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Cottonsworth · Apr 23, 2010, 04:04 PM

I'm looking to upgrade the hard drive on a 12" alum Powerbook G4 I have.

I'm looking at a 100gb Seagate ST910021A 7200rpm drive vs a Western Digital Scorpio 250gb 5400rpm drive.

Both have a 8mb buffer but the 5400rpm WD has faster read seek times and average latency compared to the Seagate (12 vs 10.5) and (5.5 vs 4.2). Am I missing something here? The 5400rpm drive is faster than a 7200rpm drive? Please fill me in. Thanks.

analogue SPRINKLES · Apr 23, 2010, 04:09 PM

7200 is faster. go with that.

Cottonsworth · Apr 23, 2010, 04:22 PM

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES

7200 is faster. go with that.

That is what I thought but can you explain to me why the 5400rpm one would have better specs than the 7200rpm one? I found looking at the specs for both very confusing. Thanks.

Cottonsworth · Apr 23, 2010, 05:12 PM

Someone else told me that the 250gb 5400rpm would be faster because it is 2.5 times denser. Does that make any sense? Thanks.

reader50 · Apr 23, 2010, 05:18 PM

It might be, if the capacity jump is all due to higher platter density. On the other hand, if the 100 GB is a 1-platter and the 250 GB is a 2-platter, the density may not be much higher. You'd have to check the specs more closely to find out the real density-per-platter figure.

Or you could see if both drives are in a performance database. If they are, you could compare real speed figures.

Cottonsworth · Apr 23, 2010, 05:40 PM

Do you think manufacturer specs are to be trusted? If so, the WD 5400rpm is clearly faster than the Seagate 7200rpm. Thanks.

amazing · Apr 23, 2010, 05:56 PM

100 GB just doesn't seem big enough, does it?

are you buying the HD or are these just something you've got hanging around?

chabig · Apr 23, 2010, 06:41 PM

I can't believe it will make a bit of difference in an old Powerbook G4. Any modern hard drive will saturate the data bus to the CPU, no matter how fast it's spinning. The only advantage the 7200 RPM drive is in lower latency.

amazing · Apr 23, 2010, 07:17 PM

it will make a difference--but even 5400 rpm will make a significant difference, given that the original HD was 4200 rpm

Cottonsworth · 08:26 PM

I have both laying around. I got the 100gb 7200rpm off a friend who parted out his high-res 1.67ghz G4, it came stock with it as a build to order option from Apple.

So I guess the consensus is I go with the 250gb 5400rpm one? Thanks.

Simon · Apr 24, 2010, 02:08 AM

Originally Posted by chabig

Any modern hard drive will saturate the data bus to the CPU, no matter how fast it's spinning.

You sure about that? IIRC that PB had a 133 MHz bus. So for DMA we're looking at 133 MHz * 32 bits = 4.3 Gbps, right? Its PATA bus to the drive OTOH is 100MB/s.

I'd say the real bottleneck is the PATA bus, not the data bus to the CPU.

chabig · Apr 24, 2010, 03:42 AM

Here's the info on the ATA-6 bus in the machine (Parallel ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). The maximum data transfer rate is 100Gbps. By the way, I think the ATA bus is only 16 bits wide.

I dug further and here is a website that did some benchmarking where they discovered the 5400 RPM drives were about 5% slower than the 7200 RPM drives (Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB Mobile HDD)

Simon · Apr 24, 2010, 04:56 AM

ATA-6 = UltraATA/100 = 100MBps = 800 Mbps, not 100 Gbps.

chabig · Apr 24, 2010, 10:17 AM

You're right. That's what happens late at night!

reader50 · Apr 24, 2010, 03:48 PM

With PATA, you lose about 1/4 of the rated speed to bus overhead. On PATA 100, data transfer will top out around 75 MB per second. That's still pretty good, and certainly much faster than your old drive could manage.

If you got a solid-state drive, it could saturate the bus at all times. A later hard drive is likely to saturate at the beginning of the drive, but will fall off a bit as it fills up.

Simon · Apr 24, 2010, 04:45 PM

Good luck finding a 2.5" PATA SSD at a decent price.

reader50 · Apr 24, 2010, 05:14 PM

Good luck finding *any* SSD at a decent price. They're running 20-30x the price per GB of hard drives.

Which is a real shame. Those who have SSDs don't want to go back.

Simon · Apr 25, 2010, 01:38 AM

Hmm. My point was that PATA SSDs are massively more expensive than SATA SSDs per GB. And compared to SATA SSDs there's almost no selection once you've settled on which capacity you're looking for.

amazing · Apr 25, 2010, 09:04 AM

I'm not sure it serves much purpose to hotrod an old Honda Civic (12" PB?), main thing is to just get it back on the road, 'cause it can be quite useful--for example, as a jukebox or just some mobile browsing on the couch.

Be kind of interesting to see speed tests between an iPad and a 12" PB, from that point of view. Yes, they're different beasties, different weights, all that, but if you've already got one, and it's just for the couch?

Cottonsworth · Apr 25, 2010, 11:19 PM

I'm using the 12" PB to be my Mac "netbook." Something to use when traveling when I don't need the horsepower of my MBP. Mainly just surfing the net and maybe working on some office apps. I figured a hard drive upgrade may give it a noticeable performance boost. I'll report what I find after I do the upgrade, which should be fairly soon.

amazing · Apr 26, 2010, 12:10 AM

Well, having gone from the 4200 rpm original HD to a 5400 rpm WD3200BEVE in a 1.33 12" PB, I can tell you there's a noticeable boost. I can also tell you, from personal experience, that it got hotter and that the fans would come on in "airplane mode."

