Laptop Hard Drives - Bigger is Better

Todays laptops are rapidly becoming desktop replacements, especially with Intel’s new line of CPU’s which blow away the performance of older, Core2Duo processors, and with 8GB of RAM (2 x 4Gb) costing less than $100. Although most laptop monitors are TN panels and not ideal for image editing, (color and brightness vary with viewing angle), this limitation is easily overcome by using a quality external monitor like an NEC. The only other significant piece of performance related hardware left is the hard drive.

The hard drive you use affects both performance and storage capacity. Faster drives have faster read/write times allowing the computer to boot faster, load applications and image files quicker, and let you scroll through huge files with less lag. In addition your hard drive may also be used for scratch when you run out of RAM. Super fast SSD drives are the future and in a league of their own when it comes to performance but they command a huge price/GB making them out of the range for most people. For example, a 500GB SSD costs nearly $1,000 while 7200 rpm 500GB Hitachi Travelstar costs only about $60 (as of this writing).

If you are a photographer you likely have a growing library of images and if you prefer the flexibility of a laptop without having it tethered to a external drive to access a huge library then there is good news. Laptop drives now sport up to 1TB capacity although these 1TB drives currently have a slow spin rate of only 5200-5400 rpm (WD and Samsung). Those drives are also thicker, 12.5mm, since they use three platters and may not fit in some older laptops (they do fit in all unibody MB and MBP laptops). However, if you want both speed and storage the best option might be the latest 750GB 7200rpm drives like WD Scorpio Black or Seagate Momentus. These are faster than 1TB drives because although the density is about the same, they spin about 30% faster and that means better performance.

I recently replaced the 320gb, 5400 rpm stock drive in my MBP with a big, fast 750GB,Western Digital Scorpio Black for only $109 from Amazon. Scorpio is WD’s name of their laptop drives while ‘Black’ is their faster, 7200rpm drive (WD Blue spins slower at 5400rpm) Note: replacing the hard drive or the RAM in a Mac laptop does not harm your warranty unless you break something in the process. This drive has extremely positive reviews, especially with MBP owners. The Seagate is also a good choice but reviews have it as a bit noisier and it only has a 3 year warranty while the WD is 5 years. In addition to now having significantly more storage there are also very tangible performance differences. For example, boot times for my MBP, went from about 48 seconds down to about 35 seconds - this is with the new drive storing about 500GB. Software loads about 20-50% faster with Photoshop CS5 opening in as little as 7 seconds the first time after booting up. Also, the ability to scroll through a huge number of large files is noticeably faster as is waking from sleep mode. Bottom line, my laptop, a 15” 2010 MacBook Pro, is just snappier all around.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner, Mac only, to clone my slower stock hard drive. Installation of that drive took under 15 minutes - you can google videos for how to swap the drive. If you think that you don’t need that much space, then think again. Ideally you should have more space than you need if you want to keep your computer snappy. As a drive fills up information is stored closer to the center of the platters instead of the outer portion. Data density is constant but the speed at which the out part of the drive passes by the heads is faster than the inner part so having a fast spinning drive that has plenty of empty space is required for optimum performance. If you are looking to boost performance and store more stuff, consider the 750Gb WD Scorpio Black with a 5 year warranty. Mine is dead silent with only the slightest vibration that I feel in my fingertips. Some user report no vibrations at all but I can’t make that claim. Performance is not all about CPU speed. That is just one bottleneck, the others are RAM and your hard drive. Just check to make sure you do not violate your warranty when upgrading.