MacBook Pro :: Internal 7200rpm Vs External FW800?
Oct 7, 2010
Anyone care to advise?
Would love to hear any past experiences and direct comparisons etc
Have written off the Momentus XT due to endless reviews of noise, heat and battery zapping. Is this just the way all 7200 internals are likely to perform though?
If so, should I maybe continue using my 5400 internal for apps and os, and buy a FW800 7200rpm for my media?
Oh, I'm using my MBP mainly for video editing (FCP, Motion, Shake) and some audio and graphics too.
This is in regards to the 2010 mini. I have been reading up on SSD, Hybrids and FW800 with a 7200. What is the easiest AND most effective/cost effective solution? If I went he FW800 route, can I use the same drive as my data storage drive? Will there be enough headroom to run the OS over FW and use the drive to stream movies playing in another room on Apple TV2 simultaneously? Will this give me a performance increase over the internal 5400 if I use the external 7200 for everything over FW800?
That is where my thoughts about the hybrid come into play. I know I can stream the iTunes content over USB2, which I have at the moment for the big drive. I would need to go buy an enclosure with FW800 to run it as a boot drive. I could use that same money and go get a 500GB Hybrid drive and install myself and leave the USB2 as data only. If the install is painless but tedious, I might just do that. If the FW800 route would be robust enough to run the OS and stream data to other devices simultaneously (ie use it as I would the regular internal drive), I might just do that and wait for SSD prices to come tumbling down and do a bigger internal SSD in the future.
I just bought a 640gig Samsung 2.5 inch / 5400rpm drive and threw it in a FW800 case from Other world computing. Running some test using the QuickBench 4 and AJA system test shows me that this little bugger is almost as quick as my internal drive on my MacBook Pro (Model number: WDC WD6400BEVT-00A0RT0). How can this be???? I did a varity of test with different file sizes and the Samsung get 70 MB/s vs about 84 MB/s for the internal drive.
My internal drive is pretty full vs this external drive that is currently empty. I do a lot of video work / large gigabyte files on the drive so perhaps I have a defrag problem? I really expected my internal drive to blow the FW800 connected Samsung out the water?
I got an Intel x25 160GB SSD and I use a Firewire case to carry my old 500GB 2.5 HD. Now the question is, where should I put my Bootcamp for better use. You know, I am afraid, if I put bootcamp in the SSD as well, the SSD will got heavy load.
I recently picked up a couple of external drives, and decided to benchmark them to determine whether the interface and/or drive type made much of a difference. For those that don't want to read the details, here's the bottom line: If you're going to splurge on a FW800 interface, it's well worth fitting this with a 7200 rpm drive to maximize performance. Uncached sequential writes over FW800 were twice as fast on the 7200 rpm drive compared to the 5400 rpm. FW800 is a marked improvement over USB 2.0 as well. Full results are below. For background, when shopping for drives, I was interested in using the FW800 interface on the MBPs, for the simple reason it's rated almost twice as fast as USB 2.0. Some of the drives I was shopping for included 7200 rpm drives. My first thought was this was silly, since the interface limited the throughput to far-below the limits a 5400 rpm drive could produce, so why bother upgrading to 7200 rpm? Well, it turns out it does make a difference. I've got both a FW800 enclosure (G Drive Mini) and a USB 2.0 interface (Nexstar TX) as well as a 320GB 7200 rpm drive (Hitachi) and a 640GB 5400 rpm drive (Western Digital). So, I benchmarked both drives using both interfaces. Some interesting results! Turns out, the 7200 rpm drive does in fact dramatically improve performance in the FW800 interface. For sequential operations, Firewire has a dramatic improvement over USB 2.0; for random read/writes, drive speed seems to be a more important factor. And for large files, the combination of Firewire and 7200 rpm gives a pretty impressive throughput of almost 75MB/s. Full results are below. Note that the drive and interface are noted in the title bar for each drive.
I recently purchased a new SSD and would like to input that into my MBP 2012. If I have a partition on my external HDD that contains the carbon copy of my MBP, am I able to clone it into my SSD after I have installed it in the MBP through the USB?
Internal HDD --> External HDD Place internal HDD into optibay, and place SSD into the harddisk slot Connect External HDD via USB to MBP CarbonCopy to new SSD via USB from External HDD Format Internal HDD
I am on a hard drive buying spree. Another thing I am looking to buy is external FW 800 2.5 enclosure (probably OWC on the go) and 500 GB hard drive. There are 2 options for that- 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm. In my macbook pro there is fujitsu 5400 HD. Is it worth to buy 7200 external then? In a future I am planning to upgrade my internal HD too.
