Hard Drive Speeds?

I am looking to upgrade my MacBook Pro hard drive, as 80G just isn't as much as I originally thought. I have been looking at Tech Restore, where they have three products I am interested in. One is a 160G drive with a 5400 RPM drive speed ($300). Another is a 200G drive with a 4200 RPM drive speed ($350). The last one is yet to be released, a 200G drive with a 7200 RPM drive speed ($TBD). Obviously, I would expect the faster drive to be more expensive than the others.

My question is will I be able to tell a significant jump in speed while working in FCP due to a faster drive speed (ie. 7200 RPM vs. 5400 RPM)? Additionally, would a drive speed of 4200 RPM slow me down considerably in FCP?

I would love to get 200G of space, but don't know if it's worth a) the extra cost or b) the slower speed. I'm wondering if I should just go for the 160G drive. Any thoughts?

unless youre capturig to your internal drive, youre not going to see any major performance increases.

ive heard a lot of HEAT issues when putting 7200 rpm drives in powerbooks. and no, i wouldnt suggest a drive below 5400rpm

In my opinion 5400rpm isn't enough for editing. You can do it, but you will experience more lags (the dreaded Spinning Beachball of Death) in accessing clips, playback, rendering. Even with DV media. I've been there -- used a FireLite 5400rpm FireWire drive to teach classes, because of its portability. I could access clips, but it was a lot wobblier, and I didn't even send render files to it. Add that layer and the drive may not have been able to perform.

Apple suggests the same thing:

[docs.info.apple.com]


www.derekmok.com

derekmok Wrote:
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> In my opinion 5400rpm isn't enough for editing.
> You can do it, but you will experience more lags
> (the dreaded Spinning Beachball of Death) in
> accessing clips, playback, rendering. Even with
> DV media.

Even if I'm not capturing media to this drive? This is going to be my system drive...

My MacBook Pro has a 5400 rpm 160 GB drive and FCP 5.1.4. As long as my clips are on an external drive (Firewire or SATA) it works fine for editing.

Wow,

Loads of drive talk recently. Has anyone experienced heat problems with 7200 drives in Powerbooks? I've been contemplating upgrading to a 7200 internal with my Powerbook but the capacity at the moment for them doesn't go above 100gb

My PB gets real hot in the HDD section sometimes (no problems so far) but now I have placed it up on a stand so air can circulate under it, seems like a wise thing to do to keep heat buildup down, and an ejected CD no longer bumps into my external keyboard .

Scott