Do I really need 7200rpm?

Dagon

I've been doing a little tracking on my Mac using the internal 5200rpm drive, and so far I haven't been met with any serious disk access issues. All my drum samples and synths are on the disk, as are all recorded guitar tracks, etc.

When I first got my Mac, I intended to invest in a good 7200 firewire drive, but now I'm wondering do I need to? By the way, I still haven't created any huge projects with 20 or 30 tracks, perhaps I'll change my mind.

The ultimate situation for me is to not have to lug around a big external FW drive + power supply, and just do everything using the internal, then use a large external for all backups.

My spec: Macbook Pro 2008 model, 2.4ghz 15", 4gig RAM, 200gig HD

PaulBrewer

It depends what you need. Faster access time effectively increases Data throughput. But if you don't need that , why bother?

However I don't think the price difference is significant either way.

Dagon wrote: »

I've been doing a little tracking on my Mac using the internal 5200rpm drive, and so far I haven't been met with any serious disk access issues. All my drum samples and synths are on the disk, as are all recorded guitar tracks, etc.

When I first got my Mac, I intended to invest in a good 7200 firewire drive, but now I'm wondering do I need to? By the way, I still haven't created any huge projects with 20 or 30 tracks, perhaps I'll change my mind.

The ultimate situation for me is to not have to lug around a bit external FW drive + power supply, and just do everything using the internal, then use a large external for all backups.

Anima

7200 has been the standard for I dunno how long now and they're cheap as chips so I theres no reason not too if it'd improve performance.

However 5200 rpm drives are still used because they're not that much slower than 7200 rpm, they use less power (not much less) and they're quieter.

If everythings running reasonably well, theres probably no reason to upgrade.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

i founf that oonce you go over about 5 tracks - you need to be one sepearte drive.

it better to record on a seperate drive than the OS , then drive speed comes next.

trackmixstudio

I run a 10,000rpm raptor sata drive in the mac pro in the studio. It is only 60GB so I use it as my current session drive then back up to another drive when the session is finished. I notice a huge difference even compared to a 7200 drive. The response time is so much faster. When opening a session the files load really quickly and I never get errors due to the disk being too slow. I was hitting bottle necks on a 7200 drive. I run very high track counts and very little virtual instruments so HD speed is vital to me. If you are running lots of VIs lots of ram is probably more important.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

he he i use an ex web server - dual xeon 2.4 gig 3 gig ram , dual 300 gig 10k scsi drives - but its in the other room cos it sounds like a jet taking off.

Dagon

Ok you convinced me... I'm going for the Western Digital MyBook Studio, 1TB!! FW800 (the duet needs the 400) and 7200 rpm.

Just hope my Mac's aggresive power saving features don't destroy it the way it's currently destroying my WD passport (clicking, etc). Can't seem to use the hdapm on an eSATA drive

teamdresch

A Velociraptor seems to be a pretty good bet performance-wise.
Mind you a solid state disk would really be somethin'.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403