Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Thanks for the heads up. Also simply stunning to think that two of these in the M6400 through Dell costs over $800.

 

Much appreciated!

With 8GB RAM I'm hoping Vista will not keep moving app from memory to HD. Anyway to tell Vista not to do this until 90% physical memory is used?

The reason for data on RAID 0 is that video editing and computations are HD intensive. Although I'm now thinking of OS, app, and long term data on RAID 1 with all cache, temp files, hibernation, etc., on smaller RAID 0. A lot safer and the HD intensive part is using the RAID 0.

I would configure CS to write all temp files to RAID 0 and all permanent data files to RAID 1. Similarly for all temp files created by Gaussian and HyperChem, which like CS, nothing ever seems fast enough. Anyone doing this for their video edits, or rendering, etc., ?

I have CS3 Master Collection. CS4 is now 25GB. Anyone think the CS3MC to CS4MC upgrade is worth it?

I know about the positional performance with a HD, but don't know how to specify where on a HD to place OS vs apps, etc.

 

Need to compare apples with apples.
Newegg does not stock free fall sensor versions.

$107 at CDW
Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BJKT
320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s free fall sensor
Buffer Size 16 MB
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Read Seek Time 12.0 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Weight 0.22 Pounds
Idle Mode 22 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 25 dBA (average)
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.15 Watts
5yr warranty

HITACHI Travelstar 7K320 HTS723232L9A360 (0A57547) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
Although it uses less power (1.8W read/write) it appears not to be available with free fall sensor.
It is also slightly heavier and louder (25, 28 dBA).

Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ-G2 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
Read/Write 2.30 Watts
Idle 0.80 Watts
Standby 0.13 Watts
17g heavier than WD
Idle 25 dBA
Also appears not to have free fall sensor.

$104 at CDW
Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421ASG - hard drive - 320 GB - SATA-3.0 with free fall sensor
Average Latency (ms) 4.17
Idle Mode 23 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 25 dBA (average)
Seek Avg 2.3 W
Read/Write Avg 2.1 W
Idle 0.75 W
Standby Avg 0.21 W
5yr warranty
11gram heavier than WD.

Spec wise looks like a close call between WD and Seagate.
WD slightly slower, but also very slightly quieter and lighter than the Seagate.

Comments ...

 

LLavelle, I agree with you that the best choices would be WD or Seagate. Did you have a chance to look at Tom's Hardware site where they did a comparison of some of the above drives? I believe the conclusion was the Seagate was the best drive, but the WD one is a very close second and could be a better bet depending on how you are going to use the drive.

I assume when the 500GB 7200RPM drives come out, they will be better performers. Does anyone know if we will be able to install those 500GB drives into the M6400?

 

Sure, when they release some.

Personally I like Seagate because I just trust their reliability more, and they always have a perfectly acceptable mix of features.

 

It won't do it unless it needs more RAM.

No reason you can't put anything you like on the RAID-0! I just recommend also using it for the slower loading apps, since nothing really bad happens if the apps drive goes offline during a session. I have some apps on my Raptor array, and some on my single drive because I don't need those apps sped up. Also a good deal of data files on the single drive because their speed doesn't matter and that's where My Documents is. (And yeah, sometimes I forget where I put something.)

Video editing is definitely sped up by Raid-0. I notice my scrubbing is far, far more interactive on this older machine with raid-0, than any modern single-drive machine I've used. I can scrub 1080i HD footage faster than the video workstations at school scrub standard 480i.

CS4 is majorly worth it for anyone doing 3D content. It lets you import an OBJ file and paint your texture map directly on the mesh, using the full cadre of Photoshop tools! That by itself fully justifies it to me. Depends what you do with it... check what's new.

You can't, other than partitioning. The first 2/3 of the drive only varies by about 15%. The last 1/3 goes down by a little bit more. The first partition will be faster than the second, and the first files you put on each partition will in theory access slightly faster than files you put later.

The performance difference only effects sequential read/write. Seek time doesn't change with platter position. In practice, I'm not really sure choosing your platter position makes a huge difference. (The web in general does, but they could just be just looking at the graphs and leaping to conclusions. In app loading, say you get 100% of the benefit... that means maybe 4.5 seconds instead of 5.)

Since you have to make a choice one way or the other, just pick which partition gets a 10% speed boost and which one gets a 10% speed cut, understanding that it won't be a huge difference anyway.

 

For the record, I have this drive and I love it.

According to this page from Tom's Hardware, the lowest power consumption 7200rpm 320gig drive is the Western Digital, when constantly accessing a small amount of data, and the Seagate under full idle or full load. The wattages are low, but go by percent difference and watts equals heat. The Seagate also has the highest power consumption during constant light use. (first graph.)

In my use, the drive will spend far more time idle than doing anything, so I favor idle power savings slightly. Then again, the WD must have some kind of good power saving technique going on, because it definitely wins in power consumption when it is under steady, light use.

Summary (ST = Light Streaming test):
WD: Idle: 1.12w Full: 3.26w LS: 1.3w
Hitachi: Idle: 1.0w Full: 3.1w LS: 1.6w
Seagate: Idle: 0.95w Full: 3.03w LS: 1.9w

 

Wasn't Photoshop CS 3 Extended already able to do such stuff?

I guess what makes CS 4 worth upgrading/buying is the integration of graphics hardware. But be warned, at the moment there's no real support for 64bit OS. At least for x64. I have CS 4 running on my system (x64, with special photoshop drivers from Adobe) but have to disable the OpenGl option - otherwise the program crashes. Shame on Adobe.

 

Dell hard drive prices are ridiculous.

When I got the HP laptop, this was what I did:

Got computer. Removed hard drive, put it in an enclosure.
Used "ddrescue [olddrive] [newdrive]" in linux to directly image the original drive onto one I bought from newegg.
Put new drive in laptop and started it up.

HP's preinstall environment fired right up as if the new drive was the original. Lucky me, it even ran through a little install process and formatted the entire 320gig drive, not just the 80gigs that were on the original. You can even do the drive image transfer without needing a second machine with the M6400.

Unless Dell's system makes it much harder, there is NO reason to pay their hard drive price.

In fact, if you buy your own, you get to KEEP YOUR DRIVE AND YOUR DATA if you ever send it in for repair or return. Just slap the original 80gig drive back in. (With 320 in your laptop, it's probably still empty anyway!)

 

Not that I'm aware, or I've been wasting a LOT of time in my texturing classes!

CS4 lets you actually see the model IN 3D while you paint. Rotating around it and everything... You're saying CS3 had that?

Hmmm... Disturbing... My main complaint is AfterEffects not supporting 64bit, since it seems to want SO MUCH RAM to do even simple filter stacks. If your Photoshop file is 2 gigs, I bow to you, sir!

AfterEffects sucks in general anyway. I'm going to switch to either Blender or Nuke, starting next term.

Are you saying that the Photoshop CS4 openGL crashes on your M6400? i.e. on a system with a certified openGL card, not a geforce or something? Not good... And why have they still not moved to 64bit, for content creation programs for crying out loud? The scene I was working on last term couldn't be opened on a 32bit operating system. It sent Maya up to 3.2 gigs RAM usage, beyond the capacity of a 32bit OS.