On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 3:36 PM, John Carmonne <carmo...@aol.com> wrote: > > If I use an external 3.5 7200 RPM via Firewire 400 will I gain speed over the > internal HDD 4200 RPM in my Mac Mini? >
That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. When you connect via Firewire 400 you will never be able to move data faster than Firewire 400's 400Mbps bus speed. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. In other words, if you're going to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive throughput. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 4:28 PM, John Carmonne <carmo...@aol.com> wrote: > > Newegg has a large selection of them including large accompanying prices. > http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008120%20600038505&IsNodeId=1&name=PATA > Anyone care to do the math on what percentage of the current market price of a PPC Mac Mini those PATA SDDs might be? ;-) It is NOT how fast any particular component of a system may be which determines the performance of a system. It's the sum of all the components ... the system itself ... and how they are used ... the applications and OS. In my opinion buying an SSD for a PPC Mini is just throwing money away. If you can afford to throw money at an SSD you'd probably get more bang for your buck by upgrading to a later, Intel version of the Mac Mini. But to each their own ... -irrational john -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list