Hard drive question

[Craig 0]

I decided to post a computer question since well I'm not sure, its late and I have been up too long to think straight. Anyhow, does anyknow if they make laptop hard drives 2.5" that run 7200RPM and have a ATA-5 enhanced IDE interface? I checked Hitachi (what i have now) and they only go up to 5400RPM and IBM is part of them now so they have nothing better to offer. The reason I am looking at 7200RPM is video editing. I would like to find at least a 40GB capacity cause I have a 20 now and only have 5GB free The thought of a firewire HD crossed my mind but it seems I can get an internal for a bit less $ and it should do the trick? THanks for any insight [yawn]

[Kris 0]

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does anyknow if they make laptop hard drives 2.5" that run 7200RPM and have a ATA-5 enhanced IDE interface?

Highly doubtful. Even if it were available, your laptop more than likely won't support ATA-5.

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I checked Hitachi (what i have now) and they only go up to 5400RPM and IBM is part of them now so they have nothing better to offer. The reason I am looking at 7200RPM is video editing.

You can make up a bit for the lack of low HDD latency with a faster laptop but it all comes down to CPU utilization and buffering. A prime example would be newer Apple Powerbooks. I have seen one chop up pure DV feed like it was a Cuisinart and throw it back to a camera with no dropped frames. I've also seen the same done on a Pentium-4 Sony VAIO.

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I would like to find at least a 40GB capacity cause I have a 20 now and only have 5GB free The thought of a firewire HD crossed my mind but it seems I can get an internal for a bit less $ and it should do the trick?

Here, your best bet would be to buy an external FireWire box ($65 at CompUSA) and throw a standard 3.5" 7200, 8MB cache HDD into it.

The big advantage with this solution is that you can now easily transport the data to another PC with an IEEE-1394 interface. You also keep the speed advantage because you aren't limited by your on-board IDE controller, you are now running at full FireWire speed.

Kris

Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™

[Gawain 0]

I'm not an expert, but have you looked at an iomega-Jaz drive? Mine's fast enough to run audio or video off of. Of course, this was courtesy of someone that knows how to do these things...

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[CrazyIvan 0]

Actually, USB 2.0 is faster than fireWire.

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[Craig 0]

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Actually, USB 2.0 is faster than fireWire.

We have found that for video editing it would not be worth the switch to USB 2.0 if you don't already have the capability. The DV coming from cameras/computers is easily carried by 1394 and the new USB will not speed the transfer up. I did have the numbers for what the digital bandwith is but...?

[Craig 0]

Thanks for the info. I have a Vaio and the existing disk is an ATA-5 and I am using DMA mode 5. I am gonna check out the firewire box solution with an external drive. I was just trying to keep things kinda simple, and an internal drive would be less hassle as far as transport.

[adamT 0]

Im pretty sure the fastest laptop harddrives are 5400rpm.

[lummy 4]

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Im pretty sure the fastest laptop harddrives are 5400rpm.

hmmm.... I remember reading in a tech forum that there were 7200rpm laptop drives.. IBM's I thought...

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[adamT 0]

There might be some in development but as far as i can tell there are none on the market. 5400rpm is fast for a laptop drive, most are 4200. I have a 48gb IBM at 5400rpm, its a nice drive.

[Kris 0]

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Actually, USB 2.0 is faster than fireWire.

Theoretically this is true but it doesn't hold up in the real world.

See this post: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=355701;search_string=search_string;guest=615094#355701

BTW, FireWire2 is now starting to hit the market and is already available on new Macs.

Kris

Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™

[dreamsville 0]

I put a Maxtor 80 gig external firewire drive (7200rpm) on my old laptop (uses a PC slot card with 6-pin plugs), which then developed an LCD display problem, so I was easily able to switch the existing 15-20 gig of mostly-jump stuff to the new laptop.

It edits fast and doesn't drop stuff (machine is Dell 1.7ghz with 512 meg. Yes, get the RAM, it's worth it.). People have been telling me that firewire is at least as fast as USB 2.0.

Last point: the Dell 1394 built-in 4-pin outlet is fine for capturing video. However, this particular port on this particular machine drops OUTBOUND frames when writing back OUT TO mini-DV camcorder tape. The software in question is Media Studio Pro 6.5. Using a firewire card instead of the internal port on the Dell 8200 eliminates the outbound frame drop problem.
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[sabredriver 0]

Personally working in the HD industry, there are not any 7200 2.5" laptop drives in the market. Too much heat generation for the small confined spaces in laptops, not to mention the power consumption, however, the thermal and power characteristics are getting better.

[Craig 0]

Another question, when using an external firewire drive where, if any, are the "bottlenecks?" I don't want to spend alot on a fast drive and stuff only to have it's performance reduced cause of some other factors. Thanks for all the info so far!

[Cajones 0]

There are actually a few factors to consider in the internal vs. external as well as factors within 2.5 (laptop) and 3.5 (desktop) drives. Spindle speed (5400rpm, 7200rpm, 10,000rpm, etc) is a large factor in access times (how long it takes the HD to start finding data). The actual mechanics of the hard drive (how fast the head moves over the platters mostly) and data density (aureal density - how close together the data is packed on the platter and how many platters are inside the drive) also have a factor in drive performance. [This is a simplified version of some of the factors] External drives have some inherent latencies that can add to these factors. The chipset of the motherboard (sort of the nervous system of the computer) determines how parts of your computer interact (internal and external). In the case of external devices, there is an additional chipset (nervous system) which converts requests between the computer and the external device. Efficiencies of these chipsets varies and is a huge factor in hard drive performance.

Confused yet?

PM me the details of your system (be very specific - OS, chipset (if you know) or specific computer make/model, and peripherals installed) and what you plan to do with your extra storage and I'll try give you some advice to what would be most cost-effective or highest performing.

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