To get my Multimedia-Data off my MBP i5 SSD I am looking for a small, 1 2,5" hdd enclosure that is FW-800 powered. I was unable to find anything in the forums nor in the buyers guide about this. Any recommendations or tests? I am looking for something well designed if possible (imho like the LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra, which has two hds (double the power comsumption) and is too big).
I have been using a MBP for a few months now and I am making a total conversion from PC user to Mac user in January when I buy a nice new 24" iMac but to go with it, I want to buy a couple of new external hard drives. I have currently got a Seagate FreeAgent 500GB USB Drive which is Windows Formatted and I will be keeping that to use with my work laptop (a Dell), and I have been really pleased with its reliability. Anyway, I have been looking around and there are some fab drives on the market but I have a couple of questions. If I get an iMac with a 500GB Internal Hard Drive, how big an External hard drive will I need to use Time Machine without having to delete backups all the time?
Also, I have been primarily looking at the new Seagate FreeAgent drives and the do a PC version (USB) and a Mac version (USB/FW400/FW800), but the 640GB USB version costs �76 whereas the 500GB FW version costs �100. Would you go for the bigger size or the added benefits of FW800? Will I notice much speed difference between USB and FW800?
Could anyone recommend an external (FireWire 800) Hard Drive that they're using without issues with a Power Mac G5 (mine is a Dual Processor 2.3)?? I bought a couple of WD My Book Studio Edition but have no end of problems on FW800, and looking around here so is everyone else. LaCies seem to have similar problems, plus my own experiences in selling these and seeing FW ports falling off the enclosure's board, etc., puts me off them. Maxtors seem to have different issues and the new brown and orange Seagates are too fugly to even consider. So, anyone recommend a solution (250-500GB) that works fine with FW800 on a dual PMG5??
so I am in search of a new 500GB-1TB External Drive for Time Machine, and it has to have FW800 as well as USB 2.
I was thinking of getting an external chassis and buying my own hard drive, has anyone purchased a good external chassis with both ports, or a all in one drive that is worth the money?
1. Can I connect an external HD to both my AEBS (via usb) and my Mac Mini via FW800?
2. If I can't do the below - lets say I connect my external HD to my Mac Mini via FW800 - with the drive be accessible on the network if my Mac Mini is sleeping?
I'm just trying to figure out what is the most efficient/produce the best speed - way to connect an external HD to my network.
First I wanted to upgrade my new mac mini with a Momentus XT but now I'm thinking about getting a "real" ssd + a FW800 drive for storage to have the huge speed boost of the ssd drive. Does anybody have this combination in his mini? What I want to know: How is the performance like of the external drive connected to FW800? Is it comparable to a standard internal hard drive?
My new 27" i7 is supposed to be delivered next week, got the SATA cables for installing my own SSD, but am a bit doubtful as to where placing my Scratch space. So, I will end up with an iMac with two internal drives (SSD + HDD).OS, System Library and Applications go to the internal SSD (120GB).
As I will be using FCS (besides CS package and other smaller programms) I would like to set up a dedicated Scratch drive for it.
Which of the following options would you go for, and why?:
1: install scratch space on the internal HDD together with all the other data (pics, music, videos - space is not the issue with a 2TB drive). Would a partition be advisable in this case, since I heard that partitioning slows a disc down considerably.
2: install scratch space on the internal HDD (scratch only), and all other files (pics/music/video) on an external FW800 HDD.
3: install scratch space on the external FW800 HDD (all other files on the internal HDD like usual).
4: use an external RAID backup as scratch space as well (something like the Drobo) with a FW800 connection.
I was looking for feedback on using the Drobo not only as a backup, but also as a scratch - some people found it great working, others not so much...I'd like to find out, if that has to do with the FW800 bottleneck, or if a Drobo scratch is even slower than an external FW800 HDD would be. I know that eSata would be faster, but that is currently out of reach (besides the OWC mod.).
I wasn't sure if it wouls be a bad idea if I wiped the interal hard drive while I'm booting from a recovery disk, then made a RAID 0 with the internal drive and my FW800 external drive. I'm nearing my max for the internal drive. I have a second FW400 drive backing up with Time Machine. I was hoping to just wipe, make the raid volume, and then restore from the Time Machine backup.
