MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo hard drive options

On Nov 7, 2006, at 7:52 AM, David Shayer wrote:

> I'm also conflicted. I want 200 GB, but 4200 RPM sounds slow.
> However, I don't have any real data on how slow. I remember when
> 3600 was considered high speed.
>
> I agree with whoever said the biggest speed improvement is maxing
> out your RAM to 3 GB.

While RAM is a big help, I would never go back to a 4200 RPM drive.
Despite the lackluster gains in the PPC CPU lines, the hard drives
were actually making even less performance gains in the same period.
Capacity was increasing, but transfer rates were not.

It's too bad Apple removed the 7200 RPM option from the MBP, that's
what I ordered with the rev1. It's a noticeable difference in pep.
With Spotlight and the metadata indexing, and soon to be time machine
processing, there is more and more processing and disk access with
every write to your disk. Disk speed is one of the last remaining
limiting factors in the MBP.

Steve

FYI, something I finally found the answer to recently was the 3GB
limit on the memory. In the current Intel chipset being used, seems
that the PCI bus addresses overlap where the last 720MB of memory
would be. So if you put 4GB in, you'd only end up with 3.2 usable. I
can understand why Apple didn't offer users the chance to buy a 2GB
chip, only to be able to use 1.3 GB of it.

At 4:52 AM -0800 2006/11/07, Paul Durrant wrote:
>At 01:06 -0800 1/11/06, Google Kreme wrote:
>>Not in computers, where kilo- is ONLY 1024 and NEVER 1000. Ever.
>>And mega- is not 1,000,000 but 1,048,576. And kilo- and mega- have
>>always been clearly delineated in computers to mean these specific
>>powers of 2. It was only with the advent of marketing-speak on the
>>part of the HD manufacturers that there was ever a confusion
>>created. A kilometer is 1,000 meters. A kilobyte is 1024 bytes.
>
>With K there's an easy distinction - in SI units, the prefix is k
>(lower case), as K (upper case) is the symbol for the unit of
>temperature. So computer jargon could get away with using K
>(uppercase) as a prefix meaning 1024 without too much confusion.
>Unfortunately, Mega, Giga and Tera and M, G and T in SI
>abbreviations. So confusion is widespread.
>
>E.g., does Firewire 400 run at 400,000,000 bps or 4,194,304Mbps?
>
>And it's not just HD manufacturers, and it's not recent - the 1.44MB
>floppy disk is neither 1,440,000 bytes, nor 1.44*1,048,576 bytes,
>it's 1,440*1024 bytes.

        Note that file sizes are *usually* base 2 (on UNIX, they were
historically based on disk blocks, which are normally 512 bytes, so
1024 is an easy calculation, but 1000 would have normally required
rounding/truncation), and 'wire' speeds (including wireless, I
presume) are normally (rounded) base 10.

        LAN networking is base 10; current stuff is all conceptually
descended from 10BASE-T Ethernet, at 10,000 bits/sec (10,000 Hertz).

        On the other hand, telecom speeds are based around multiples
of some slightly funky 'base' units. A 56kbps serial port actually
runs at 57,600 bits/sec, and I suspect that's the actual max download
speed of a '56k' modem. Note that max upload speed of a '56k' modem
is substantially lower -- not in the 56kbit neighborhood. This goes
back to 300bits/sec serial ports, and all serial port speeds are
multiples of 300bps (yes, I know there were lower serial speeds
before 300baud).

        IIRC, T1s are actually 1,544 bits/sec or something like that.
The telecom rates are similarly multiples of some telecom standard
units.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.reppep.com/weblog/pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

At 5:14 AM -0800 11/7/06, Jack Hodges wrote:
>I wonder how much space is set aside of a hard drive for the FAT, file allocation tables. I assume it takes alot for big hard drives.

You can calculate this.

Divide the disk size by the cluster size to get the total number of clusters. (Values are in the boot sector)

There are 128 entries per sector in the FAT table, so divide by 128 to get the number of sectors used for the FAT.

Multiply by 2, because most disks have 2 FATs (you can check in the boot sector).

And now you know how much room the FATs take. QED. :-)

Of course Macs use HFS+, not FAT. HFS+ is a *lot* more complex than FAT. It's described here.

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html
--

David


"Mission Accomplished" - May 1, 2003

On 7/11/06 22:53, "Chris Pepper" <pepperreppep.com> wrote:

> LAN networking is base 10; current stuff is all conceptually
> descended from 10BASE-T Ethernet, at 10,000 bits/sec (10,000 Hertz).

