[geeks] Advice on buying a new Mac

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Nov 13, 2006, at 8:34 PM, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> Mon, 13 Nov 2006 @ 11:50 -0600, Lionel Peterson said:
>
>> IIRC, a Firewire ext. HD can really speed things up, the idea is that
>> you set your mac to boot off the external drive, and you cna use the
>> slower (laptop) HD for backup...
>
> If you get a 7200rpm notebook drive, will it run about as fast as any
> other 7200rpm drive?
>

No, if you mean "will it pull data off the disk as fast".  Reason is 
twofold:

1.  they optimize for ruggedness and low power consumption

2. the physical drive platter is smaller, thus, even though rotating at 
the same speed, the swept area (whatever the technical term is) is less 
than a larger platter.

--Patrick