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Thread: HD performance shootout: 3.5" 7200 vs 2.5" 7200

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    HD performance shootout: 3.5" 7200 vs 2.5" 7200

    is there a difference in performance between a 3.5" 7200 rpm hard drive VS. a 2.5" (mobile) 7200rpm drive?

    im planning on getting a external drive for a laptop which is mainly used for live-music performance, so seek times and transfer speed are of importance preference

    and if there is difference, is it significant?

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    Big Member BlindMelon7's Avatar
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    I hate to say it (some may disagree with me here) but for anything music based you would be better off with a mac, it will be a lot less troublesome in the long run
    With love and many thanks,

    Melons

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    surely the main concern for speed will be ..usb/firewire etc.. not the hard drive itself

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    Quote Originally Posted by BlindMelon7 View Post
    I hate to say it (some may disagree with me here) but for anything music based you would be better off with a mac, it will be a lot less troublesome in the long run
    firstofall: you are completely wrong.
    secondofall: i DO NOT and WILL NOT discuss this here with you
    thirdofall: please dont respond to any of my questions anymore. (im not trying to be rude, i just really dont have time for nonsense. )

    ot top of it all! my question was not even pc based! (it applies to both macs and pcs!)

    lastofall: your name somehow really seems to suit you (whether or not based on a band) . the words 'blind' and 'melon' somehow seem appropriate.
    Last edited by rektek; 16-04-2007 at 02:14 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by staffsMike View Post
    surely the main concern for speed will be ..usb/firewire etc.. not the hard drive itself
    so youre saying that the seek time and transfer bandwith will be the same between: a 2.5" usb2 external drive, and a 3.5" usb2 external drive?

    oh, and are you guessing or assuming?
    or is there info supporting this

    (just curious)

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    Well in my experience of both size hard drives there is no noticable difference between them day to day..whether there is or not I honestly don't know. Most people will have only come across 5400rpm drives of this size..due to them being quieter for laptops.

    What i'm saying is that the differences if any will be marginal between the sizes. If you are desperate for the highest speed avaliable you would in my opinion be better off with a firewire external drive as the interface between the laptop and the drive will be the bottleneck for performance.

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    There's no descernable difference btween 2.5inch and 3.5, though sometimes laptops drives have much more restrictive acoustic management, which can slow it down.

    I'd be more concerned about getting a good external enclosure than the drive itself. A lot of the cheaper ones have very slow transfer rates(usually due to dodgy USB) and are rather fragile, if you're doing live music you want a very solid one.

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    Quote Originally Posted by rektek View Post
    firstofall: you are completely wrong.
    secondofall: i DO NOT and WILL NOT discuss this here with you
    thirdofall: please dont respond to any of my questions anymore. (im not trying to be rude, i just really dont have time for nonsense. )

    ot top of it all! my question was not even pc based! (it applies to both macs and pcs!)

    lastofall: your name somehow really seems to suit you (whether or not based on a band) . the words 'blind' and 'melon' somehow seem appropriate.
    wow rektek's crazy lol

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    Quote Originally Posted by fresh View Post
    wow rektek's crazy lol

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    Quote Originally Posted by rektek View Post
    so youre saying that the seek time and transfer bandwith will be the same between: a 2.5" usb2 external drive, and a 3.5" usb2 external drive?

    oh, and are you guessing or assuming?
    or is there info supporting this

    (just curious)
    The seek times will be dictated by the HD and any acoustic management settings it has on it. The real problem with a USB2 connection is that it just can't cope with sustained data transfer rates so this will effectively be your bottleneck. If access times and data transfer rates are critical to you then I'd seriously think about getting and connecting the drive via firewire.

    Having said the above once you get the data onto the drive accessing it isn't that much of a problem, for example I have a PC which runs VMWare via a USB2 external drive, getting the VMWare sessions copied onto it and backing them up is a real chore but running them isn't that much of a problem, I can at times be running 6 VMWare sessions running a mix of Server 2003 and Window NT 4.

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    Big Member BlindMelon7's Avatar
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    WOAH! I'm a windows man myself but I'm not a stupid fanboy. Its a fact that macs are better for audio and video production (note why ALL the pros use them).
    With love and many thanks,

    Melons

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    Quote Originally Posted by fresh View Post
    wow rektek's crazy lol
    well, the response he got had nothing to do with his original question so..
    i guess he has a right to be angry.

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    Quote Originally Posted by moogle View Post
    well, the response he got had nothing to do with his original question so..
    i guess he has a right to be angry.

    no need to go OTT though


    I would have thought you if you need good seek times It might be worth getting a faster HDD like a raptor, or a device that has eSATA, or maybe (I dunno if this is possible or not) an external raid solution, like a 1+0 job or something where you have 2 copies of the data and it is read at the same time so reduces times

    I would have thought the HDD noise would be an issue if its being used in audio stuff
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    Quote Originally Posted by moogle View Post
    well, the response he got had nothing to do with his original question so..
    i guess he has a right to be angry.
    Well actually out of the 2 I know who's the arse

    What BlindMelon said about the Mac made a lot of sense, there is some very good software available for the Mac, he just never backed it up with any names or why? But the response for me was enough to get me googling.

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    Quote Originally Posted by rektek View Post
    firstofall: you are completely wrong.
    secondofall: i DO NOT and WILL NOT discuss this here with you
    thirdofall: please dont respond to any of my questions anymore. (im not trying to be rude, i just really dont have time for nonsense. )

    ot top of it all! my question was not even pc based! (it applies to both macs and pcs!)

    lastofall: your name somehow really seems to suit you (whether or not based on a band) . the words 'blind' and 'melon' somehow seem appropriate.
    I've got to say, although his comments were off topic, stooping to the level of insulting his forum name is really pretty lame.

    As some have said, the limit on the performance of the drive is more likely to be the interface, than the drive itself - ie because USB is slow, the difference between a 3.5 and 2.5" drive will be less than if they were connected up by IDE or SATA.

    One person mentioned eSATA - good if you can get a card that supports it on your laptop - and will give you the improved performance you want.

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