I guess even before that, my FW800 is not working in Lion. I reformatted while connected by USB, reset power management, and reset PRAM, but the firewire bus panics and takes out the Time Machine on FW400 as well. Is there a fix for this somewhere that I'm missing? I bought the FW800 drive for the above reason, only to run into a wall trying to make it work. I really don't want to do a RAID 0 with a USB connection.
I'm not going to try setting up the RAID 0 until I get the FW800 drive working reliably, but I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone.
Info: iMac (24-inch Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
A few months ago I bought the NewerTech USB 2.0 Universal Drive adapter. I was going to purchase my first laptop and knew there would be drives I could take from my G4. This was my first real experience with USB 2.0 and boy do I hate it. I do mostly video editing and I very regularly transfer huge amounts of data from drive to drive. USB 2.0 waaaaay too slow compared to what I was used to. Hours to transfer 40Gbs. I now regret not getting a FireWire enclosure.How does everyone feel about those HDD docks that take SATA drives? To me it seems very economical. I understand a smaller bus powered drive would be good for travel because a dock or larger drive needs a power source.
I have a HD that I took out of my computer to get a larger one. Can I still use the old one somehow, as an external HD?If the operating systems are different or the same, how does that affect it?
I am able to buy a bigger hard drive, but I'm wondering if it should be external or internal.If I bought an internal, what is the best kind to get, and how would I install it?If I got an external, which is the best one to get?
So i want to switch my 500gb external hard drive and the generic factory 80gb hard drive in my laptop, but i already have alot of stuff on the external, if i cloned my mac onto the external and switched would i be able to access the files on previously external hard drive via my computer?
How I get OS X on the SSD without a disc? Can I download the installer on a flash drive somehow? Also, If this is really good using my Macbook Pro's HDD for a backup HDD, instead of buying one? I have no use for it anyway, if and when I get a new SSD. BTW, the HDD is the upgraded factory 500gb 7200rpm. Also, do you think it's smarter to have a bigger backup drive than internal drive?
In other words, I would like to get a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD, and my current HDD is only 500GB.... I am a musician and need a lot of storage for musical purposes. I use Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro X, Ableton Live 9, Office, and Photoshop.... My Macbook Pro is a Late 2011 Macbook Pro 15.4' 2.2ghz quad core i7 8gb RAM. I think I should get an enclosure that has a thunderbolt port with usb.
i just removed my internal dvd drive to install an extra hdd to my macbook pro, but i want to give some use to my removed internal dvd drive by making it external, is this possible? which would be the ideal enclosure to do so? (by looks, size, portability)
so i thought i might as well aksed you people here for some opinions.im in need of large capacity HDD for my uMBP. and i want the 640GB WD cause i heard good review for it, however the WD distributor in my country haven't stock it yet, and they say it might be a little bit as late as early january cause i need it urgetnly, here the question, the WD distributor in my country do have stock for 640GB but its the external one, the My Passport [URL]i have bad experiences in online shopping cause in my country the custom is terrible, and they took very long time to scan for shipment, so i thought is it okay if i buy the wd external one then i pry open the casing and put the harddisk inside my umbp ? are they basically the same drive ? and is the casing ( after opened) can be used with my older hard disk to be used as external one ?sorry for my broken english, but i need the answer as son as possible,
I am currently in the market for a new hard drive for my MBP to upgrade and one to use for Time Machine. I was thinking somewhere between 500GB to 1TB of data for both the MBP and external. I tried the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB in my 2009 13" MBP but it was too loud and clicked so I returned it. I now have the 2010 13" MBP and was wondering what other hard drives are out there?
There is no sound coming out of my speakers- internal or external. This problem just recently happened (I didn't get my MacBook Pro with this problem). I have checked and double-checked the sound preferences. Nothing is muted or anything and the correct "device for output" is selected.
I am trying to install osx maverick on an external ssd before i phsically put it into my macbook. I ran the installer and selected the external ssd and it seemed to go alright until my computer restarted. Then when i hold option it shows my current hard drive but its called install osx and recovery. my computer no longer will boot up like normal. I dont know whats going on,
I have a quick question that maybe you guys can help me with. I used to store all my music on an external drive, but now that I got a Mac I decided to just save them on the internal drive. When I select the External drive and Copy the files to transfer somewhere along the lines it gives me an error and pretty much the transfer Stalls(the transfer window stays open but nothing is being moved) and it wont close or nothing unless I restart. I really don't know what file is corrupt or anything, Is there a software I can get to make this process easier? I am trying to transfer over 100gb of music Via USB.
