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    External HDD

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by wangcow, Sep 3, 2007.

  1. wangcow

    wangcow Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello,

    I read somewhere that the larger your hdd is, the faster your mac will boot and perform. Will this be the case if I get a large externall hdd? (I have a spare 160 gb one). And if this is the case, how do i configure it that way?

    Thanks!
     
    wangcow, Sep 3, 2007
    #1
  2. stealthsniper96

    stealthsniper96 What Was I Thinkin'?

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    that depends. are you going to boot off the external drive or just plug it in?
     
    stealthsniper96, Sep 3, 2007
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  3. graf1k

    graf1k Notebook Geek

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    Even if you boot off of it, that doesn't sound right that it would boot faster off a bigger HDD. Maybe a bigger cache, but how would more GB make it boot faster? I know seek times are generally slower on bigger hard drives so I'd think if anything it would make the boot slower.
     
    graf1k, Sep 3, 2007
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  4. wangcow

    wangcow Notebook Enthusiast

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    I dont know. its hard to explain :p. Something to the effect that the mac uses a good portion of your free space as virtual ram or something to that effect. And stealthsniper I'm just plugging it in.
     
    wangcow, Sep 3, 2007
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  5. hollownail

    hollownail Individual 11

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    I think part of what you are talking about is that a larger HDD will let you have more free space on the drive. Hard drives slow down quickly once they start filling up on space, so if you have the same data on two drives, and one is much larger, it can actually run (and seek) faster.

    the platter sizes also effect speed. I'm not completely sure how much perpendicular recording effects speed. But for example, the 100 gig 7200 rpm drive is about the same speed as the 160 gig 5400 rpm drive, mostly due to platter size.

    But in no way will an external HDD boot faster than an internal.
     
    hollownail, Sep 3, 2007
    #5
  6. SaferSephiroth

    SaferSephiroth The calamity from within

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    What if an external hdd was connected with e-SATA?
     
    SaferSephiroth, Sep 3, 2007
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  7. hollownail

    hollownail Individual 11

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    Not sure about e-SATA. But I'm guessing since you'd have to use the expansion slot to get an e-SATA port, that your speeds would still be lower (though probably still faster than fw/usb) than an internal drive.
     
    hollownail, Sep 5, 2007
    #7