80G 7200RPM HDD's

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shorty · #1 Post by **shorty** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:22 pm

Is anyone aware of any 80G, 7200RPM hard drives for the T42's? I can't seem to find one.

A darn good price would be a plus!

baraider · #2 Post by **baraider** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:27 pm

because there is none to be found

shorty · #3 Post by **shorty** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:32 pm

Any idea why? Is this something that will be available sometime in the near future?

JHEM · #4 Post by **JHEM** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:32 pm

They're still vaporware.

Regards,

James

shorty · #5 Post by **shorty** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:47 pm

so between an 80G 5200, and a 60G 7200, what would you suggest? Does the RPM make a huge difference?

baraider · #6 Post by **baraider** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:50 pm

there is surely one in the future or even 100ghz 10krpm....who knows.

if you need space, get the 80gb, if you need speed get the 60gb, i have the 60gb hitachi and i'm happy.

Marc_G · #7 Post by **Marc_G** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:02 pm

In my T42p (2373-htu) I've used three drives. I have not run any benchmarks but do use applications that are disk intensive:

1. The 60 GB 7200 RPM drive (stock for this model). Quite zippy.

2. Then I went for about two weeks to an 80 GB 4200 RPM drive. This was clearly slower than the previous drive, in terms of boot time and certain disk-sensitive applications like Lotus Notes, but in "typical usage" it was no big deal. Note though that I've got 1.5 GB RAM and so generally pagefile use is minimal for me. This drive is now in an external USB enclosure and does just fine in that venue.

3. Eventually got my final drive, an 80 GB 5400 RPM drive, and to me it seems nearly as fast as the original 60 GB 7200 RPM drive. This is subjective of course. I routinely use 1 GB VMWare images, large Lotus Notes databases and such. The drive is plenty fast for my needs, and the extra 20 GB is sweet for me.

Again, this is all quite subjective. If benchmark speeds matter to you, the 60 GB drive will probably make you happier.

At the prices of storage these days, I say buy BOTH.

I remember my first hard drive, a 5 MB beast attached to an Atari computer.

Marc

shorty · #8 Post by **shorty** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:15 pm

normally when i set up a computer, i set up 4 partitions.

1. O.S
2. Swap
3. Applications
4. Data

Is this really a good thing to do? I heard it was.

Also, if I've got 1G of RAM do how much swap space should I really set up?

FrankK-F · #9 Post by **FrankK-F** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:01 pm

Shorty,

I've the same partition arrangement as you .. but 2GB memory.

On my 72K60 HDD I assigned 4GB to my D-Drv (I call 'VirtualMem'). I force VM to D: at 2GB min (about 1x memory) .. and use the balance for such as Photoshop's "Scratch Disk".

Putting these in a separate partition (I believe) minimizes fragmentation that would otherwise occur.

Sometimes I have the same question as you about the utility of these partitions .. yet I think I am on the right track .. as I have been using this arrangement the past 6 years.

Frank K-F

A31p / A31p / TP765D

shorty · #10 Post by **shorty** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:35 pm

Thank you for that response Frank.

I thought it was supposed to be 1.5x the RAM? Is that not correct? And even with 2G of RAM you still allow that large of a VM allocation? Is it necessary or even affective? Or does such large VM allocations degrade performance?

Is it not true that the larger the VM, the more room for fragmentation? Not sure of any of this. It's just things I've heard?

Anyone with particular knowledge on this subject?

Marc_G · #11 Post by **Marc_G** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 8:40 am

The page file tends to fragment, particularly when windows can adjust the size at will.

You don't "need" to have any particular size of page file. However, having a large page file allows you to run more applications than would otherwise be possible. I ran for a week without any pagefile at all, solely using my 1.5 GB RAM. Windows was quite happy. However, sometimes i need to start up a virtual machine with VMWare, and then I need more than my 1.5 GB, so I re-enabled the page file. For some reason it has grown huge...

Marc

James314 · #12 Post by **James314** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:08 am

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?lo ... 143&var2=0

A very thorough guide to the paging file. It will answer any questions you might have including whether it is worth partitioning your hdd.

James.

awolfe63 · #13 Post by **awolfe63** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:44 am

I also chose the 80GB 5400RPM. The transfer rate is within a few % of the 60GB/7200rpm drive so large file transfers are just about as fast. Since I only have a single user on my laptop, access time is less important.

I wanted the extra space and the quiet.

dfumento · #14 Post by **dfumento** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 1:57 pm

I bought a T42 with the 80GB HD because I need to dual boot with Linux. It performs very nicely.

shorty · #15 Post by **shorty** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:21 pm

James314, thank you for that link. very thorough.

From it, I learned that it really is not beneficial to create the swap space in a seperate partition, and also that the 2.5x rule is not really true.

So my question now is:

If I leave the swap space in the first partition along with the O.S., will creating a seperate partition for applications and data degrade performance? So the partitioning will look like so:

C: O.S. and Swap
D: Applications
E: Data

So, I have 80G of HDD space, and 1G of RAM. What should the allocations be?

