5400 vs 7200 RPM drives - 1.5GB/s vs 3.0 Gb/s SATA for Intel mini

Question

Level 1

22 points

5400 vs 7200 RPM drives - 1.5GB/s vs 3.0 Gb/s SATA for Intel mini

I am looking at upgrading my mini again with a larger harddrive. It is amazing how fast the 250GB drive filled up after I replaced the original 120GB. Now I am considering a 320GB or 500GB.

I am currently looking at the Hitachi Travelstar, WD Scorpio or Seagate Momentus drive.

They come in various sizes and specs.

I am wondering if a 7200 RPM drive would make that much difference to the original (and upgraded) 5400 RPM drives considering the limitations of the mini.

Some of these drives seems to come with either a 1.5GB/s or 3.0 Gb/s SATA interface. Again, how much difference would there be in real-world or should I just go for whatever is on sale ($65-70 vs $100-110) ?

The Developer Notes state that it has a "1.5 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA) bus for the disk drive" so I guess a 3.0Gb/s HDD wouldn't be much better than a 1.5Gb/s HDD.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/Macmini_0602 /Articles/architecture.html

Mac mini 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Feb 2, 2009 8:38 AM

Reply

Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Feb 2, 2009 8:52 AM in response to TXcrude

Make sure you are getting a 2.5" hard drive. The 3.5" hard drives won't fit in the Mac Mini.

5400 RPM 500 GB is closer to the speed of the 320 GB 7200 RPM drives simply because the seek times are less for a higher capacity drive that has closer together tracks. If a 7200 RPM 500 GB drive exists, that obviously would give you the best speed overall. Note though since the bus is only 1.5 Gbps, you likely won't see much improvement in speed over a 1.5 Gbps drive to a 3.0 Gbps drive, as the bus acts like a bottleneck.

Reply

Answer 2

AndyO

Level 6

17,064 points

Feb 2, 2009 8:52 AM in response to TXcrude

There are performance gains to be had from moving to a 7200rpm drive - not just as a consequence of the spindle speed, but because it has implications in the functioning of MacOS itself. Like any modern OS, MacOS uses virtual memory extensively - the process of writing and reading cache and temporary files is known as paging. Since 7200rpm are almost universally faster than 5400rpm devices, these paging activities are much faster with the quicker drives, meaning the system will function more smoothly and perceptible quicker as a whole.

Exactly how much quicker is really dependent on how much RAM you have - because the more RAM the fewer paging actions there will be, thus the smaller the overall gain when using a faster drive. Even so, however, a C2D mini with 4Gb RAM will show performance benefits across the board with a faster drive.

Reply

Answer 3

TXcrude Author

Level 1

22 points

Feb 2, 2009 9:09 AM in response to AndyO

I think I will go with a Hitachi travelstar drive.
They have both a 5K320 and a 7K320. The specs are very similar and there is about $20

Average Seek Time: 12ms for both
Average Latency: 5.5ms vs 4.2ms

Some drives show 'SATA II' instead of just 'SATA'. I assume that is backwards compatible and will work with a mini.

Reply

Answer 4

AndyO

Level 6

17,064 points

Feb 2, 2009 9:59 AM in response to TXcrude

As far as I know, the SATA 'I', 'II' and 'III' designations are all about speed rather than a variation in interface, and the interface itself is designed to be backward compatible.

There's a pretty thorough background article on SATA which you may find of interest at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA .

Reply

Answer 5

thermal

Level 1

20 points

Feb 2, 2009 12:19 PM in response to TXcrude

another thing to think about doing is getting a SSD.

it wont solve your lack of capacity problem, but you will be amazed how much faster programmes and such boot up and how quickly tasks are completed (like renaming songs or moving files etc) due to how much modern operating systems use virtual memory.

just a thought

Reply

Answer 6

Feb 2, 2009 12:42 PM in response to thermal

I put a 7K320 in my mini. I haven't noticed much difference with the old 80Gb disk (apart from all the lovely space) except that the fan now comes on at the quietest level.

Reply