[iBook] replacement harddrive suggestions

[Angus Wallace]

G'day all,

There are at least 2 ways to measure the speed of a hard drive.

The first is a measurement of how fast the hard disk can send data to the rest
of the computer. In the case of your FW drive, that is limited to 400mbs. In
practice - you are unlikely to ever achieve that. This is because of other
bottlenecks that exist in the system.
Generally, it's faster to copy one large contiguous (meaning that all the data
for the file is stored serially along the hard disk, as opposed to being broken
up in little bits and spread all over the place. the latter is also called
'fragmentation').

In the case of the hard disk having to 'search' for data (i.e if it isn't
contiguous, or is comprised of many small, scattered files), then the other
measurement becomes relevant. That is the speed at which it rotates (i.e.
4500rpm). Generally, a hard disk that rotates at a higher speed will be able to
search for, find, and read/write data more quickly - and will use more
power/produce more heat..

An often undervalued attribute of a hard disk is it's cache. This is RAM on the
drive that keeps recently/often used data in memory, so that it bypasses the
seek/read thing entirely. This is often 2mb or 8mb. A larger cache allows the
HD to streamline data I/O, making it work more efficiently.

My advice would be that laptops generally are not designed for speed, but are
designed for portability. Based on this, you should get the largest capacity
drive as possible/reasonable, with the largest cache (for speed/efficiency),
but not necessarily the fastest rate of rotation.

However, if you really want/need rapid data I/O (perhaps for video or
_serious_multitrack_ audio editing), then an external, 7200rpm, 8mb cache,
FW/USB2 hard disk is probably your best bet. However, to do this in a _really_
serious way, you probably want a desktop anyway! ;-) 

This is, at least, my understanding of it all. Others may want to add to or
correct what I've said.. ;-)

HTH,
-Angus

Quoting Max Miles <earthvital at gmail.com>:

> By the way, what is the speed differences of the laptop internal
> drives and external FW 400's? How exactly does the 400mbps related to
> internal 4200rps drives?
> 
> ~m
> 
> 
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 08:24:44 +0800, Jean-Paul Thuot <jeanpaul at zhenwu.org>
> wrote:
> > I have the same ibook as you, and when I went into an Apple dealer they
> > suggested an external firewire case with as fast an HD as you can
> > afford.  He said I could replace the internal HD, and go from 4200 (I
> > think) rpm to 5400, but with an external firewire setup I could use the
> > faster drives.
> > 
> > I haven't had the money to do it yet, but if you do go this way I'd
> > like to hear how it turns out.
> > 
> > Jean-Paul
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On 11/10/2004, at 7:28, jack law wrote:
> > 
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > What do you folks suggest aout harddrive replacement
> > > for a IBook G3 600?  Right now I have the standard 20
> > > gig model.  I would like to purchase a larger drive.
> > > Any suggestions about what make and where to purchase.
> > >  What speed?  Will I notice a speed boost with a
> > > faster drive?  What size offers the best price bargain
> > > at this time?  Thanks for any suggestions.
> > >
> > > Jack law
> > >
> > >
> > >
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