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The best 250 GB Macbook Hard Drive?

G

grpaul349

macrumors member
Original poster
I'm looking into a new Hard Drive for my macbook. I see that Western Digital, Samsung and Hitachi all offer 250 GB options. Does anyone have a favorite? They are all around the same price.

I have several Western Digital External HD's and have been happy with them. I am leaning toward the WD - but I wanted some other opinions first.

Many thanks.
 
I was just about to ask the same thing 🙂

I live in the EU so if anybody can recommend good webshops in the UK for example, that would make my day.

PS. To the OP: Hope you don't mind me bugging in 😱
 
They all seem to be good drive makers.. So I would say go with the WD and you will be fine.

Let me know how it goes, cuz I'm thinking about a drive upgrade too.. 😎
 
I went with the WD. There is a link around here with the test results with the 5400rpm drive and it is very speedy, quite, and low temp.

Going to put mine in this weekend.
 
I got the WD 250GB. Quiet, fast enough for me. All three seem to be great. I think Hitachis and Samsungs are often used for OEMs, including sometimes the Mac laptops.
 
The Samsung is considerably slower than the WD Scorpio drive. I haven't read anything about the Hitachi, but I think your safest bet is the Scorpio.
 
The Western Digital MyBook drives look awesome next to a mac. My friend's got a white one hooked up to his iMac and it looks very mac-like. I'm planning on getting one to use as my Time Machine backup when Leopard's out 😀
 
I'm currently wrestling with a 250Gb Samsung. It was seriously cheap so worth a try! Giving me grief installing OS X at the moment - suspect it's faulty. 🙁

The benchmarks I've seen rate it nearly as quick as the Hitachi, and quicker than the WD.

I'd steer clear of the WD - I've seen too many of the 60 and 80Gb Scorpio's fail. They've only been in the 2.5" drive market for a couple of years and they are pushing hard on price and capacity, but the reliability is far short of Hitachi and Seagate.
 
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yea i wouldnt recommend samsung, too badly made.

western digital are average.
seagate thumbs up!!!
hitachi are just the best, i would def go for them if your after consistency
 
I bought the WD specifically for a Macbook. It is a little quieter than the Hitachi, which seems to be highly rated. I have heard stories of WD drives failing, but, to be fair, they all do. Hard drives are a bit of a lottery these days. The Hitachi is a little dearer than the WD and is probably overall the safest bet. When capacities top 300GB, I will buy a Hitachi for my MBP.

As for webshops, check kelkoo.co.uk and Froogle.co.uk for the best deals.

Otherwise, www.dabs.com and www.ebuyer.com are mainstays. Dabs are quick to ship in my experience. I bought from them, although I could have saved a couple of pounds going to one of the virtual online shops.
 
Samsung problem is solved - requires a firmware update.

Tested fine in a friends laptop. I've got good google skills, but he found something I missed! Downloaded an ISO to flash the firmware and all is now well. It's quiet and fast and I've got 3 times the space 😀.

How Samsung can make a range topping drive that won't work properly out of the box with a recent Intel SATA chipset baffles me!
 
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MagicBoy said:
I'm currently wrestling with a 250Gb Samsung. It was seriously cheap so worth a try! Giving me grief installing OS X at the moment - suspect it's faulty. 🙁

The benchmarks I've seen rate it nearly as quick as the Hitachi, and quicker than the WD.

I'd steer clear of the WD - I've seen too many of the 60 and 80Gb Scorpio's fail. They've only been in the 2.5" drive market for a couple of years and they are pushing hard on price and capacity, but the reliability is far short of Hitachi and Seagate.
Click to expand...

I've never seen a benchmark where the Samsung came anywhere near the Western Digital in performance. I haven't seen any benchmarks for the Hitachi, so I can't comment on that one. The new Seagate Momentus 5400.4 250GB drive comes out sometime this year.

As for price, you can usually grab the WD cheaper -- you can also pick up the external 250GB drive and get a case to use on your old drive. Some people say it's a 2MB cache inside, others say it's the 8MB. I have one but haven't gotten around to sticking it in the computer to test the cache.
 
I do want to swap my drive to, but, does it void my Applecare?
I have a 100GB HD, I will like to get a 250 5.4k or maybe a 200 7.2k, I dont want to loose my warranty, If I bring the computer to an apple certified tech, can I keep the waranty?
 
I have the Samsung HM250JI in my new MBP since some weeks and it works flawless. It's fast as hell. There are several benchmark tests in German-language magazines saying that it is almost as fast as a 7200 rpm. Certainly one of the fastest existing notebook HDDs with 250 GB.

