16mb buffer hard drive in a laptop

hi,

I'm about to upgrade the hard drive in my gateway m275 (1.4 pentium m,
256mb ram) and i was looking around and i saw that there are a few
drives on the market with 16mb buffers (mainly the toshiba MK5024GA).
i was wondering, does this realy help, or is it overkill?



thanks for the help,

dan

"Dan Irwin" wrote in message
om...
hi,

I'm about to upgrade the hard drive in my gateway m275 (1.4 pentium m,
256mb ram) and i was looking around and i saw that there are a few
drives on the market with 16mb buffers (mainly the toshiba MK5024GA).
i was wondering, does this realy help, or is it overkill?



Well it clearly depends on
the apps and workloads you
are running.

I have installed a couple
of Tosh MK5024GAY on two
notebooks, replacing 2MB
5400rpm drives, and the
difference is like night
and day.



dk

But would 7200 with an 8mb buffer do just as good?

"Dan Koren" wrote in message ...

Well it clearly depends on
the apps and workloads you
are running.

I have installed a couple
of Tosh MK5024GAY on two
notebooks, replacing 2MB
5400rpm drives, and the
difference is like night
and day.




dk

Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.


dk

"Dan Irwin" wrote in message
m...
But would 7200 with an 8mb buffer do just as good?

"Dan Koren" wrote in message
...

Well it clearly depends on
the apps and workloads you
are running.

I have installed a couple
of Tosh MK5024GAY on two
notebooks, replacing 2MB
5400rpm drives, and the
difference is like night
and day.

added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
performance.

"Dan Koren" wrote in message ...
Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.


dk

"Dan Irwin" wrote in message
m...
But would 7200 with an 8mb buffer do just as good?

"Dan Koren" wrote in message
...

Well it clearly depends on
the apps and workloads you
are running.

I have installed a couple
of Tosh MK5024GAY on two
notebooks, replacing 2MB
5400rpm drives, and the
difference is like night
and day.

In article ,
Dan Irwin wrote:
added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
performance.


It's easy enough to check; Find the detail specs for a models you're
considering on the manufacturer's web site, and the disk you've got
now. The specs wiil show power draw for idle, startup, peak, etc.

I just looked at the numbers for these models and they are just about
equal.

Sometimes new designs can be faster _and_ draw less power.




"Dan Koren" wrote in message ...
Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.


dk

"Dan Irwin" wrote in message
m...
But would 7200 with an 8mb buffer do just as good?

"Dan Koren" wrote in message
...

Well it clearly depends on
the apps and workloads you
are running.

I have installed a couple
of Tosh MK5024GAY on two
notebooks, replacing 2MB
5400rpm drives, and the
difference is like night
and day.



--
Al Dykes
-----------
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

"Dan Irwin" wrote in message
m...
| added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
| more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
| performance.
|

My 7200 uses no more battery than my 4200 did in my m6809.

Jason Cothran wrote:

"Dan Irwin" wrote in message
m...
| added heat and power draw. I was also thinking would i wind up losing
| more in battery power from 7200rpm drive then i would gain in added
| performance.
|

My 7200 uses no more battery than my 4200 did in my m6809.

I've had a 60GB Hitachi in my ThinkPad for 6 months - big bump in
performance & I've never noticed that it made any noise at all.

Dan Koren wrote:

Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.


"Quieter" is a mute point (no pun intended). Most drives start out life
pretty quiet, but get a helluva lot louder after a few months (a year
tops). If you really want a quiet drive (don't we all!) then I reckon
you have to factor in a hard drive change over every year. Oh well.

-p

In comp.sys.laptops plated metal wrote:
Dan Koren wrote:

Maybe, but why bother?

The Tosh MK-5024GAY are cheaper than the
IBM/Hitachi E7K60. They are also quieter.


"Quieter" is a mute point (no pun intended).

You mean "moot":

moot
adj 1: open to debate [syn: {disputed}]
2: capable of being disproved [syn: {debatable}, {disputable}]
v: think about carefully; weigh; "They considered the
possibility of a strike" [syn: {consider}, {debate}, {turn
over}, {deliberate}]

So I think you must have _intended_ a pun, and failed somewhere along
the line.

Most drives start out life
pretty quiet, but get a helluva lot louder after a few months (a year

!! Well, it's likely that a failing drive will be noisy, or even that
a drive slowly swapping outmore and more bad sectors will be physically
jumping the heads from point to point more and more, which makes more
noise, but to say "most drives" do that within the lifetime of the
laptop would be out of order. I've owned something like 7 laptops over
the years (started with a 386sx50), and all of them still work, and
none of them make any more noise than they ever did that I can notice!

Now, noisy scsi barracuda drive on servers is something else ...

Peter