5,400 RPM Laptop Hard Drive with 16MB Cache

Clocker

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I saw this mentioned on PriceWatch and thought it was interesting. Something for your road warriors out there heh heh....5400 RPM with 16MB cache in a 40GB laptop hard drive.
 

blakerwry

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at $4 per GB that's pretty costly... but probably comparable to other laptop drives...

A 5400rpm FDB disk with slowed down actuators is sure to be a cool and quiet piece of equipment... i could see this type of thing being used in console game machines and the like... I would imagine the cache would really help out there... the only thing keeping this from TIVO is the reletively small capacity.
 

Handruin

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blakerwry said:
at $4 per GB that's pretty costly... but probably comparable to other laptop drives...

A 5400rpm FDB disk with slowed down actuators is sure to be a cool and quiet piece of equipment... i could see this type of thing being used in console game machines and the like... I would imagine the cache would really help out there... the only thing keeping this from TIVO is the reletively small capacity.

I'm going to guess that not only will the capacity limit it from a TIVO, but the drive may not be able to handle the STR required for video capture. Just a guess though...
 

blakerwry

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I expect TIVO caps at pretty low resolution 320x240 or thereabouts... MPG would be the easiest format i can think of for it considering the low cost of hardware mpeg encoders/decoders... at 40GB per platter and 5400RPM i think this thing can handle it.

The only comparable (STR wise) desktop drive's i can think of would be the 400/600/800AB and the samsung 5400 rpm 40/80gb drives.
 

Handruin

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honold said:
tivo is doing fine with standard 5400rpm drives...

Standard 5400 RPM drives, but laptop drives are even slower, so I thought... Mobile drives have to take into account a greater chance of shock. I don’t know, I'm only guessing, so my point is moot.
 

Newtun

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According to BensBargains' page 2, the Dell-branded version is "only" $128 ($3.20/GB) (Ben sez through today [2/20] only :().

I assume it's the Toshiba - are they still the only ones with 16 MB cache?
 

.Nut

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A 2.5-inch 5400 RPM hard drive is only good for use in notebook computers. The sustained transfer rate on these physically small hard drive mechanisms is poor compared to the typical 5400 RPM desktop hard drive mechanism.

The use of a large cache/buffer in this Toshiba hard drive is to help elevate the otherwise poor performance characteristics found in 2.5-inch drives.

 

blakerwry

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i dont know about that... if the density is 40GB and the speed is 5400RPM, then it should have similar STR characteristics as a desktop drive of the same platter capacity...

The only diff I can think of is that the platters are smaller in a laptop drive and thus, probably are more similar to a short-stroked drive that has a single 60GB platter but is capped at 40GB.

Of course, we are just talking about STR here... seek times are horrid on laptop drives... low heat, low noise, low power, lower cost... these are the things that make them attractive for laptops, but at the cost of slower performance.
 

.Nut

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blakerwry said:
...The only diff I can think of is that the platters are smaller in a laptop drive and thus, probably are more similar to a short-stroked drive that has a single 60GB platter but is capped at 40GB...

Performance characteristics of a 2.5-inch hard drive are dissimilar to the performance characteristics of a destroked 3.5-inch hard drive.

The outer tracks (i.e. -- the first recording zone) of a 3.5-inch hard drive have many more sectors than that of a 2.5-inch hard drive.
 

blakerwry

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.Nut said:
blakerwry said:
...The only diff I can think of is that the platters are smaller in a laptop drive and thus, probably are more similar to a short-stroked drive that has a single 60GB platter but is capped at 40GB...

Performance characteristics of a 2.5-inch hard drive are dissimilar to the performance characteristics of a destroked 3.5-inch hard drive.

The outer tracks (i.e. -- the first recording zone) of a 3.5-inch hard drive have many more sectors than that of a 2.5-inch hard drive.


Ah, i forgot HDD's worked from outter to inner for a second... do you think if you had a WD 600AB and made 2 partitions on the drive... one 20gb (outter sectors) and one 40gb (inner sectors) that the STR performance characteristics would be similar?
 

yeti

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Toshiba 2.5" with 16MB cache

As far as I can tell , this is a pretty old drive (issued in 5/02). Toshiba came out with a 60GB version last Fall. Both have a 16 MB cache, and neither seem very good at caching. They behave about as well as a similar drive with an 8MB cache.
 

blakerwry

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I wonder how they were measured.. where is a good site to find benchmarks on laptop drives?

I'm sure there's a point where more cache doesn't help any longer... maybe 8-16MB is that point.
 
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