My current everyday machine is an Apple Macbook Pro Unibody 2.4Ghz/4Gb RAM/500Gb 5400RPM Hard Disk unit. It gets used for normal office apps (word/excel etc.) as well as my technical work which generally involves a lot of virtualisation of server operating systems & workstations.

That kind of use does tend to stress most hardware.

Now, I’ve been noticing that my machine has been running a bit sluggish. I’ve already archived/installed (also did a fresh install) and I know that the performance I was getting was pretty normal for this specification of machine. What was really getting to me though was the machine would randomly hang for 10-15 seconds.  I’ve not been as happy with the performance of my MBP Unibody 2.4Ghz as I was with my late 2007 Macbook 2.2Ghz/4Gb - the performance on the old Macbook seemed to be more ‘consistent’ for want of a better word.

So, I spotted that now I was able to get hold of the 7200RPM version of the hard disk I had from Overclockers (see here)... so combine that availability with the fact that my Mac Mini is struggling for space I thought I’d try the new 7200RPM unit and see what effect it had on performance.

Firstly, the unit’s current drive was a Seagate ST9500325AS - the full specification of which you can see here. I replaced the unit with a Seagate ST9500420ASG - the full specifications you can see here.

There’s technical performance charts all over the internet on both these drive units so I thought I’d offer a more subjective, and less technical, overview by actually showing them working.

500Gb 5400RPM Boot Up Times

So, firstly, let’s look at the boot up time of my MBP. Note that the video quality isn’t great but then again it doesn’t really need to be. I’ve timed from the screen-light on to the mounting of some secure drives images I have. My laptop does a fair bit at turn on so it’s probably a little bit longer than your ‘normal’ laptop - however it’s a good comparison as you shall see.

So - boot up on the 500Gb 5400RPM unit:

2 minutes 35 seconds from screen-on to the mounting of my secure images. Seems like a long time doesn’t it? I must admit I’ve never really noticed it before, but that’s a fair while. It doesn’t compare well to my Mac Mini for example.

500Gb 7200RPM Boot Up Times

Ok, let’s have a look at the boot up time for the 7200RPM version of this drive.

57 seconds! Now that is far, far more like it.

Summary on Boot-up Times

2 minutes 35 seconds on the old Seagate 5400RPM unit, and 57 seconds on the new 7200RPM unit. That’ll do me.

I’m almost wondering if there’s something wrong the 5400RPM unit? I’ve tested it thoroughly though and I don’t appear to be getting any issues. I’ve also looked into the sudden-motion-sensor (SMS) configuration - see below - and found nothing. It works, and copy times are reasonable, but the boot up and operational times are not great in my opinion.

What about application performance? Let’s look at start times for common applications right after boot - I.e. they’re not in the cache.

Application Start-up 5400RPM Unit

Here we go - see this.

Application Start-up 7200RPM Unit

Here we go - see this.

Application Start-up Summary

Well the above videos show that the 7200 unit is so much ‘snappier’ than the 5400.....

XBench Comparison

The figures in XBench don’t seem to stack up when compared to the ‘subjective’ timing of the above.

Consider these comparisons - first the 5400RPM unit, second the 7200RPM.

The write performance of the 7200RPM unit appears to really let down the overall benchmarking of the drive? Still, I’m not going to rely too much on these benchmarks as I just don’t believe them. Large file copies (such as some 40-50Gb VMWare images) are showing some 30% improvement on the 7200RPM unit? Go figure.

Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS)

The 500Gb 7200RPM unit has the ‘G’ designator which denotes the inclusion of Seagate’s ‘G-Force’ protection technology - I.e. parking the heads away from the platters when sudden motion is detected.

There have been reports of this conflicting with Apple’s own Sudden-Motion-Sensor technology. I’ve carried out the above tests with the SMS turned on and off to make sure this has had no effect - and it hasn’t. Currently, with the G model I’m running, I have SMS turned off.

You can see how to control the Apple SMS here.

General Summary

Well in general I’m very happy with the performance of the 7200 Momentus. It is so much faster than the old 5400RPM unit I had in there. The machine is far snappier, quicker to boot, and just generally nicer to use. Not bad for 100GBP.

I can’t help wondering if the Seagate 5400 RPM just doesn’t suit the MBP? I can’t think there’s actually anything wrong with it. I plan on putting it into my Mac Mini so I’ll report back on the performance of it in there if I find anything odd.

You live and learn. It’s nice to have a snappy & fast MBP back!