200rpm and 5400rpm on my dual800?

greetz
daydreamer

What do you want to do with the machine? Anything having to do with digital audio, video, or imaging and you'll want to 7200 rpm drive.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to get the best processor configuration possible, just to turn around and get a slower than usual drive. Boot times will be slower, as will application startups, etc.

[Hydra]

I have used both 5400 and 7200 RPM drives and while the 7200 RPM drives are faster you only really need them when doing DV stuff where a 5400 RPM drive would start dropping frames on you. Other than that you'll get better performance from the 7200 but I don't think it's earth shattering. I noted in an older system I had that a 7200 drive could boot in about a min. and with a 5400 drive it took maybe 10 sec longer.

I did what you say you're thinking of doing by ordering the 40GB HD with the dual 800 but I used the $200 savings from the Apple Store to buy an IBM 7200 RPM 60 GXP - which is a very fast drive because I will be doing some DV stuff. The IBM only cost me about 150 bucks at newegg.com so for less money than the standard 80 GB I have 2 drives totaling 100 GB. I really like having multiple drives anyway as far as redundancy goes.

-Jerry C.

I have to agree with Hydra. Take the 40GB drive and pick up an IBM 60 GXP drive. Use the slow drive for mondane stuff and the IBM drive for video, scratch disk, etc..

Or, you can sell the 40GB drive and use the funds for the faster drive. Or if you have an older Mac with a smaller drive, then use it there.

Or ... Or ... Or ...

[Hydra]

Sorry I should have mentined this before but in case you're not aware make sure you buy the BARE MINIMUM of RAM that APPLE will allow.
They cut $200 off the price for dropping from 256Mb to 128Mb. For $200 you can get 1.5 GB of ram at the shockingly low prices they are at now. What is that about 10x's the cheapest rate that Apple charges for RAM now? Just for kicks go to the Apple store and see what they charge for configuring a sys. with 1.5 GB of RAM


-Jerry C.

[AIOg3guy]

I swapped out the slower 5400rpm drive in my AIO g3 for a Western Digital 30gig 7200rpm and the performance increase was noticable both in practice and benchmarks. Check current prices of 7200 rpm drives to see if you'd be saving money by just installing your own 7200 and going with the 5400 from apple as a second, extra drive.

If drives are anything like memory, you'd be crazy to buy one from the Apple Store, especially if your comfortable cracking open your Mac yourself.

Nathan K.

[daydreamer]

thanks for the info guys, but buying two HDs will only increase my price, anyways i found a local dealer who wants to rip out the 40gig 5400rpm drive for a 7200rpm one

i am also going to buy the 15 inch lcd with the twinview card instead and add a second 15 inch lcd later because the 17 inch is to expensive and you can have almost two 15inch lcds for one 17inch that is 30 inch against 17inch for almost the same price

greetz
daydreamer

[Gregory]

I'd beware of NewEgg.com - those are OEM and you may have trouble getting warranty or if you need to RMA. I'd rather pay couple dollars more and get retail kit from Buy.com or www.hypermicro.com. there is no reason when 40GB 60GXP is $119 or less to sacrifice disk speed. And when you are moving 4 GB around, hardware RAID is worth it. Plus, OS X looks like it has native support for RAID.

Even using a 5400 for backup was slow even though ATA/100 otherwise. I'd like to see 10k w/ 4MB cache IDE drives along with PCI IDE. And Drive Setup just doesn't get as much performance as 3rd party drivers. OS X does though do a better job (but has had bugs in the IOKit making it less than stable).

[in the flesh?]

if i were to buy one of the ibm 40 gb 60gxp's would i have to buy a cable or anything else if i were to install it in my 533mp while leaving the original drive in there?

[Hydra]

Originally posted by in the flesh?:
<STRONG>if i were to buy one of the ibm 40 gb 60gxp's would i have to buy a cable or anything else if i were to install it in my 533mp while leaving the original drive in there?</STRONG>

I have never seen the 533mp model in person but as far as I know it's almost identical to the new Quicksilvers as far as the motherboards go. Just look inside; the rear bottom of the case should have your ATA drive (unless you have a SCSI drive setup) with a wide ribbon cable on it and if you see a extra connector on it that's all you need. You Just remove the metal bracket on top of the old dirve and mount the new drive and reattach the bracket with the drive on it (make sure to set the jumpers on the drive to slave if the original was set to master as it most likely was). Attach the ribbon cable and plug in a spare power connector from inside the case and that should do it. Oh yeah make sure the power is off when you start

An above post mentioned that the newegg.com deal is an OEM drive which is true so you get nothing but the drive in a plain ol box but as I don't need the cable, mounting brackets or documentation I would rather save the money. As far as the warranty goes they put a card in the box with IBM's support number on it so as far as support goes I think I'm OK but I'll live with the chance for getting a 60GB 60gxp for $150. Others who may worry about the OEM arrangement or need the other hardware in the box may want to steer clear however.

- Jerry C.

[Hydra]

Just a follow up- Make sure to ground yourself on the power supply before touching anything in the case. And as far as needing anything with one of these OEM drives you may need 4 mounting screws as the OEM IBM drives don't have anything but the bare drive in an antistatic bag shipped on a very well foam padded box. I had some lying around form other drives but you could get the screws at Radio Shack or CompUSA for next to nothing I guess.

-Jerry C.

[blakespot]

The OEM 60GXP I ordered came in its antistaic bag, wraped in several wrap-around layers of large bubblewrap, fixing it tight in its box, but that box was put in a larger box with no padding between, so there was definitely some sliding and bumping of little box in large box during shipping. Oddly, this is just how my old Cheetah 10,000 RPM USCSCI drive was shipped to me years ago.

Cheetah was fine, I hope this drive is too!! (Waiting for dual-800 to see). Does it mean something odd that I did not get this apparently standard IBM foam-packed-box treatment?

Also, apparently the 60GB drives in the dual-800's (likely 867/733's as well) is the IBM Deskstar 60GXP. (!)

blakespot

[bil207]

Originally posted by in the flesh?:
<STRONG>if i were to buy one of the ibm 40 gb 60gxp's would i have to buy a cable or anything else if i were to install it in my 533mp while leaving the original drive in there?</STRONG>

I added the IBM 60GXP to my 533DP as a second HD (slave). You don't need any additional cables, only a small screwdriver. The installation is very easy. You can get instructions here. http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/add_2nd_drive/index.html