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    Internal MBP Hardrive Slow?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by awes1003, Aug 17, 2008.

  1. awes1003

    awes1003 Notebook Guru

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    I just benchmarked my internal 120gb 5400 RPM Fujitsu HD vs. my Lacie Big Disk Extreme (FW 800, 1 TB) using xbench and found my internal drive scored 33.67 while the big disk extreme scored 79.29... do these results seem correct? I thought it was impossible for externals to reach internal speeds let alone be appx 2 times as fast
     
    awes1003, Aug 17, 2008
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  2. ltcommander_data

    ltcommander_data Notebook Deity

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    Why would it be impossible? Especially when FireWire 800 can theoretically reach 100MB/s and I believe the fastest hard drive still can't sustain 80MB/s. And I believe the 120GB 5400rpm Fujitsu was the slowest HDD of it's class in it's time. The 1TB drive is a desktop 7200rpm drive which already makes it faster, plus at 1TB the density of the platters is also a lot higher which also speed things up.
     
    ltcommander_data, Aug 17, 2008
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  3. Budding

    Budding Notebook Virtuoso

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    That is a bit slow for your internal, but your external will be faster nonetheless since
    1. it has a higher spin speed, LaCie Big Disks usually have speeds of 7200rpm as opposed to the 5400rpm of your internal
    2. it has higher disk density, since your LaCie has much more memory per disk platter than your internal, it will be able to access data at a much higher rate
    3. Firewire 800 is a very fast interface. Normally external drives are bottlenecked by the interface (for example USB 2.0 can only in theory reach speeds of up to 480Mbps, in reality it's much less), and this bottleneck is significantly reduced by Firewire 800
     
    Budding, Aug 17, 2008
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  4. awes1003

    awes1003 Notebook Guru

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    alright thanks guys, I was just looking for a good excuse to replace the internal before the semester starts, but I guess I'll just have to wait until failure (hopefully within the 3 years when applecare still covers it)
     
    awes1003, Aug 17, 2008
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  5. liuman51086

    liuman51086 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I just got a new mbp, with the 200gb 5400rpm Hitachi drive. In xbench I get around the same score as you. I've looked at the other mbp scores and they're about the same. Even the drives in the normal macbook have higher scores for some reason.
     
    liuman51086, Aug 17, 2008
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  6. Jurisprudence

    Jurisprudence Notebook Evangelist

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    Just got mine. 120gb at 32.81, I'm not very impressed. I have a 320gb WD Scorpio 5400rpm to replace it with as soon as I can figure out how to mirror my OS with Superduper without an external sata caddy to mount the 2.5" into. Once thats done I'll post some scores. On a side-note its nice to know that even if Apple are not giving you great specs on paper the drives.....well the drives aren't even that great performers either. Poo all round really. Ahh well.
     
    Jurisprudence, Aug 17, 2008
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