T42: 80GB-5400rpm vs 60GB-7200rpm

[zver17]

would I expect a noticeable difference? I do some programming and the output gets written to the drive - potentially >1GB per run (which gets post-processed and then deleted). Also, are there any 80GB 7200rpm drives for the T42?
while we are on the HDD topic - why does winXP chew up so much HDD - ~20GB??? its ridiculous.
many thanks
z.

[jdhurst]

On hard drive: I would expect you would see a difference. The way it works for me is that the 7200rpm drive makes all operations faster.

On WinXPP: It does not eat up 20Gb. My WinXPP installation used 27Gb, and that includes 4 additionaal complete computers each with its own Office suite and set of tools (9gb), a complete set of application and driver installation files for 9 different desktops and laptops (4Gb), client files (1Gb), personal documents (1Gb), a medium set of rainbow tables (3Gb). That leaves WinXPP at 9Gb including many different applications and tools. I think I can build a standard Windows XP Pro machine with Office XP and a working collection of tools in 6Gb or less. Be sure you are not including the PreDesktop Area and the Restore Recovery data if you use it. Also remember that a 60,000,000,000 bit drive is about 58Gb. Vendors like to advertise with the larger number.

... JD Hurst

[umdenken]

I do some programming and the output gets written to the drive - potentially >1GB per run (which gets post-processed and then deleted).

Wow, that's quite a lot of output. Maybe there's a more efficient way of handling the data conversion between the two systems that you're working with?

I'd say first look for a better algorithm, _then_ look for a better hard drive.

[zver17]

In this case the output data volume is fairly genuine from some engineering statistics computation. Although it would be possible to re-organise the algorithm to reduce storage at the cost of increasing runtime and algorithm complexity, generally I prefer to maximally speed things up in time even if it means increasing storage in ram and hdd.

I will be getting a dedicated desktop (quad-Xeon or Athlon ) for these computations, but its impressive that a laptop nowdays can handle them more or less ok (probably faster than my 1-year old desktop).

[Champ]

quad xenon? I think you can afford to get a nice t42p and then still have neough left over for some kind of network stroage drive that you can remoately access =)

[zver17]

that is quad-xeon in addition to the t42. i would NEVER prefer a coffin-like desktop over the TP

[egibbs]

It would really depend on whether you are I/O bound or CPU bound.

If you are trying to read or write that 1 GB of data in 2 minutes, then definitely get the 7K60. But If it takes 2 hours of processing to read or write it, then it won't make any difference.

I have the 7K60 in my T42 and it is lightning fast. I also have the 80 GB 5400 in the ultrabay at the moment. It is no slouch either, but it can't compare to the 7K60.

Ed Gibbs