[WOPR]

Just bought it and it seems fine but it has a 20gb 4200rpm drive in it. I have a 60gb 5400rpm drive that's only 3 months old, would the PB seem snappier™ with that drive in, or would it use more battery power and make no real difference?

[mrmister]

It makes a huge difference.

[WOPR]

How about battery life? Or should I find more info on both drives and see if it mentions power usage?

[cenutrio]

Xbench gave me a 15% speed increase overall when I moved to a 5,400 rpm drive. Battery life keep going pretty long (up to 4h when all energy settings were optimized for battery use).

This was a tiPB 400 1 GBRAM/80GB seagate HD.

It makes a easily observable difference. Go for it.

[cambro]

Yup, like everyone has said.

The HD is one of the principal bottlenecks in portables. Increasing the performance of this component is likely to make a big difference in day-to-day usage (e.g., opening applications, files, menus etc.)

[kmarketing]

Hi,

Same here. My ti400 with 1gb/80gb 5400 runs very well. I don't notice much loss in terms of battery life or extra heat. I'm holding on to this titanium. Meanwhile, I actually sold my 17" 1.33, made some cash, and have a nice, cheaper, great looking powerbook that can last me until something else entices me.

I say definitely go for it. And changing hard drives on titaniums are such a quick and easy job. Try it for yourself. I think you will be impressed!!

[WOPR]

The decision was made for me last night as I couldn't get some QT movies to play without stuttering. I then booted from my 5400rpm drive via firewire and the same movies then played flawlessly from that drive. So sometime this week I'll crack them both open and do the swap. I'll let you know how it goes...

[WOPR]

Well 20 minutes and a Torx and it's done

Well happy with the results. Definitely more Snappy™

[tigas]

I remember my Pismo took a whopping kick in the pants when I put my 5400rpm disk inside. Heck, and it's a slow one! It always pays to put a denser / newer / faster spinning hard disk inside a portable, because the hard disk has always been the slowest thing on a computer (except the user ) and it's even more noticeable on a portable.

[Apfhex]

Oops, looks like you already got one, but I'll add my 2¢ by saying my TiBook got a whole lot Snappier when I plopped in a 7200 RPM drive, replacing the 5400 one that came with it. I can only imagine what different you'd noticed from 4200 RPM -> 7200 RPM. It was expensive, though.

Had a hell of a time finding a store selling a small enough TORX though.

[WOPR]

Yeah the great thing was I already had the drive in my PocketDrive so I just swapped them round. 20gb is plenty big enough for my pocket drive and my TiBook is super-Snappier now, though it does still struggle with some video playback. But then it is only 550mhz I guess.

[Jacob]

My Tibook is a 400 with 512MB Memory and a 5400rpm 40GB drive. Made a huge difference. Dont even try running Tiger without it!

[playby]

barefeats recently did a comparison of the 4200, 5400 and 7200. while the 5400 kicked the 4200's butt, the difference between the 5400 and the 7200 was nominal. anyone have any experiences with the new 7200s?