Which hard drive for a Powerbook?

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Tom Owad's picture
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Which hard drive for a Powerbook?

I need to get a bigger hard drive for my Powerbook, probably 60 or 80 GB. I'm tempted to buy one of those cheap 4200 RPM hard drives listed on pricewatch, but am wondering if I should spend the extra money and get a 5400RPM drive. Any thoughts on how noticeable a difference 1200 RPM makes?

My system is a 500 MHz Powerbook G4 with 384MB RAM, running Mac OS 10.3.

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battery life ...

the 5400rpm drive will drain the battery faster than a 4200rpm model ...

TOM

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What it all depends on is wha

What it all depends on is what you use the powerbook for. Do you use applications that need to write to the disk fast (movie editing is a good example) or is this your machine that you just use for word proccessing or other light work on? Like Tom said, battery life is another factor. Do usualy stay pluged in most of the time or do you use the batteries more? Noise is another factor. Faster spinning hard drives are relitivly louder then their slower spinning counterparts. Just some stuff to think about.

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Depending on the price differ

Depending on the price difference, personally I'd say save the money on the cheaper drive and put it towards more RAM. ;^>

I've played with a Dell laptop equipped with one of the faster drives, and I can't really say I noticed much difference compared to an otherwise identical one with the slower drive. Of course, the veins on my forehead start buldging out every time I touch XP, so I can't honestly say I was accurately noting performance metrics.

--Peace

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Any particular brand biases?

Any particular brand biases? Toshiba is the cheapest, then Fujitsu. Hitachi/IBM are a bit more...

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Looks like it's down to these

Looks like it's down to these three:

Ibm 80.0GB 4200RPM 9.5mm ATA Notebook HDD travelstar ( optional 5400rpm) $173

Toshiba MK8025GAS 80.0GB 4200RPM Notebook HDD $173

Fujitsu - - 80.0GB FUJITSU 2.5 80GB 9MM MHT2080AT UATA100 4500RPM 2MB 12MS $180

Opinions?

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First, the 5400rpm drive (wit

First, the 5400rpm drive (with 8MB cache of course) will speed up your computer by a LOT. Maybe it's not so noticeable on the Ti - but on my Wallstreet, everything felt faster, and quieter. It's an IBM, 40 gig.

Also, the battery lasts 1 hour more with it - that old drive was a power sap Blum 3

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My $2

I took the original IBM Travelstar (10GB) out of my iBook because it was loud and too small. I replaced it with a 40GB Travelstar, and it is barely audible, has run reliably, and was fairly inexpensive. I think IBM had a bad batch that were extremely loud, as I had heard other complaints about noise from similar era Travelstars.

I would avoid Fujitsu like the plague. I've heard too many bad things about their reliability for comfort.

I don't have any experince with Toshiba's hard drives, but their CD drives were always top notch for me.

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Ok, can we stop saying "I've

Ok, can we stop saying "I've heard brand X is bad" "I always use brand Y" and then somebody else saying that brand Y is bad. Please. We all know that hard drives are genraly reliable, but bad batches of drives, bad luck, and the just the fact that a hard drive is a mechanical device that will eventualy fail (especialy in a harsh inviroment such as a laptop) will make it seem like a particular brand or drive model seem "bad." So can we just stop the hard drive manufacture bashing, ok?

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Western Digital are good, you

Western Digital are good, you can get a 160gb 7200rpm for £80.00 (don't know the price in dollars). But then why not get an external.

Jon
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I'm not going into the bashin

I'm not going into the bashing, but IIRC the Fujitsus ARE IBMs. It's something kinda like how Lexmark printers are really just IBM with a different name.

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Re: I'm not going into the bashin

I'm not going into the bashing, but IIRC the Fujitsus ARE IBMs. It's something kinda like how Lexmark printers are really just IBM with a different name.

IBM = Hitachi. IBM != Fujitsu.

--Peace

Jon
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I sit corrected. :)

I sit corrected. Smile

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