Quick Tip: Determining hard drive RPM

If you recently purchased a used Mac and want to determine the hard drive's RPM (revolutions per minute), or are concerned that the system you have ordered new has the wrong drive installed, there's an easy way to check.

Click on the Apple menu and select "About this Mac," then click "More Info." Alternatively, launch System Profiler (located in Applications/Utilities). In the "Hardware" section of System Profiler, select your hard drive connection method -- ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI, IDE, etc. A list of connected drives, including the built-in internal hard drive, will appear. Click on the appropriate device name, then look at the "Model:" field. On one of our in-house MacBook Pros, for instance, the model number is "TOSHIBA MK1032GSX"

Just enter the full model name in your favorite search engine as a query, or go to the manufacturer's Web site and search by model number. You should quickly be able to access information about the drive's RPM, seek time, buffer size and more.

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