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5400 SATA speed vs 7200
I’m about to pull the trigger on a Macbook pro. I’ll be editing on FCP 6. For the most part I’ll be working in SD but will definitely want the ability to work with HD when the time comes.
Should I be concerned about the speed difference of a 5400 Serial ATA and a 7200? Is it worth it to plap down a few extra hundred for the 7200 internal.
Does getting a 7200 external drive for my media offer a little more speed or does it even matter?
Much Thanks,
Paul
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10 Replies
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[Paul Factora] “Should I be concerned about the speed difference of a 5400 Serial ATA and a 7200? Is it worth it to plap down a few extra hundred for the 7200 internal.”
You should be concerned about putting media on your internal drive period. NEVER put media on the system drive, whether it’s a laptop or a desktop machine.
you’ll require an external media array for your media.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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What Walter said. But, in terms of whether a 5,400 rpm drive is fast enough for most things on a MBP compared to a 7200rpm drive, check out Barefeats.com. Here’s one comparison:
https://www.barefeats.com/rosa06.html
Ed -
Not planning to capture any media to the system drive. Was just wondering if having a 7200 vs a 5400sata as a system drive made much of a difference.
anyways thanks
-p
Avid Media Composer 8000XL
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whoa, haven’t posted in a while. gotta change my profile.
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For the MBP 5.400 Rpm is fast enough and even will need less power when in battery.
Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
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..and always a big mess on top of the table. -
I have the 5400 internal drive and I’ve captured HDV as the Apple Intermediate Codec on an external 7200 firewire drive and then edited it. Everything worked fine.
From what I can tell, the boot drive isn’t really taxed too hard for any of that. I can’t promise anything more than that as I haven’t tried it, but for using Final Cut in that way, the 5400 is fine.
I’ve heard that the battery difference between the 2 is minimal. The 7200 uses more power, but it gets the information faster so it’s spinning less than the 5400 would. It all kind of evens out in the end.
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[walter biscardi] “You should be concerned about putting media on your internal drive period. NEVER put media on the system drive, whether it’s a laptop or a desktop machine. “
Well, that was 100% true up until around 10 years ago when Ultra ATA was invented. The ingest station at my place just grabs standard-def ProRes to the internal, which we then copy to a workstation array via ethernet. Been doing this almost every day for over a year and never once had a problem.
Sean
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[Paul Factora] “Is it worth it to plap down a few extra hundred for the 7200 internal. “
Yes, it’s worth it. Major difference. It is the most significant upgrade you can make actually. The computer will start up a lot faster. So will programs.
Don’t expect to do any high end work on a laptop disk. You won’t have much space, and you’ll have to stick to compressed workflows.
Sean
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I have a 17 inch Mac Book pro with a 5400 drive and it has worked fine in SD and HDV. I was even surprised to find that I could actually capture using a Western Digital 5400 USB2 bus powered external drive for editing in very mobile situations. The only problem was battery power..
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And if I remember correctly, the new 500gig notebook drives are too fat to fit in a MBP, so 200-300g might be the biggest.
Ed[Sean ONeil] “Don’t expect to do any high end work on a laptop disk. You won’t have much space, and you’ll have to stick to compressed workflows.”
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