mwall
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Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
I know I should have asked this BEFORE I purchased, but I just bought a 100 GB 5400 rpm drive for my laptop to replace a 10 GB 4200 rpm drive. (Waiting for it to arrive.) The 4200 drive ran Sonar, even when using it with video, albeit it did drag somewhat. My question is, will the 5400 suffice for SONAR use, even though Cakewalk recommends 7200 rpm drives, or did I just waste 80 bucks? BTW, this particular 5400 drive has 16 MB of cache, if that makes any difference. Thanks.
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larrymcg
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 13:48:52
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I'd think that 5400rpm will be fine for most applications. Lots of primary memory is good for fixing lots of performance problems. I'm not sure about the 16MB cache on the disk -- likely is a help.
--Larry
Intel Core i7-4790 @3.6GHz; 8GB; Win10 Pro 64bit; 1TB disk + 3TB ext disk; Midiman Fineline mixer; MidiSport 4x4 midi I/F; Roland JV-30 kbd/synth; Yamaha TG55 synth; Rx with 3 piece Home audio speakers; Sonar X3e Studio
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Phoenix
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 13:57:25
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I ran Sonar on a 4200 RPM laptop drive for years, and performance was adequate, if not as zippy as my desktop (of course, my audio drive is an external 7200 RPM, so maybe that helps).
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j boy
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 14:05:28
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I changed out the stock 4200 RPM hard drive in my laptop, with a 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar. Made a difference but not a real extreme difference. FWIW when I do have dropout issues on large projects, it's the CPU not the drive that's the culprit, and I just turn off the CPU hogs like Perfect Space, Voxformer, etc. until things settle down, mix, and turn them back on for rendering an export file.
I use a 5400 RPM external Seagate drive for streaming BFD samples, and it keeps up just fine. I've got my Dimension Pro multisamples on the same external drive, but they load into RAM, not streaming. Again, my bottlenecks are always related to not enough CPU grunt. I shoulda got a more powerful machine I guess...
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mwall
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 14:05:38
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Thanks to both of you. I'll just have to give'er a try. I guess I can always go the external route if necessary, I would just prefer to not have the extra apparatus to lug around.
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mwall
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 14:08:14
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Thanks for the tips j boy. I was about to go for a smaller capacity Travelstar in the same price range myself, but some reviews said it was quite noisy, and I didn't want that. Is that the case with yours?
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j boy
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 14:24:47
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ORIGINAL: mwall
Thanks for the tips j boy. I was about to go for a smaller capacity Travelstar in the same price range myself, but some reviews said it was quite noisy, and I didn't want that. Is that the case with yours?
Not at all... mine's extremely quiet. That's one of the advantages of using a laptop, versus a desktop, I think. No mic spillage issues...
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ohhey
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 14:37:32
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ORIGINAL: mwall
I know I should have asked this BEFORE I purchased, but I just bought a 100 GB 5400 rpm drive for my laptop to replace a 10 GB 4200 rpm drive. (Waiting for it to arrive.) The 4200 drive ran Sonar, even when using it with video, albeit it did drag somewhat. My question is, will the 5400 suffice for SONAR use, even though Cakewalk recommends 7200 rpm drives, or did I just waste 80 bucks? BTW, this particular 5400 drive has 16 MB of cache, if that makes any difference. Thanks.
It should be much better then the 4200, so it's worth a try. However, I would have gone for the 7200 just to have the extra speed. I upgraded a IBM Thinkpad A31 from 4200 to 7200 once and boot time was cut in half ! The hard drive is one of the main things that slow laptops down. If the 5400 is still too slow you could get an external case for it and use it for backups and go for the 7200 if you can't send the 5400 back.
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jeffb9363
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 17:15:53
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I upgraded the internal drive in my laptop for live use from 4200rpm to 5400rpm and it copes fine with playback of backing tracks (generally about 8-10 audio tracks per song) whilst simultaneously using one or two softsynths (Atmosphere, Hypersonic 2, FM-7) but I can be left waiting around for songs with soft synths in to load (15-20 seconds).
Interestingly when I tried using my external 7200rpm firewire drive for the same purpose it didn't seem to make any difference.
I've not tried doing any recording onto this drive as I use my desktop daw for that.
Studio: X1P on Q9550 @ 3.4Ghz P45 8Gb DDR3. W7 x64. MOTU 1296, 2408 Mk3. TC-Helicon Voiceworks. BCF2000. Stage: Cantabile Performer 2 on E8600 @ 4Ghz P45 8Gb DDR2. W7 x64. 2408 Mk3, TC-Helicon Harmony-M.
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ohhey
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 17:20:30
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ORIGINAL: jeffb9363
...
Interestingly when I tried using my external 7200rpm firewire drive for the same purpose it didn't seem to make any difference.
...
That test would not be vaild because the external connection (USB or Firewire) is not as good as the internal IDE connection. The only way to do a fair test would be to have it attached IDE.
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Opus
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/03 18:10:00
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missword
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/05 17:21:56
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I use 5400 rpm drive in my laptop and I wish I had bought a 7200 rpm drive now, the major reason is decvreasing load time for projects when I'm performing live, otherwise the 5400 rpm is fine. my external firewire 7200 rpm is faster then the internal though, the internal 5400 rpm has a read transer rate around 33 MB/sec while the external is 41 MB/sec.
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jiroe
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/05 17:37:33
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5400 rpm is pretty much unnaceptable, reason being, 7200 rpm HDD isn't that much more expensive when you break it down, I would highly recommend the 10,000 rpm HDD (as many would)
but, 5400 might work fine just max your RAM out
I always say if you got money to spend on PC related things, consider memory over hard drive
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missword
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RE: Laptop HD at 5400 too slow?
2007/01/05 17:43:37
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ORIGINAL: jiroe
I would highly recommend the 10,000 rpm HDD (as many would)
where are you buying 10 000 rpm laptop hard drives? The OP is talking about laptops
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