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Performance increase in replacing a mini's Hard Drive
By Jamie Dresser

We received our first mini to test and one of the most asked questions has been - will a different hard drive increase performance? You bet it will!

Compare the mini to an iBook and you're thinking along the right lines for performance. Long battery life and low cost is the name of the game with the iBook line and this is why Apple chose to use a 4200RPM drive in the mini - low cost. But most of us will run out of room in a 40GB drive in no time, so an upgrade is in order. We chose to test the largest and fastest 2.5" drives available, and they make quite the difference.

Note: Installing these did not noticeably increase either noise or heat.

Drives tested:

• Stock 40GB 4200RPM Seagate Momentus 42
• 60GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hitachi Travelstar
• 80GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache Hitachi Travelstar
• 80GB 5400RPM 16MB Cache Toshiba
• 100GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache Seagate Momentus 5400.2

The test below is using Xbench - disk test ONLY. It's a great overall performance gauge.

Raw Scores - Higher is Better

Drive Tested:	Xbench Score
60GB 7200RPM Hitachi	85.85
100GB 5400RPM Seagate	79.76
80GB 5400RPM Hitachi	77.73
80GB 5400RPM Toshiba	77.01
Apple/Seagate 4200RPM 40GB	59.69