Hard Drive Question

I have heard that OS X is very hard drive intensive as far as speed loading things, especially at start up. I have noticed this with my Powerbook G4 that seems a bit slower than it used to now that I only have 10 of the 80 GB's left on the harddrive. I was thinking about getting a 120 GB internal HD for my powerbook to solve this problem. But will this mean that it will get even slower in the future if I start to fill that up? Is it worth it to get a HD from the powerbook? Will my computer seem faster if I have more space on my HD?

if you would see any speed increases from space on a HD, i'd guess they'd be negligable. fragmented space, or extremely low space (under a gig or so free), will effect performance once you start using swap file space (is that what they call it on macs too?).

not too sure about startup, but i'd guess cached items would effect this more. you can always try a bit of cache maintenence. i use onyx, it's very very nice.

I cleared out much of the HD. it runs faster now. what's the deal?

well, it seems you may have answered you own question, perhaps free space does matter. not sure how. though it may have to do with what you cleaned out versus how much...