You meant 10,000,000 Hz; but actually 10BaseT's signal is clocked at 20 MHz,
and the basic Manchester encoding used makes effective bit rate only half of
that at 10 Mb/s. That's why descending to the physical layer is perilous,
but marketing departments don't care (see my previous post about Fibre
Channel). :)
And don't assume then that Fast Ethernet's signal is at 200 MHz: it's 125
MHz, for 100 Mb/s effective... The physical layer is different.

> IIRC, T1s are actually 1,544 bits/sec or something like that.

Right, a T1 is formed of 24 DS0 channels (64 kb/s each, enough for one
analog telephone communication) plus 8 kb/s of overhead, for a total of
1.544 Mb/s.

> The telecom rates are similarly multiples of some telecom standard
> units.

Like DS3, OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, etc. for North America, and E1, E3, STM-1,
STM-4, STM-16, etc., for Europe.

-- Thomas Perrier

David Shayer wrote:
> At 2:33 PM -0800 10/31/06, Chris Pepper wrote:
>> At 7:52 PM -0800 2006/10/30, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>
> At 12:19 PM -0800 11/1/06, Jeffrey McPheeters wrote:
>> I think any given drive reads data faster on the first half than
>> the last half, at any given RPM.
>
> It's true that the outer tracks are "faster" that the inner tracks,
> both because the platter spins faster under the head, so sectors read
> in faster, and because there are more sectors per track, so you end
> up seeking less. But you can't control where on the disk any given
> file is stored, so there's no practical way to take advantage of
> this.
And most "modern" drives put more data on the longer outside tracks than
on the inner tracks.
>
>> I'm not sure about writing, but it seems that with video capture,
>> which I do regularly, there is a noticeable difference in reading
>> to or writing from a drive that is less than half full compared to
>> the same drive if it is 70-80% full. I generally don't use the last
>> 10% of any drive. I allow backup drives to approach 90% capacity. I
>> keep open project and system disks at 60% capacity or less,
>> generally.
>
> This is a key observation. As your disk gets full, it gets more
> fragmented. So accessing any given file gets slower, simply because
> the head has to go all over the place.

Even when this isn't so very large files incur extra seeks to get to
specific places in a file. At least with HFS+ and other similar
implementations.

> For the same amount of data, the 200 GB 4200 RPM drive may be
> competitive with the 160 GB 5400 RM drive simply because it would be
> so much less fragmented. And this applies even more to the VM backing
> store file.

All of this gets very complicated when you look at variable data per
track, 1 head vs 4, etc... A two platter 4 head drive "should" be faster
in some ways than a newer 1 plater 2 head drive as it's much faster to
switch to from one head to another instead of seeking to another track.
But if the newer drive is denser it might appear faster for simple use.
But the CPU in most disk drives is much more capable than a MacII or
later computer and has much more ram and does lots of things in terms of
bad sector remapping, look ahead caching, cache size optimization, etc...

But end the end for a single user machine doing moderately disk
intensive things, rotational speed is the most user noticeable thing.

YMWV

When you receive the new MBP, I would be interested to have some real life data regarding the performance of the hard disks, especially the 4200 rpm 200GB disk. Best would be a direct comparison with the other disks, but short of that, I'd like some timing numbers, such as boot time, Finder copy time for a large file (try a CD image file for example) and for a large directory with many smaller files, opening time for a large text file in TextEdit or large image in Preview, or some such...

Thanks,

JD

Can one get meaningfull numbers on hard disk performance and data transfer speeds from the downoadable utilities like Disk Speed Bench and MBBench?

How does the purported ease of swapping out the HD on a MacBook Pro influence your disk selection decision? I could imagine ordering the lower capacity, faster drive option now, with the expectation that in a few months, for around $100, I will be able to pick up a new drive that is both faster and bigger than any of Apple's current offerings for the MacBook Pro.

Being able to install the new drive myself, if it is as easy as Steve Jobs implied, cuts the cost of upgrading the hard drive to less than half of what the upgrading services charged for putting a bigger drive in a PowerBook or iBook.

derek wrote:
> Can one get meaningfull numbers on hard disk performance and data
> transfer speeds from the downoadable utilities like Disk Speed Bench
> and MBBench?
Yes, but with a HUGE but.

It's like coming up with an automobile review charge and applying it to
everything made by Ford. From farm tractors to sedans to big rigs.

My mother in law thinks of her computer and the Internet as one and the
same. Disk drive speed to her cold drop by half or double in EVERY
metric and she'd likely not notice.

Someone with 10,000 iTunes or iPhoto images will have a very different
experience than someone who works in Word or Excel.

As someone who's done configuration management for both in house setups
and software to be sold for over 20 years, the more you move from
looking at a single very specific application to a broad category of
user, the harder it is to quantify the result of a "better" drive.

Given all of the above there are some broad assumptions most folks can make.

