600X - Buying new harddrive

[Lomax]

I was planning on getting a new harddrive for my 600X but as I was looking at the speedier new 7200RPM drives I realised I had no clue whether the 600X could actually make use of the extra speed. I went to the IBM specs to find out and searched here in the forum but haven't been able to determine the speed of the 600X's ATA bus.

Does anyone know if it's ATA/33, ATA/66 or ATA/100? Is there any point getting a 7200RPM drive or is the 600X so old that I won't notice any difference compared to a 5400RPM drive?

Thanks,

Lomax

[whizkid]

You will notice a difference. The 600X cannot handle the maximum speeds of data from the drive's cache, but it can handle the high sustained data rate.

7200 RPM also gets you reduced latency so getting the first data off the drive will be faster too. They also often have larger caches.

They're just all-around faster, and it will make a difference. It won't make quite as much difference as it would in a faster machine, but it will be noticeable.

...and the 600X has a UDMA/33 interface and can handle drives up to 138GB or so.

[Lomax]

Thanks for the reply, was surprised to hear it's only UDMA-33! Now I'm thinking I might go for a 5400RPM drive with 8Mb cache as they're A LOT cheaper per Gb. They're also likely to draw less power, generate less heat and less noise and maybe even last longer?

I've so far gone through 3 drives in my 600E and 600X - 2.5" drives just don't seem as reliable as their 3.5" brethren. Has anyone got recommendations when it comes to reliability fo laptop drives?

Lomax

[whizkid]

Do doubt jinxing myself... I've used IBM, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Toshiba drives and never had one fail... not even the 170MB (yes *M*B) IBM drive from my 1992 750P.