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LMR vs PMR

C

cambrook

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 26, 2006
2
0
There's been a bit of excitement about the 160G HD being Perpendicular Magnetic Recording technology, but when you look at the Fujitsu site (and the data sheet that's linked from that page) there's no difference in latency or seek time between the 120G (LMR) and 160G (PMR) hard drives.

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/computing/storage/hdd/mhdd/mhw2xxxbh-catalog.html

Given that's the case, I'm wondering if the extra 40G capacity is worth the upgrade cost, or whether the money is better put towards an external HD?
 
My understanding is that if latency and seek time are the same, then the 160GB drive is going to be faster, as more data can be read in the same length of time, due to the data being packed denser. In theory, the 160GB would be 33% faster.
 
The 160 will be faster, overall, because the areal bit density is higher. All the current Hitachi 2.5" are PMR. I upgraded my 1.67 PBG4 a bit ago to the Seagate 160 (from 100), and I'm "on hold" waiting for the new 17" MBP C2D, which also has 160. It's very nice not to worry about space when editing video, aside from my 50GB of music and photos not cutting into "general" storage.
 
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