Re: [microsound] Powerbook hard drive speed

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Niklas Wernerwrote:

> On Friday 26 March 2004 12:26, Arie van Schutterhoef wrote:
>>> Getting close to buying a 15" Powerbook but have concerns about hard
>>> drive speed. Could any list members who use these machines as audio
>>> workstations offer advice on whether the stock 4200 rpm drive is
>>> suitable or whether the build-to-order 5400 rpm drive is necessary?
>> 
>> -5400 is not really fast either, but 4200 is pretty slow,
>>  maybe for typing letters it's adequate, but for realtime
>>  applications and specially when performing, the fastest
>>  the better...
> basically right, but rpms are not the sole factor for a drive's speed
> (filesystem-performance being the main bottle-neck on OSX). I don't have
> any problems with the 4200 one. Gives me a reading-throughput of 24MB/sec
> and is beautifully silent!
> 
> and 24MB/sec is pretty OK for multitrack-audio given that really big
> projects need to be put on an external(=faster=louder) drive anyways.
> 
The problem with lower rpm drives is that the seek time is longer. This
begins to cause problems when you have a large multitrack project made up of
lots of edits and lots of files.  Everything will work well to begin with
but towards the completion of the project playback will start to stutter and
you may not be able to play it back at all. I had this happen several years
ago with a 5400rpm drive (which was in fact sold mistakenly as a 7200).
Niklas is right.  If you intend to do serious multitrack work get a 7200rpm
firewire drive and keep it defragged as much as possible.


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