Faster spinning will feel snappier.
(Things load faster.)

More platters will feel snappier.
(You seek less.)

Faster spinning will draw more power.
(Higher performance motor needed.)

Fewer platters will draw more power.
(More seeking will be required.)

More platters will draw more power.
(Bigger motor power to spin things.)

Notice how my last two point contradict each other. It depends on usage.
  I.E. how often will you cause a seek?

But even the above comments break down when comparing drives that are
from different generations, manufacturers, or design lines.



YMWV (Will being the operative word.)

At 11:22 AM -0800 11/9/06, derek wrote:
>How does the purported ease of swapping out the HD on a MacBook Pro
>influence your disk selection decision? I could imagine ordering the
>lower capacity, faster drive option now, with the expectation that
>in a few months, for around $100, I will be able to pick up a new
>drive that is both faster and bigger than any of Apple's current
>offerings for the MacBook Pro.

Extremely easy in a MacBook, where it is a simple user upgradable
part. You can get the drive out without an screw driver. You just
need one to remove the screws that hold the shielding to the drive
(which might only exist so there is something to which the tab you
pull on to remove the drive can be attached).

Not as easy in a MacBook Pro. 19 screws and two ribbon cables to be
careful with.

I don't think that Jobs said anything about drive upgrades in an MBP, did he?

--

=Alex Hoffman
Leadership Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

On Nov 10, 2006, at 3:12 PM, Alexander Hoffman wrote:

> Extremely easy in a MacBook, where it is a simple user upgradable
> part. You can get the drive out without an screw driver. You just
> need one to remove the screws [...]

...which, err, is considerably easier with a screw driver :-)

That said, yes, it's a 5 minute task, and of the same complexity as
installing RAM. If you can replace RAM modules, you can replace the
Macbook's hard drive.

Well, okay, putting data on the drive will take longer than 5
minutes. If I'm going to split hairs about the screwdriver, I suppose
someone else will split hairs about my time estimate :-)


--
Chris Devers

--On November 10, 2006 8:31:49 AM -0500 Alexander Hoffman
<ahoffmanAleDev.com> wrote:

>> How does the purported ease of swapping out the HD on a MacBook Pro
>> influence your disk selection decision? I could imagine ordering the
>> lower capacity, faster drive option now, with the expectation that
>> in a few months, for around $100, I will be able to pick up a new
>> drive that is both faster and bigger than any of Apple's current
>> offerings for the MacBook Pro.

My (unreliable) memory is that Steve touted the drive-swapping ease during
last January's MacWorld Keynote, when the MacBook Pro was announced. The
MacBook (Amateur) didn't appear until a few months later, and I don't
remember watching any media event for that, if there was one.

It's ironic that swapping the hard drive in the MBA is so much easier than
in the MBP, since professionals are much more likely to upgrade their
drives.

Derek

At 5:17 AM -0800 11/7/06, Joshua Root wrote:
>I can't remember who first suggested this, but it seems like a good idea
>to me: refer to the power-of-two units of data as "binary" and the
>power-of-ten units as "metric" (or maybe "SI" or "ISO").

        It is always good to be specific about what units are being use -
however one should not specify "186 GB (binary)", rather one should use the
IEC standard term: "186 GiB". Since GiB has no other history of usage,
there should never be any ambiguity when using it. Adding "metric/SI/ISO"
to any usage of GB is probably a good idea.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte>

--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

>--On November 10, 2006 8:31:49 AM -0500 Alexander Hoffman
><ahoffmanAleDev.com> wrote:
>
>It's ironic that swapping the hard drive in the MBA is so much easier than
>in the MBP, since professionals are much more likely to upgrade their
>drives.

And perhaps more adept at making the more difficult installations.

Richard

On Nov 13, 2006, at 8:48 PM, Chris Devers wrote:

> That said, yes, it's a 5 minute task, and of the same complexity as
> installing RAM. If you can replace RAM modules, you can replace the
> Macbook's hard drive.

I replaced the drive in my new MacBook right away with a 7200 RPM
100GB model (Seagate). It was easy, but it requires one more tool
than a simple screwdriver: that is a TORX driver. The screws that
hold the drive to it's carrier are TORX #8 or 9, (sorry can't
remember exactly). Other than that, it was an uneventful experience.

Regards,

Howard

On Nov 13, 2006, at 8:48 PM, Derek Roff wrote:

> It's ironic that swapping the hard drive in the MBA is so much
> easier than
> in the MBP, since professionals are much more likely to upgrade their
> drives.

