Resolved New hard drive advice

[kdog679]

So I'm running on the stock 7200 rpm 500gb HD from apple (Hitachi HTS725050A9A362) and I googled XBench results for one of my target drives in hopes of comparing speed loss. I was under the impression that because the drive I'm looking at has an 8mb cache and runs at 5400 rpm, that it would be slower than my current drive. Looking at the results however showed that the samsung got better results. Am I missing something? I'm not great with computers, and am not sure I'm interpreting these results correctly.

Samgsung results :
http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt179/Vantage72/368449.png

My current hard drives results:http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/838/screenshot20111012at600.png/

Thanks

edit: I was actually looking at buying the scorpio blue 1tb (9.5mm, in case I ever want to put an ssd in and throw this in the optibay) but couldn't find any xbench results, and figured the samsung would give comparable results.

 

[kdog679]

Also, does anyone know what kind of battery and noise differences a 5400 will bring vs my current 7200?

 

[deadwulfe]

The 1TB Samsung Spinpoint M8 should theoretically perform about the same as the 1TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue. I couldn't find Xbench scores for it, either.

I started off with the same stock drive as yours in my MBP and kept it for several months before upgrading to the Spinpoint M8. I will say that it is not faster. From bootup to the point of when startup apps finish loading, it's actually slower than the stock drive. However, after that and under normal use the performance is equal. I'm thinking that the Spinpoint doesn't handle loading so much data all at once as well as the Hitachi, based on the Uncached Read test scores.

As for the scores you've listed, they show that the Spinpoint M8 should outperform the stock 500GB 7200rpm Hitachi. I suspect the scores you found for the Spinpoint M8 may not be accurate. They're much more higher than my own, which I've attached. Comparing your Hitachi to my Samsung, our drives are about equal with each outperforming the other in different tasks.

The more data transferred per second, the better (look in the Detail column); so you are looking for a higher number as being better. The Xbench Disk Test also uses Uncached performance; ignoring an important variable when comparing hard drives. So if you had two drives being the same, the one with a higher cache should slightly outperform the other even though their Xbench scores could be the same.

Lastly, I'm not a battery/noise person. I suppose the Samsung should save on power and, on average, output less noise due to a slower spin rate? I don't know and don't really care to know that answer. Hope this helps you, though.

 

[kdog679]

Thank you for the excellence response! I was expecting the 5400 to be slower, but seeing that the difference between it and my current drive isn't much is a relief. Hopefully I'll be able to deal with the 1tb's speeds before I go buy an ssd.