hard drive speed ?

RobWorc

New Member
I'm looking at picking up an inexpensive laptop to play flac files on through dac to amp.Most inexpensive laptops have 5400 rpm hd,not being much of a computer expert,will this speed be ok,would 7200 rpm be better

thanks
 
I've used both for music servers and never detected a difference. It's not a very demanding application. You'll be fine with either.
 
Should be a non issue. Especially if you are just using it as a music server/player. My old system (5400) used to run 3 squeezebox players at the same time and did not even break a sweat.
 
It does not need fast drive for playing music. If you have a large amount of files - lets say over 1000 lossless CDs then file copy operations slow down. For instance adding CD 1001 to music library or backing up music. Then you see the difference. If you have 100-200 CDs ripped (relatively small library) then no big deal.

In general having better/faster within your budget is good thing. Memory is always the cheapest way to improve performance.
 
Depending on the program used, you could also set buffering to avoid problems should you run into any.
I use JRiver and it allows both buffering and read-from-memory (RAM) only.
 
16-44.1 stereo audio is roughly 1411kb/s, or roughly 0.18MB/s. Even a 5400 RPM HDD and subsystems are capable of hundreds of times faster data transfer.
 
A quick and easy way to understand if your system is struggling for speed is to time copy duration. Copy a large file onto the disk and measure the time it takes to copy it. It gives you real life measurement of the transfer rate of your system (reading it should be a bit faster). Then compare the time it took to copy it against the file's run time.

To have a marginal system, the run time would be a bit longer than the copy time - pretty rare to get this unless you are copying to a magnetooptical RW drive or something.

I just did a similar test on my system. Copied an uncompressed (not flac) 37 minute 32/96 file from one folder to another on the same drive. It took 40 seconds to complete the copy, which means that the transfer rate is about 120x the required to properly play it back without hickups. (twice as much as the 60x you may have estimated as this test had the file be read from the drive and written again on the same drive).
 
thanks, the only problem with that is I have not picked up any laptop yet,but will remember that for the future
 
Laptops use 5400 RPM drives because they take less power and increase battery life.

What would be ideal would be a Solid State Drive or SSD for speed and battery life.

SSD drives are still quite pricey though, for most laptops 5400 RPM drives suffice.
 
Laptops use 5400 RPM drives because they take less power and increase battery life.

What would be ideal would be a Solid State Drive or SSD for speed and battery life.

SSD drives are still quite pricey though, for most laptops 5400 RPM drives suffice.

My new work laptop has a SSD. Wow, it's quick.

Not only in practice, but the Windows Experience rating is maxed out at 7.9 on the SSD. Programs that used to take a few seconds to open now open in the snap of a finger. Of course, it has more HP in the processor too, but the SSD is quick.
 
It seems regardless of the speed of the hard drive or optical reader an hour's worth of music takes an hour to play. RAM has more effect than the hd speed.
 
Think of it like this: any computer that can stream video on Netflix smoothly (every computer made in the last 5 years) will have infinitely more speed than is needed to playback even the highest resolution audio perfectly.
 
That Toshiba laptop will work great. I am using similar laptop with Windows 8 and works great. The Toshiba has two 3.0 USB ports which I recommend to anyone purchasing new. I only wish they came with 4 total USB ports. I use all 3 and would be nice to have open port.
 
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