Spec comparision on HD Tach 2.70, in
Travelstar 4200 rpm ATA 6 40 gig vs. 7k 60 gig 7200 rpm travelstar:
Access time:
4200 rpm 23.8
7200 14.7
39% Difference?
Read performance:
4200 rpm 28.6 max, average 22.6
7200 rpm max 39.4 average 29.3
29% Difference?
While the access times appear to justify the upgrade, in my case with the drive in my current Panasonic, I don't really think the reads do.
I try and look for a 50%, or more, increase in Access times prior to upgrades, and, a similar increase in sustained read performance.
Let's look at the Hitachi 4200 vs. the Seagate 5400.2 100 gig
Access time:
4200 rpm 23.8
5400 rpm 17.0
29% difference
Read performance:
4200 rpm 28.6 max, average 22.6
5400 rpm max 36 average 27.9
19% difference
On the desktop side:
Average access read times for the drives I use all the time:
Cheetah 15.3 320's
5.7ms
Quantum LM 11.5ms
I consider the LM fast enough access time wise, to be useable for a
Desktop, but, sustained transfer rate around 23-25 mb/sec leaves a lot to be desired.
So, I guess to get the perspective difference, all I have to do is compare the laptop with the 4200 rpm drive, and nearly the same sustained transfer speed, to the Dell 400 P2, with the quantum LM still churning away, nearly 7 years later.
With folding at home running
Laptop is 1.4 ghz M, and 1.25 gig ram, P2 is 400 mhz, and 384 ram, Laptop XP, desktop 2000)
Not real scientific, but loading Firefox takes 12 secs on the laptop, and 8 on the P2. Loading IE takes 5 secs on the laptop, and 3 on the quantum/P2.
From fresh restart, f@H off:
3 seconds for both to load Firefox.
IE 2 seconds on both.
Photoshop about 16 seconds on both.
2 seconds to load word on desktop, 3 seconds on laptop.
Excel loads in under two seconds on both.
About 16 seconds for both to load photoshop.
On the duals, photoshop loads in about 10 seconds.
Word under a second:
IE under a second.
I guess my point is, if you have a decent ATA-6 4200 rpm drive, at least in my case, it's pretty much fast enough, as long as you have enough ram to keep pageing down to a minimum, and a fast, 533 mhz system bus.
I'm unconvinced the % increases really justify the costs of the 7200 rpm
drives. If you need a big drive, the % difference makes you want to take a long look at the 100 gig Seagate Momentus 5400.2.
Perhaps a faster drive would make really good sense, on something like my old Panasonic CF-37, with a 6 gig drive.
Let's pull that out, and test it...
The only problem here is it may not support over ATA 5, and I believe that's the same with the Mac Lombard laying around here.
So that limits you to the slower drives, and really makes you wonder why are you throwing money at old machines?
Can't get the CF-37 to boot right now, so this test may have to be done later
:roll:
GS
