[sadpandas]

Hey people, I had posted to the iFixitdotcom people (i was there researching the topic) and after sending it i would probably have a better chance of this being answered here. So, although it is a 'repost' of sorts it is only because the info would be good here as well. why am i still typing? Anyway, here it is:


Hello all. I have a powerbook with the factory 100gb 5400rpm drive installed. Although i have recently done fresh install of 10.5.6 and updated i am getting a little worried about space, speed issues, and overall reliability of a 4 year old notebook drive. I am using this machine to trigger samples live and other smaller audio projects. I would like to either install a larger faster drive or a larger drive just to try and keep the amount of variables of something going wrong. there are a lot of variables. I have heard that a drive starts to 'degrade in performance' when as little as 50% of the drive has been written to and although i am not actually writing to the disk in a live situation the disk is still spinning. sorry for the long post. thoughts?

thanks in advance,

pandapple

[Simon]

Indeed, as a HDD gets filled up it's read/write speed reduces.

Regardless if you get a new drive or stick with your old drive, be sure to have a good backup strategy.

If you want a new drive you'll have to make sure to get an PATA rather than the nowadays much more common SATA drives. Newegg has a couple:
WD Scorpio Blue 320 GB, 5400 rpm, $95
WD Scorpio Blue 250 GB, 5400 rpm, $85
WD Scorpio Blue 160 GB, 5400 rpm, $65 shipped
Considering those prices, I'd definitely get the 320 GB drive. Not only is it the largest capacity notebook PATA drive, it will also be the fastest.

Installing the drive can be a bit nasty on the PB if you're not used to this kind of work. You can get manuals from places like iFixIt.com and do it yourself. If you don't feel comfortable you can also have an AASP to do it for you for a fee.

[sadpandas]

Wow thanks for the reply. Since the PATA techis so old i am unable to find a larger 7200rpm pata drive for my power book. I will probably end up getting the 320 gb drive so i could actually use more space than the stock 100gb 5400 drive that i paid an extra $100 for the option (came stock with an 80) when this model was introduced.

If you do happen to know where i could find a 7200rpm drive please let me know and thanks again!

P

[Simon]

Newegg doesn't sell a single 2.5" PATA drive at 7200 rpm.

They exist though.
2.5" PATA 7200 rpm - Google Product Search
They're ridiculously expensive and low-capacity though (like $80+ for 100GB).

Rest assured that if you put ~100 GB on a new 320 GB drive the speed-up just because of the higher storage density and larger continuous free space will be very pronounced. Even if that 320 GB is 'just' a 5400 rpm drive.