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Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Notebook Hardware
Upgrade Hard drive question
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<blockquote data-quote="bobtomay" data-source="post: 489415" data-attributes="member: 24160"><p>Whether it would be worth it for you to upgrade to a faster drive is really a personal matter. Would say that if you are frequently writing large files (> 2GB) it may be advantageous for you to upgrade the internal drive. </p><p></p><p>As far as speed goes, which will ultimately be the fastest really depends on how much free space you maintain on the drives. Ex. If you are using 175GB of space - the slower 250GB drive will actually be faster with its 75GB of free space than the 200GB 7200 drive with its 25GB of free space.</p><p></p><p>However, at $200 that money would probably be much better spent for an external 500GB FW400 drive. A 500GB drive attached as an external will meet or beat the speed of one of those smaller drives installed as an internal drive on your MacBook as the fastest part of an internal drive is already taken up by the OS and your apps.</p><p></p><p>The best way to decide is to start researching and reading reviews and speed tests of the drives in question. This really is the only way to know if replacing your internal is right for you or not. <a href="http://www.barefeats.com/rosa05.html" target="_blank">Here's</a> a place where you can start. (Just as an FYI, learned long ago, not to use more than 50% of the space on the drive that holds my OS. I know this was true with drives up to the 120GB size, but may be moot with today's large drives. However, write times definitely will become slower the more data you have on them.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="bobtomay, post: 489415, member: 24160"] Whether it would be worth it for you to upgrade to a faster drive is really a personal matter. Would say that if you are frequently writing large files (> 2GB) it may be advantageous for you to upgrade the internal drive. As far as speed goes, which will ultimately be the fastest really depends on how much free space you maintain on the drives. Ex. If you are using 175GB of space - the slower 250GB drive will actually be faster with its 75GB of free space than the 200GB 7200 drive with its 25GB of free space. However, at $200 that money would probably be much better spent for an external 500GB FW400 drive. A 500GB drive attached as an external will meet or beat the speed of one of those smaller drives installed as an internal drive on your MacBook as the fastest part of an internal drive is already taken up by the OS and your apps. The best way to decide is to start researching and reading reviews and speed tests of the drives in question. This really is the only way to know if replacing your internal is right for you or not. [URL="http://www.barefeats.com/rosa05.html"]Here's[/URL] a place where you can start. (Just as an FYI, learned long ago, not to use more than 50% of the space on the drive that holds my OS. I know this was true with drives up to the 120GB size, but may be moot with today's large drives. However, write times definitely will become slower the more data you have on them.) [/QUOTE]
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Upgrade Hard drive question
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