Mac Mini and Samsung Spinpoint M8 1TB

[christophermdia]

So, received my new hard drive yesterday and got it all setup in my new Mac Mini. I will say, the difference from a 500GB 7200 rpm drive (Apple stock Hitachi) vs this new Samsung 5200 rpm (9.5mm form factor) is very negligible. In a disk test I found the following results:

1GB File Hitachi 500GB 7200 RPM:
Write - 87.0
Read - 97.8
Geekbench - 6604

1GB File Samsung 1TB 5200RPM:
Write - 94.8
Read - 82.5
Geekbench - 6616

In just a nights time, I see very little relative slowdown. There is some however.....I have a 140GB Aperture library which takes a little longer to load up, but not so long that I would want to switch back to the 7200 drive.

I do have a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB on its way to add as the second hard drive as soon as my data cable comes in for the bottom drive to give me 2 TB total, I am using this mainly as a media server, but do a bunch of photoshop/aperture work on it. While these are no SSD's its respectable enough, plus I have a MBA for typical everyday use.....

Hope this helps somewhat everyone thinking about these drives.

Mac Mini Specs: 2.5 i5, 8GB Crucial Ram, Samsung Pinpoint M8 1TB Drive.

 

[xheathen]

How does photoshop do? I mean, just in general? Is it draggy at all, or choppy? Do filters and stuff pinwheel for a little bit to accomplish? When you drag files around is there any lag? Or does it feel pretty snappy in general?

Sorry for the barrage I just wish the damn apple store would have a i5 w/ 8gb of ram and the AMD sitting out so I could test it!

 

[Cave Man]

A common misconception is that 7200 rpm drives perform better than 5200 rpm drives. I don't have any 7200 notebook drives because the perceived performance benefits typically aren't there and I value capacity for the money.

 

[xheathen]

It all depends on the HDD though. We know for a fact that not all 5400 or 7200 drives are created equal. Pitting a 5400 RPM drive that has a 50-60mb read speed versus a 7200 with 90 will have some kind of performance difference. But seeing as you can get 5400 and 7200 drives that have relatively the same read/write, you just have to be choosy.

 

[philipma1957]

also remember the 1tb samsung has 2 platters each has 500gb of info a 750gb 7200 rpm hdd has 375gb of info so the density ratio of 500 to 375 is a factor of 1.33 the speed ratio of 7200 rpm to 5400 rpm is 1.33.

since those ratios are exactly equal the drives are equal in random search/access (more complex then this) .

I have done testing of the samsung and it holds its own against most hdds due to this extra density factor.

 

[Cave Man]

It all depends on the HDD though. We know for a fact that not all 5400 or 7200 drives are created equal. Pitting a 5400 RPM drive that has a 50-60mb read speed versus a 7200 with 90 will have some kind of performance difference. But seeing as you can get 5400 and 7200 drives that have relatively the same read/write, you just have to be choosy.

Platter density is the first thing I look for.

 

[christophermdia]

How does photoshop do? I mean, just in general? Is it draggy at all, or choppy? Do filters and stuff pinwheel for a little bit to accomplish? When you drag files around is there any lag? Or does it feel pretty snappy in general?

Sorry for the barrage I just wish the damn apple store would have a i5 w/ 8gb of ram and the AMD sitting out so I could test it!

Everything is pretty smooth on photoshop....I don't do too intense of stuff on photoshop though....some filters give me a beach ball but some don't..depends...of course cpu and memory are what photoshop loves, and you could "theoretically" upgrade the mac mini to 16gb ram which would make photoshop flawless....hard drive and read/write speeds won't be much affect on filter processing since everything is performed in ram at that point.....

With 8gb, I am getting acceptable performance, pro editors would want to go at least 16gb if they get the mac mini....this is where the quad/imac comes in better.....

Hope this helped...