Uhh, is this a problem?

[Arkanok]

Hey everyone,

I have one of the 2.2 ghz SR MBPs and I recently installed the windows 7 beta on it, as did my friend on his slightly newer mbp.

Now, I believe my hard drive is a 5400 rpm drive, and it's 120gb. So when I went in and did that option to test the performance of my comp, the overall score I got was only 2.0 due to my lowest score. The lowest score happened to be the data transfer rate... My friends was 5.0 for the data transfer but I'm pretty sure we both have generally the same hard drive, except his is bigger.

Why am I getting only 2.0? Is my hard drive faulty or something, or is this normal for my computer?

 

[hacksaw-C87]

I seem to remember reading a post on this at some point and I think that the Windows Performance rater won't let you have a rating higher than 2.0 unless you've got a hard drive bigger than XGB (I have no idea how big that number has to be). If your partition is smaller than that number then Windows relegates you to a 2.0, regardless of video performance/RAM etc. Shouldn't affect your performance so don't worry mate.

hacksaw

 

[Consultant]

Bigger harddrive at same rpm = faster transfer speed.
It's just how it is. Read benchmarks if you don't understand why.

 

[LtRammstein]

Consultant,

Bigger hard drives at the same RPM = faster read/write? Umm... I find that very hard to believe, at a physical stand point.

I've done an internship in the hard drive industry, and I don't remember ever seeing that.

The read/write speed will be the same on the drive, but the head of the drive will take an extra nanosecond to locate the proper sector, so you won't see it that much.

The only other thing that can influence the performance, on a hardware level, is the RAM and cache. So in a computer there are different buses, connections between memory, that the data goes to. A basic diagram is below:

Hard drive -> RAM (DDRx) -> L2 Cache (SRAM) -> L1 Cache (SRAM) -> CPU

A hard drive running at 5400 RPM, compared to a 7200 RPM drive, has a lower transfer rate. To understand how the RPM in a drive works, think of a point on a disc or frisbee. Then spin it as fast as possible so it lands in the same spot. The faster you spin, the quicker data can be read/written.

True PC gamers will claim 7200 RPM drives in a RAID setup will be the best, but if you are die-hard Mac user, don't worry about it. Besides, Mac hardware is not "Vista compatible." Microsoft's scoring system sucks and is off in all aspects. You'd be better off looking at video card ratings in gaming.

Hopefully this helps you understand. If I butchered something please post an edit for me.

 

[MAG.]

Yes, as mentioned bigger hard drive at the same speed is a faster hard drive. A 320GB 5400rpm is faster than a 250GB 5400rpm in read/write speed because those hard drives have equal surface area (equal plates in size) but the 320GB one has a plate that can fit/write/read more data on the same disk area (or plate). In other words, the read/write head in the bigger hard drive has access to more area on the plate of the drive than the hard drive with less space. Hope that helps!

 

[KevinN206]

Yes, as mentioned bigger hard drive at the same speed is a faster hard drive. A 320GB 5400rpm is faster than a 250GB 5400rpm in read/write speed because those hard drives have equal surface area (equal plates in size) but the 320GB one has a plate that can fit/write/read more data on the same disk area (or plate). In other words, the read/write head in the bigger hard drive has access to more area on the plate of the drive than the hard drive with less space. Hope that helps!

I think the word 'greater areal density' is what you're looking for. Essentially, given identical speed and number of plates, the drive with larger capacity has greater areal density. This should allow the hard drive to read/write more data per operation.

 

[MAG.]

I think the word 'greater areal density' is what you're looking for. Essentially, given identical speed and number of plates, the drive with larger capacity has greater areal density. This should allow the hard drive to read/write more data per operation.

Yes! Thank you! I wanted to use the word density, but it flew out of my head while I was typing the response.

 

[Arkanok]

So are you guys saying that this is normal? If it makes a difference, obviously I'm not using ONLY windows 7 on my mbp, I've got it partitioned and the windows partition is 36gb and the rest is for OS X.

 

[aidricksdad]

i set my windows 7 to 40 gb, i have new imac 24 2.66 stock...mine rated at 4 something...but i am using beta 7057 if that matters...i wanted ony for Empire : Total War witch is sweet by the way...still have to set it on medium cuz of the graphics card but it still look good enough