Thanks for all your help!

awolfe63 · #16 Post by **awolfe63** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 5:02 pm

I have found that some applications get confused by not being installed on C:

Putting data in a different partition makes backup easier - but you can also just put all data in My Documents and back that up.

mdarnton · #17 Post by **mdarnton** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:07 pm

I bought a 4200RPM 80gb drive, and it's turning out to do just fine. What are yoiu doing that hard drive speed is SO important? . . . or is this just another case of more-is-better?

kev009 · #18 Post by **kev009** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:02 am

Hard drive speed sets the precident of modern systems and it is an aweful spot to lack in in one of these new all powerful T4x mobile workstations. It'll make a noticable impact on booting, launching apps and swaping between data sets. Speed is a subjective thing but I run 15k SCSI disks in my workstation and even though it has "slow" CPUs, it flys with the fast drives and "feels" faster than many new generation clones I've used.

d94dsj · #19 Post by **d94dsj** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:03 pm

shorty wrote:James314, thank you for that link. very thorough.

From it, I learned that it really is not beneficial to create the swap space in a seperate partition, and also that the 2.5x rule is not really true.

So my question now is:

If I leave the swap space in the first partition along with the O.S., will creating a seperate partition for applications and data degrade performance? So the partitioning will look like so:

C: O.S. and Swap
D: Applications
E: Data

So, I have 80G of HDD space, and 1G of RAM. What should the allocations be?

Thanks for all your help!

I read through the very interesting, and thorough, article as well - it took me over an hour to read it but I learned a lot from it

As the author writes in the article, when you create the first partition (c:)on the drive (presuming the system has got only one drive) , it does this from sector 0 and up to sector x. The next partition (d:) starts from sector x+1 and up to sector y. And so on for e: etc. Since the sectors starts at 0 from the edge of the drive where the speed is greatest, this means that all data that resides on d: will have a slower access speed than data from c: and data from e: will be slower than both d: and c:.
So by creating multiple partitions, you are actually making the system perform slower than necessary.
I would go for a single C: partition and frequently run a good defragmenter utility on it (I use Diskkeeper) and follow the instructions in the article for moving the paging file to the outer (faster) parts of the disc.

Good luck!

/Daniel

dfumento · #20 Post by **dfumento** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:22 pm

Basically:
1. Defragment the hard drive.
2. Create a permament swap space by choosing custom size and make the minimum and maximum the same.

NOTE: I use a deframentation tool like diskeeper because it deframents the MFT and directories as well.

xcountryrower · #21 Post by **xcountryrower** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 9:26 pm

I've been monitoring a couple of sites, and supposedly the seagate momentus hds @ 80 and 100 gb @ 7200 rpm are due out in may.

fbrdphreak · #22 Post by **fbrdphreak** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 1:18 am

xcountryrower wrote:I've been monitoring a couple of sites, and supposedly the seagate momentus hds @ 80 and 100 gb @ 7200 rpm are due out in may.

Correct, I spoke with Seagate today and May is the planned launch time. As soon as there is news on these drives, it will be at LaptopLogic (see my sig) and we should have review models ASAP.

zzyss · #23 Post by **zzyss** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:26 am

I'd settle for one of these. [censored] if I can get my hands on one though.

fbrdphreak · #24 Post by **fbrdphreak** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:50 am

This is MUCH better for the money

zzyss · #25 Post by **zzyss** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:19 pm

A bit off topic, but if you assume that I will be upgrading to a T43p later (from T40) should I still get this hard drive, or are there better Serial-ATA ones?

zzyss · #26 Post by **zzyss** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:22 pm

fbrdphreak wrote:This is MUCH better for the money

Yeah, but the 7k series maxes out at 60GB, and I have to get at least 80GB to ease the transition from my existing hard drive. None of the drive copying software that I've investigated are able to downsize a partition without adverse effects.

awolfe63 · #27 Post by **awolfe63** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:38 pm

zzyss wrote:
fbrdphreak wrote:This is MUCH better for the money
Yeah, but the 7k series maxes out at 60GB, and I have to get at least 80GB to ease the transition from my existing hard drive. None of the drive copying software that I've investigated are able to downsize a partition without adverse effects.

I also want 80GB+ - but I have dowsized partitions with PartitionMagic many times with no adverse impact.

fbrdphreak · #28 Post by **fbrdphreak** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 9:43 pm

zzyss wrote:
fbrdphreak wrote:This is MUCH better for the money
Yeah, but the 7k series maxes out at 60GB, and I have to get at least 80GB to ease the transition from my existing hard drive. None of the drive copying software that I've investigated are able to downsize a partition without adverse effects.

Yes, but for some reason the link you posted was to a 60GB 4200RPM drive IIRC; thus I assumed you wanted 60GB. In regards to 80GB, hold out till May; Seagate to the rescue!

#29 Post by **jdhurst** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 10:25 pm

mdarnton wrote:I bought a 4200RPM 80gb drive, and it's turning out to do just fine. What are yoiu doing that hard drive speed is SO important? . . . or is this just another case of more-is-better?

My T41 came with a 4200 rpm drive. It might as well have been off. The 7200 rpm drive is vastly faster in startup and use. I just like to be able to click an icon and have the application launch quickly. I really noticed the difference. ... JD Hurst

fbrdphreak · #30 Post by **fbrdphreak** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:47 pm

The performance difference is rather extreme from 4200RPM-->7200RPM, that's the biggest bottleneck on a laptop.

80G 7200RPM HDD's

80G 7200RPM HDD's

Multiple partitions yes/no?

On the horizon

Re: On the horizon

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