5400 vs. 7200 on laptops

[Ormond]

Hard Dive speed. How much difference does it make, say on the latest Dual Processor Unibody Mac Powerbook line? How many tracks or plug-in's can be used before the "buffer" warnings start?

[docbop]

if you can get 7200 rpm get it. The internal drive has your OS, virtual memory, app's, drivers, plists, and so on. So the speed of the internal drive affects everything your computer does including PT.

[Obsidian Dragon]

Originally Posted by Ormond

Hard Dive speed. How much difference does it make, say on the latest Dual Processor Unibody Mac Powerbook line? How many tracks or plug-in's can be used before the "buffer" warnings start?

You didn't specify if you were talking about the internal drive or an external Firewire drive.

As for the internal drive, it should NOT be used for your audio so it is not a factor for track count. It may impact how fast your OS runs and loads applications from the system drive. I run a 5400 internal drive for the OS and it is fine. It runs a little quieter and less vibration than internal 7200 drives generally.

As for the external drive, Digidesign requires at least a 7200 firewire drive (Do NOT us a USB drive for Protools audio).

Do I have measurements between a 5400 external drive and an external 7200 drive? No. 5400 RPM drives for the Protools audio drive is not supported and that is enough for me. Keep in mind that for streaming multitrack audio from the hard drive as Protools does, the hard drive is normally the "bottleneck" so you'll want to get the fastest hard drive and controller as possible for Protools audio. Make sure to get a firewire drive enclosure with a known compatible chipset (Oxford chipset).

[BradLyons]

Originally Posted by docbop

if you can get 7200 rpm get it. The internal drive has your OS, virtual memory, app's, drivers, plists, and so on. So the speed of the internal drive affects everything your computer does including PT.

Actually, this isn't true. The speed of the drive does impact the rate at which audio is accessed that is streaming from the drive---but it doesn't affect the computer one bit how it performs. The computer works from RAM, not the hard-drive. With that said, NEVER use the internal drive for audio anyway---likewise, don't even partition it because it's still the same drive. Hard Drives were designed for storage, that is SAVE the files to disk and then OPEN THEM INTO RAM. But with audio and video, the files are too big for that ande must spin from the drive. Because of this, the drives work non-stop--- you can not let them go to sleep, they work harder and therefore create far more heat and stress than it was intended. Heat and over-working is what causes hard-drives to lockup and eventually crash. In the case of a laptop, it can cause more damage. Last year I tried to tell a client of mine to just buy an external drive, NOT to use the internal drive. Well after about 3-months there was this black gooey substance that was getting on his CD's, started moving up into the screen itself, and eventually started smelling smoke. It turned out the drive over-heated, practically fried itself, and damaged the computer to the point that Apple completely replaced it with a brand new one. Okay, this is obviously a worst-case scenario....

Everything else that Obsidian Dragon has stated is correct and accurate.... The Dragon has spoken!

[Obsidian Dragon]

Originally Posted by BradLyons

Everything else that Obsidian Dragon has stated is correct and accurate.... The Dragon has spoken!

Thanks for the credit Brad. Actually I learned much from you.

To the OP, if you considering upgrading the internal hard drive anyways, feel free to up the speed to 7200 (but watch the heat issue). As said already, that does little or nothing to improve your Protools performance. Be sure to use an external firewire 7200 hard drive for your audio drive. There is a very important post in the general Troubleshooting sticky thread above that talks about daisy chaining FW drives with the newer Apple computers that only have a FW800 port. Save yourself some headache and follow the instructions.

Here is the text:
Mbox 2 Pro and most M-Audio firewire interfaces do not support FW800 connections anywhere in the chain. If you only have a firewire 800 port on your computer, you can try using a FW800 to FW400 adapter cable however keep in mind that this is not the ideal solution and may still be problematic. A better solution is to get a FW400 expresscard (for laptops) or PCI/PCIe FW400 card (for desktops) and connect your interface to that. The Siig 2 Port card (link to expresscard or PCIe versions) has been shown to be suitable for this situation.

If your computer has both FW400 and FW800 ports on it, they're most likely using the same bus and the above info would still apply, though you have the flexibility of connecting any firewire drives you're using either to the FW400 or FW800 ports on the computer or to the card, as long as your interface is not on the same bus - so if you connect your drives to the computer ports, connect your interface to the card or vice versa.
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Digidesign Tech Support

[CME]

FWIW I just upgraded my HD in my MacBook Pro to a 500GB 7200rpm model and I'm digging it. I didn't do it for PT performance, but for faster boots and more capacity. I record to an external FW drive. So far I'm a happy camper. It now goes from the gray apple screen straight to my desktop. No blue loading screen in between. Also Disk Utility repairs the permissions on the drive much faster also. So if you're needing more space I'd recommend a 7200 rpm drive. Just don't expect it give you "more tracks".

[docbop]

Originally Posted by BradLyons

Actually, this isn't true. The speed of the drive does impact the rate at which audio is accessed that is streaming from the drive---but it doesn't affect the computer one bit how it performs. The computer works from RAM, not the hard-drive.

Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about. I've been working in computer field for over 20 years (systems programmer) and IT (systems engineer) the last 9 years. Monitor your system drive sometime and see the constant I/O going on reading and updating files. Also where do you think the virtual memory is on a Mac, the system drive. So you have more spindle speed you reduce access time and with a drive that is being assess as much as a system drive that improves overall performance.

[BradLyons]

I agree on virtual memory, but I don't agree with using virtual memory. Clearing disk access is faster, but I'm referring to the poster stating that it makes the program itself run faster and the plugins--but that is all entirely out of RAM.