Difference Between 375GB Foundation and 1TB Berryboot Editions

Hi,

What are the differences between the 375GB Foundation Edition vs the 1TB Berryboot Edition other than the storage and physical sizes?

Are there any differences in terms of performance, software etc?

Thanks,
Mike

Hi Mike, these products have different hardware and software.

Hardware: the 375GB (and 250GB and 314GB) is a 1-disk, 2-head platform in 7mm high form-factor. The 1TB is 2-disk, 4-head in 9.5mm high form-factor. The 375 has lower demand on the power system. The data throughput performance are similar between the two (both exceed the capability of the Pi’s USB2 I/O). The 375 has some additional features to reduce power demand that may increase the spin-up time (power-on to ready) and seek time. These are probably not noticeable in system use, however.

Software: both Foundation Edition (375) and Berryboot (1TB) are multi-boot OS loaders. After installation, when the system is booted a menu is presented that allows the user to select which OS/application to launch. At a high-level they are similar in purpose, but their architectures are very different.

Foundation Edition is based on the R-Pi Foundation’s NOOBS software. NOOBS enables download of several OS/apps from the R-Pi site (e.g. Raspbian, OSMC, LibrELEC, etc.) and installs them into separate partitions. NOOBS is designed for new users, providing simple installation of ready-to-run applications. Foundation Edition uses the NOOBS multi-boot system, but is designed for creating multiple software projects (via command-line programming). It enables installation of multiple instances of the core OS (Raspbian Lite), so users can create and run multiple projects from the system instead of managing this on a stack of SD cards. Foundation Edition installs the OSes on the PiDrive versus NOOBS that only supports SD card.

Berryboot also has an online repository with OS/apps for download and installation. There’s a wider selection of OSes for Berryboot versus NOOBS. One key difference is that Berryboot uses versions of the OSes that have been converted so they can be installed on a common kernel and the files are compressed for download using a different compression method than NOOBS and Foundation-Edition. Due to the use of converted OSes, updating of the OSes is done by Berryboot’s developer at his discretion. Berryboot is designed to provide easy installation of a wide range of popular OS/applications.

Foundation Edition software and Berryboot both work on all PiDrives, so you can try them both whether you have a 375GB or 1TB. The software can be downloaded at the link below.

Hopefully this gives you some idea of the differences. Please ask any questions. Thanks!

1 Like

@dwcsjca WDStaff

  1. For the 375GB and the 1TB drives, what (unofficial) approximate peak currents in mAmps has WDLabs measured for each drive? (The drives’ product photos show the official rated peak current for both as 0.55A = 550mAmps, but presumably & hopefully the unofficial peaks measured by WDLabs are less.)

  2. For the 1TB drive, is it correct to conclude the peak current occurred during spin up? If not, during which actiity did the peak occur?

  3. For the 375GB drive, during which activity did the peak current occur?

Thank you.

It should also be pointed out that in addition to the downloadable BerryBoot images available via the WD-provided BerryBoot microSD card that many additional images customized for use with BerryBoot are available from Downloads Berryboot Images - BerryServer. For complete installation instructions, see http://berryboot.alexgoldcheidt.com/how-to-install-os-images/. With the additional images available from Alex’s site, BerryBoot provides a very easy way to install and use a wide variety of Linux distros.

Hi L_P,

The 0.55A on the product label is a typical value, not absolute peak. I don’t have the specific data you’ve requested, but the peak current is typically during data read operations and is in the range of ~750-850mA.

Given the nature of the R-Pi application where set-ups, components, software and use cases are very wide-spread, our approach with PiDrive has been to simply drive down the peak current demand of the drive as much as possible (via recording format and controller firmware and servo firmware changes) and to maximize the current supply to the Pi system (e.g. 3A power supply; low-resistance USB power cable, etc.). Our product development focus has been on system-level testing versus drive/component-level testing and parameters.

Hope this helps provide general background. If you have an application that requires more specifics, let me know.

Thanks.

Hi dwcsjca,

Thank you for your response. I just want to check that when you said,

that you are referring to PiDrive HDDs specifically, and NOT 2.5" 5400 RPM <=1TB HDDs in general?

Thanks again.

Hi, sorry for the delay. My statement above was based on PiDrive 314GB data. The 375GB and 250GB use the same 1-platter drive platform as the 314GB. The 1TB is a two-platter platform with greater spindle and actuator inertia. The 1TB was also our first PiDrive and does not have some of the power reduction features of the 314, 250 and 375.

Hi dwcsjca,

Thank you for your response.

For the 1-platter platforms compared to the 1TB: What are the respective approximate current requirements during spin-up?

Thanks again.

Hi dwcsjca,

Hoping you’re able to answer my above question from the 11th.

And, if available, what are the approximate spin-up times?

(If helpful to save you time: for both questions I care most about the 1-platter platforms.)

Thank you.

Hi, sorry for the delay. I don’t have the data and am tracking down what we have and requesting additional testing. Not sure if you’re at liberty to share your application, but knowing application requirements might help us ensure that the data we collect is relevant to your specific needs. I can also send you samples of the drives so you can test them in your application, make measurements and share drive vs. drive data with the forum.

Thanks.

Hi, sorry for the delay. Below is the characterization data for 5V current draw (mA) comparing PiDrive 1TB (2-platter) to PiDrive 250GB/375GB (1-platter). Max operational current demand occurs during seq-write. This data is at 128B block size, which is a standard workload in our Performance Benchmark testing. Note that these standardized tests are primarily designed for client Win PC applications. How these parameters translate to behavior in R-Pi is unknown.

Regarding peak values, I don’t know what the sample rate is in these tests and how this translates to response of the R-Pi USB current limiter circuitry.

Hope this helps!

Thanks.