Hard drive: speed vs. size?

[explone]

I'm purchasing a Mac Book Pro, which I intend to use for (among other things) recording with LE. I'll be recording to external FW800 drives, but I'm not sure which internal hard drive I should get with the machine itself. They offer two:

> 100GB drive @ 7200 RPM
> 160GB drive @ 5400 RPM

So my choice is size vs. speed. Since this drive will be running the system and Pro Tools files, I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on which criteria (size or speed) is more important? All things being equal, I suppose I'd rather have the larger drive...unless Pro Tools LE needs the faster hard drive to perform adequately.

Advice is welcomed and appreciated.

[CME]

I believe Digi recommends 7200 rpm system drives. But I think there are quite a few people around here using 5400 rpm. I would personally stick with the 7200, but I only have a couple of GB's used on my system drive.

[EGS]

Check what DIGI recommends, and stick to that. But in general, I'd say a 7200RPM system drive is the way to go. Keep all your data files (Pro-Tools and other) on an external drive. Keep your system drive lean-and-mean, and backup your system drive to an ext drive. If your system drive ever experiences a problem (of course that won't happen, right?), you just restore it from the backup. If you do this, your system drive does not need to be very big in size.

[explone]

Thanks to both of you for the advice, I appreciate it.

One more wrinkle to consider: should I be at all concerned about temperature with the faster drive? I hear these little notebooks get pretty hot...but perhaps I am worrying needlessly?

[tele_player]

For the system drive, either 7200 or 5400 is fine. Until recently, most laptop drives were 4200 RPM. More important is installing the max RAM, which will also reduce dependence on the speed of the system drive, since pagefile access will be minimized. and more disk accesses will stay in RAM.

For serious work, you'll want to use a 7200 RPM external drive for your Pro Tools sessions.

From what I've read, the 7200 RPM internal drives have no significant impact on heat or noise.

[The Dougfather]

It's the external drive for your audio that is the crucial for a good track count, the more ram the better also. I queried a faster internal hard drive spin speed when i was purchasing my ibook, i was considering a 7200rpm and the dealer said that the system will not take full advantage of the higher speed.

I've also heard that the Mac laptop 7200 drives are quite noisy, theres nothing worse than a whisper quiet laptop and a noisy hard drive. When i bought the iBook i replaced the internal drive to a 80GB 5400 travelstar, it had a junk Toshiba 40GB 4200, there was no noticable difference in system speed, i just didn't get the annoying whirring sound anymore.

Cheers

[chagos]

i hvae a macbook 2GHZ and the slow drive(5400). get the 7200 drive or you will be sorry like myself. seriously.

i plan on upgrading ASAP.