Windows Notebook

[Tim Gray]

I've been spec'ing out a new notebook.  I notice that the 160 gb drives are all 5400, but the smaller 100gb drives are 7200.  Also all the S-ata drives appear to be sata 150 rather than sata 300.  I'd like a sense of what the real world performance difference between 5400 and 7200 and 150 vs 300 might be.  I would guess that over the next 6 months or so we'll see 160gb 7200/300.  

My plan would be to get a card adaptor and add a second external sata for backup and as a PS scratch disk.

Thanks.

[Roy]

Seagate makes a 2.5" 7200 rpm 160 GB drive which performs well. See this test:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard90.html.

The difference between SATA 150 and 300 will not affect performance in a portable computer. Sustained data transfer from even the fastest disk is considerably less than SATA 150 speed. SATA 300 matters in a RAID or with port multiplier technology, but not for a single drive.

If you are getting a card adapter for an external drive make sure it is Firewire 800 or SATA. Otherwise your external drive will be slower than your internal drive and not much use as scratch space for PS. Also, partition the external drive into two partitions. For maximum performance, make the first partition (the outer portion of the disk) your scratch space.

[Tim Gray]

thanks, that's useful info.