And I know that many people will say that the newer PATA HDs don't get any hotter than the originals. All I'm saying is that I used that 12" PB for 2 summers before replacing the HD, and that it did indeed get hotter, to the point that I bought a laptop cooler. YMMV.

Dex13 · Apr 26, 2010, 01:33 AM

you'll regret swapping out the hard drive after you take the laptop apart. (and maybe putting it back together.)

it isn't fun at all.

amazing · Apr 26, 2010, 09:41 AM

Yep, it's a very complicated swap. Which is why you should print out 2 copies of the ifixit.com guide and tape the tiny screws directly to the appropriate spots of the second copy. Makes it much easier. Just be sure to use something like a dental pick to pry up the connectors: whatever you do, don't pull on the wires to loosen the connectors.

Cottonsworth · Apr 26, 2010, 10:51 AM

Why would it be hotter? The fact that it spins faster or the capacity? Would I be better off using the "slower" Seagate 100gb 7200rpm that came out of a PB 1.67ghz? Thanks.

Originally Posted by amazing

Well, having gone from the 4200 rpm original HD to a 5400 rpm WD3200BEVE in a 1.33 12" PB, I can tell you there's a noticeable boost. I can also tell you, from personal experience, that it got hotter and that the fans would come on in "airplane mode."

And I know that many people will say that the newer PATA HDs don't get any hotter than the originals. All I'm saying is that I used that 12" PB for 2 summers before replacing the HD, and that it did indeed get hotter, to the point that I bought a laptop cooler. YMMV.

amazing · Apr 26, 2010, 01:00 PM

The original HD was a 4200 rpm, probably lower power consumption hence cooler. The WD 320 GB 5400 rpm wasn't all that much hotter, just enough to be noticeable, just enough to occasionally ramp up the fans when the PB was under load.

Having the large HD was definitely worth the very occasional irritation of fan noise. Frankly, installing the HD is enough of a hassle that you should put the largest HD in, simply because you don't want to do too often.

Another important point is to max out the RAM.

Sosa · May 25, 2010, 03:48 AM

I swapped out my original 4200 rpm 40 gig hard drive and self-installed a 60 gig 7200 rpm. I used the iFixit guide and thought it was an interesting 2 hour project- done out of necesity mind you, my computer was dropped once too many times! But hey, it has been dropped a few more times and here I am still writing on it. How much of a beating can these 12" Powerbooks take? It is by far the biggest bang for my buck of any equipment I have ever purchased.

afransen · Nov 17, 2010, 02:22 AM

ok, so i have the same question. I have a 17" 1.67 G4 Powerbook, thinking i had better swap out the hard drive before it fails and to increase the HD size. Anyway, so I have been browsing Western Digital and other brands of HDs and they all are 5400rpms. On ebay i can find the 7200rpm hard drives. Currently i have a 100gb 5400rpm, is the 7200 worth getting. Also is there a 7200 PATA out there larger than 160GB?

Thanks for the help

Sosa · Nov 17, 2010, 08:46 AM

Check out this sale:
Search Results for garage.sale at MacSales.com

I'm back down to a 5400 rpm drive myself after trading my 12" PB for a 17" PB 1.67. If I had to replace the hard drive I would go for one of those.

hadocon · Nov 18, 2010, 01:07 AM

Have you considered power use?

I imagine that the difference in drive performance in real life situations will be negligible. With this in mind it might be prudent to give power requirements (battery life) a thought or two.

THOMBOMBADIL · Nov 25, 2010, 06:04 PM

Is there ant technical reason an ssd would not work in a 12" G4 PB?

(ignoring cost/benefit, size....)

chabig · Nov 25, 2010, 06:20 PM

Yes. The interfaces are not compatible. PB G4s used PATA drives. Modern computers use SATA. SSDs are made for modern computers.

Cold Warrior · Nov 25, 2010, 06:56 PM

I found at least one pata ssd on newegg in a quick search just now. Not saying it's worth it, but THOM if you really wanted one...

THOMBOMBADIL · Nov 25, 2010, 07:29 PM

Yes, they are beginning to appear as other market niches saturate. The price of SSDs seems to be coming down. I do not need a big drive, I am using about 22GB so a 64GB ssd would be big enough, and might run cooler than the 7200 rpm 100GB Hitachi I am using. Is there any reason that this might not work?

THOMBOMBADIL · Nov 26, 2010, 02:37 PM

I think the answer, for me, is that the time to do this will be when an ATA/IDE SSD for G4 PB is offered by OWC or iFixit or similar. I am ok spending $150 or so, but I lack the skills/knowledge to deal with the inevitable minor soft/hardware bugs that will arise.

OreoCookie · Nov 26, 2010, 02:46 PM

ATA is dead, the industry has moved to SATA quite a few years ago. And changing a harddrive in a 12" PowerBook is a Royal Pain with capital letters. If I were you'd I'd save the money towards a new machine.

amazing · Nov 26, 2010, 08:04 PM

You already own the 12" PB. Having changed the HD in a 12" several times, it's definitely doable if you're a person who can handle complicated fiddly direction and loads of small screws.

Print out 2 copies of the directions at ifixit.com and use one of the copies as a blueprint where you can tape each and every screw in the exact location that it came out of. That's very simple and very effective. You reassemble in reverse order, methodically checking that you didn't overlook a screw taped to the blueprint.

And you can get a WD3200BEVE for about $90 (newegg.com)