Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:21 am Post subject:
5200 rpm vs. 7200 rpm
helping my brother put together a Mac system ...he wants a laptop but the drives run at 5200 rpm..i am pretty sure this is too slow for serious audio, but i can't seem to find a link or page anywhere that can back up this claim...
It should be noted that that's the only 7200rpm laptop drive on the market and I don't think it's a mac option. You may be able to get the Hitachi drive in your laptop but it could be a project...
It will do fine for small projects. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
so, can one expect more than , say, 8 tracks of 24 bit audio running off a 5200 rpm drive..is that a reasonable guess... ? _________________ Spiral Recordings
If you setup you system properly, it shouldn't make much of a difference. 7200rpm drives spin faster, and the ONLY uptake is that you get faster seek times.
However, for larger audio files, you shouldn't be seeking very much. Make a seperate partition on your drive for the "current" project you want to work on. Format it clean before starting your project (ie- before you copy working files into it, or begin recording). This minimizes fragmentation on the drive, so the files will be 1 continuous stream on the disk: once the audio file has started recording or playback, the drive won't need to seek elsewhere, it's already where it needs to be.
You shouldn't notice any difference, especially if the drive has an 8MB buffer or larger, until you hit over 25 stereo tracks in the mix. (I mention stereo, since they are interleaved into one wav/riff file).
Macs are a bit different, so some of the PC strategies dont really make much sense. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
If you setup you system properly, it shouldn't make much of a difference. 7200rpm drives spin faster, and the ONLY uptake is that you get faster seek times.
Well, I won't comment on a mac but a 7200rpm hard drive in a laptop can mean much more than just lower seek times. It also has a higher bandwidth which, to me, is perhaps the most underrated performance feature in a computer. Hard drive bandwidth effects almost every application you run and is especially important during boot times.
This minimizes fragmentation on the drive, so the files will be 1 continuous stream on the disk: once the audio file has started recording or playback, the drive won't need to seek elsewhere, it's already where it needs to be.
You shouldn't notice any difference, especially if the drive has an 8MB buffer or larger, until you hit over 25 stereo tracks in the mix. (I mention stereo, since they are interleaved into one wav/riff file).
ah ok....thanks for that information...that maks sense _________________ Spiral Recordings
it's at least worth getting a 5400rpm drive over a 4200rpm drive. Hopefully the mac gives you the option of 5400rpm. Most cheap PC laptops don't even tell you what they put in so it's likely a 4200rpm.
Cache helps certain apps more than others and I'm not sure how much music editing really benefits from it but this is something drives vary greatly on from 2mb to 16mb.
Makes you think, doesn?t it. Scary.. What would that be like? _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Cache helps certain apps more than others and I'm not sure how much music editing really benefits from it but this is something drives vary greatly on from 2mb to 16mb.
Most drives (at least all Quantum/Maxtor drives) will read-ahead...knowing that you are reading file "A", the disk will continue to read file "A" ahead of the actual read requests (like ESP...it figures you're going to reuqest it anyway). And the only place to put this info is in the drive's cache-- so more cache = more read ahead and more files accessed at the same time). So, when it comes to dealing with multiple files, the disk will manage reading ahead into several read requests, so the data is "already" available in the queue.
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