After watching an instructional video of installing a hard drive in
my MacBook Pro, I ended up shipping mine to TechRestore to have a
160GB drive installed rather than installing one myself. I've done
plenty of hard drive upgrades on desktop Macs and RAM upgrades on
both desktop & laptops, but a MBP hard drive upgrade requires
removing over 20 screws and getting into some very tight spots.

--On 10/30/06 11:39 PM -0800 Google Kreme wrote:

> The reason that a 200GB drive does not format to 200GB has nothing to
> do with 'formatting' it has to do with Hard Drive manufacturers lying
> about capacities.
[...]
> However, Hard Drive vendors sell a drive that hold 200,000,000,000
> bytes as a "200GB" drive. Simple math will show you that a drive
> that hold 200,000,000,000 bytes is, in fact, 186.25GB. And when you
> format a "200GB" drive you get a drive that holds, amazingly enough,
> 186.25GB<2>. You didn't lose 14GB, it was never there.

I know this particular dead horse has been beaten pretty thoroughly over
the past week, but I wanted to add an observation based on the 160GB drive
I bought yesterday...

The fine print on the box says:

"1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending
upon operating environment (typically 5-10% less)."

Now since the actual capacity IS 160 times 10^9 bytes, and since formatting
does NOT really use 5-10% of the space, I think this disclaimer is
basically an admission that the quoted capacity is an exaggeration (or lie)
rather than an argument that the base-10 GB is somehow a more correct unit
than the base-2 GB.

Another thing to note is that as the sizes get bigger, the difference
between base-10 and base-2 grows.

KB: binary = 1.024 * decimal
MB: binary ≈ 1.049 * decimal
GB: binary ≈ 1.073 * decimal
TB: binary ≈ 1.100 * decimal

and so the larger our units the more significant the difference.

Dave Scocca

>On Nov 10, 2006, at 3:12 PM, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>
>>Extremely easy in a MacBook, where it is a simple user upgradable
>>part. You can get the drive out without an screw driver. You just
>>need one to remove the screws [...]
>
>...which, err, is considerably easier with a screw driver :-)

Give me another piece of shielding with the tape on it, and I can
swap macbook drives without a screwdriver. That is what I was trying
to say.

And so, I maintain that I don't need a screwdriver to remove a macbook drive.
--

=Alex Hoffman
Leadership Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

On Nov 14, 2006, at 3:37 PM, Howard Kaufman wrote:

> I replaced the drive in my new MacBook right away with a 7200 RPM
> 100GB model (Seagate). It was easy, but it requires one more tool
> than a simple screwdriver: that is a TORX driver. The screws that
> hold the drive to it's carrier are TORX #8 or 9, (sorry can't
> remember exactly). Other than that, it was an uneventful experience.

Just about every Mac laptop I can remember has used Torx screws in at
least some capacity, and I've owned just about everything from the
500 series on. I believe it's Other World Computing even sells a
little screwdriver with the three types of heads required for mac
laptop work.

Steve

On Nov 14, 2006, at 12:46 PM, Dave Scocca wrote:

> Now since the actual capacity IS 160 times 10^9 bytes, and since
> formatting
> does NOT really use 5-10% of the space, I think this disclaimer is
> basically an admission that the quoted capacity is an exaggeration
> (or lie)
> rather than an argument that the base-10 GB is somehow a more
> correct unit
> than the base-2 GB.

File system creation for NO common* file system costs 5 to 10 %?
Those Unix/Linux file systems which copy the inode tables
periodically across the file system space (for backup) are pretty
greedy now that the inode tables are pretty big.

Plus, some fraction is set aside at formatting time for substitute
sectors. Not sure what fraction these days. One might hope that
those sectors are not counted in the label capacity, but don't bet on
that.

As density increases, so does the amount of substituting going on.
(At least one person I trust asks for the SMALLEST drive he can get
of a given type when he needs a new drive, to try to cut down on the
almost constant error repairs being done by the ECC on modern drives--
which only lead to sparing out in extreme cases.)

   --John

*Actually, even one very uncommon file system would justify the
claim, sort of.

Someone has VERY politely pointed out that I am wrong on the no
screwdriver comment on the MB drive removal.

I had forgetting about the the l-shaped metal thing with the three screws.

So let me be clear here.

1) I was wrong.

2) You DO need a philips head screwdriver even to remove a MB hard
drive. (In addition the the tiny torx screwdriver to change the
drive.)

3) I was really wrong. 100%, even.

(It's amazing that I forgot that, given how many time I removed that,
as it also must be removed to access the RAM, and I did many many RAM
and HD swaps as I was tring to figure out the random crashes and
powerdowns of my pretty black MB over the summer. Perhaps I've
blacked it out to save my sanity? Or perhaps I was just wrong?
Hmmmm...)

--
=Alex Hoffman
Leadership Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University