[G4] PowerBook G4 titanium

[Philip J Robar]

On Apr 27, 2005, at 2:36 PM, Feldave at aol.com wrote:

> 550mhz PowerPC- powerbook
> 512 MB sdram
> 20gig hard drive- original IBM
> OS-X 10.3.9
>
> I need to upgrade my hard drive. I'd like to get a 60gig.
> I'm assuming that anything faster than 5400rpm is to hot for this  
> machine. True?

No, nothing I've read leads me to believe that the 7200 RPM drives  
are too hot for your machine. Remember these drives were designed for  
laptops. A newer drive may actually include a hidden bonus in that it  
will be both faster and probably use less power than your current drive.

> 8mb cache buffer seems most common.

Yes, but 16 MB isn't hard to find.

> I would like some recommendations on what brand/type of hard drive  
> to buy.

I went with the latest Toshiba 40 GB 5400 RPM because the IBM (now  
Hitachi) 7200 RPM drives weren't enough faster to make a difference  
to me and the Toshiba was significantly less expensive due to a sale/ 
rebate price. (The Toshiba I got has a 16MB cache which might help a  
little with battery life as well as performance.)

One thing you'll want to be aware of is that there can be many  
variations of similar drives of the same size from a given  
manufacturer. The two major variances are cache size and platter  
density. Cache size usually varies within model years and platter  
density tends to increase with each generation. (Higher density means  
there is more data packed into a given area on the disk. This tends  
to increase performance as the drive is able to read/write more data  
in a given period of time.) It took a very careful reading of  
Toshiba's site to make sure that I got the drive that I wanted.

One thing to note about the IBM drives, there are enterprise and  
laptop versions. The enterprise versions do not spin down to save  
power making them inappropriate for most laptop use, yet they tend to  
show up first in most price searches as they are the less expensive  
of the two variations. Be sure to have the drive name, model number,  
and part number so that you are sure you are getting the drive you want.

A little web searching will find laptop drive reviews.

If a few 10s of dollars aren't significant to you get one of the  
Hitachi/IBM 7200 RPM drives as they are the fastest you can get, on  
the other hand the Toshiba is more then good enough for most of us. I  
got mine for $70 after rebate.

Phil