Mac Mini IDE 5400rpm 8mb cache VS external FW400 7200rpm 16mb cache

[majorp]

I had a search around the forums and it seem to be a good idea to get a new hard drive for my mac mini to increase the speed a little. I do a little music production (nothing major) and sometimes notice it's a little slow to open folders etc. I see many people have done this because the older mini's had a 4200rpm drive. Luckily mine came with a seagate 5200rpm drive. My question is, is there really much of a speed difference between an

Internal IDE 5400rpm 8mb cache seagate (came in my mac mini)

or

External Firewire400 16mb cache maxtor

will the FW400 limit the speed to below what the 5200 IDE can handle or doesn't it work like that?

Thanks very much in advance.

 

[topicolo]

you're probably not going to see much of a limitation on a 5400rpm drive from FW400. The most those drives can sustain in transferring is around 30mb/sec, which is lower than the theoretical 50mb/sec limit of FW400. A 7200rpm drive will possibly be limited by the interface somewhat, but it would also have lower access time than any of the slower drives.

I suggest you go for the external drive. If you end up wishing for a speed increase, just swap the external enclosure's drive with your mac mini drive.

 

[aquajet]

You should download xbench...

http://www.xbench.com

Do the drive benchmark, test each one and see the results. I'm curious, so post back here if you do...