My AJA KONA System Test (256 MB):
Write: 55.4 MB/s
Read: 54.3 MB/s

The Samsung stays a little bit cooler than the original built-in Fujitsu. You'll notice that at the left palm rest. Maybe a little bit (barely recognizeable) louder spinning sound.

It is very important for Macintosh computers & Samsung HM250JI that you have firmware version HS100-08 or later for the disk. Look under System Profiler - Serial-ATA. If your disk has HS100-06 there will be huge problems (not data loss but other problems) according to a German-language forum and the professional computer magazine "c't".

If you need to update firmware please ask again. There is a special method (burning firmware update CD) for Macs.

Highly recommended!
 
dollystereo said:
I do want to swap my drive to, but, does it void my Applecare? I have a 100GB HD, I will like to get a 250 5.4k or maybe a 200 7.2k, I dont want to loose my warranty, If I bring the computer to an apple certified tech, can I keep the waranty?
Click to expand...

If you swap the drive it voids your warranty. If you get a certified technician to do it, it will run you about $90 and take a week.

You can do it in 30 minutes and put the old drive back in should you need to send your computer in for repair. 😀
 
majordude said:
If you swap the drive it voids your warranty. If you get a certified technician to do it, it will run you about $90 and take a week.

You can do it in 30 minutes and put the old drive back in should you need to send your computer in for repair. 😀
Click to expand...

I didn't think that was true of the MacBook as it requires no dissasembly?

I have the WD 250GB hdd inside my MacBook and I bought it from Dabs.com (the UK version) for £100 - click here
 
majordude said:
If you swap the drive it voids your warranty. If you get a certified technician to do it, it will run you about $90 and take a week.

You can do it in 30 minutes and put the old drive back in should you need to send your computer in for repair. 😀
Click to expand...


The drive in the macbook is considered user replaceable and changing it does not void the warranty.

Apple even provides the instructions on their site:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf
 
whateverandever said:
I've never seen a benchmark where the Samsung came anywhere near the Western Digital in performance. I haven't seen any benchmarks for the Hitachi, so I can't comment on that one. The new Seagate Momentus 5400.4 250GB drive comes out sometime this year.

As for price, you can usually grab the WD cheaper -- you can also pick up the external 250GB drive and get a case to use on your old drive. Some people say it's a 2MB cache inside, others say it's the 8MB. I have one but haven't gotten around to sticking it in the computer to test the cache.
Click to expand...

From Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/02/speed_or_capacity/page3.html) :

Samsung's HM250JI is the second 2.5" drive model with a standard height of 9.5 mm to reach a total capacity of 250 GB. Although Western Digital beat Samsung to market with the Scorpio WD2500BEVS, Samsung's new top model beats the WD drive in each and every test discipline: 3.1 W vs. 3.4 W maximum power draw; 0.9 W vs. 1.0 W idle power requirement; 17.3 ms vs. 17.8 ms average access time; 10% faster data transfer rates; and slightly better application benchmark results in PCMark 05. All of these figures make very clear that Samsung has created an excellent hard drive, and this becomes even more impressive as you compare its performance with 7,200 RPM drives, which it can compete with in several benchmarks.
Click to expand...
 
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Have you guys (and gals) seen this one?
FUJITSU MHX2300BT 300GB SATA 4200 RPM 8MB Mobile Hard Drive
(At Zipzoomfly, but out of stock)
Says it is 12.5mm higher than the average 2.5" drive. Would that not fit the MBP?

I too have opted for the Scorpio drive. I hope it arrives next week.

Is there a way to image my old 160 onto the new 250 ? Kinda like a "Ghost" process? If so, that would be a time saver. I can then transfer my old 160 to my wife's Macbook (I hope).
 
Mr.Gadget said:
Is there a way to image my old 160 onto the new 250 ? Kinda like a "Ghost" process? If so, that would be a time saver. I can then transfer my old 160 to my wife's Macbook (I hope).
Click to expand...
Yes there is. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to create an exact image of your current drive. Works like a charm.

When my new drive arrives, I have a external casing that I put the new hard drive into, then connect via Firewire. I create an exact image of my current MBP hard drive to the external drive.

Then, unplug and take the MBP apart. Take the current drive out, and put in the new drive that I just created the hard drive image on. You get the same exact drive, with a lot more room

To transfer the information over to the external takes about 2.5 hours.
 
Veritas&Equitas said:
Yes there is. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to create an exact image of your current drive.
------------
To transfer the information over to the external takes about 2.5 hours.
Click to expand...

Woot! Thanks! 2.5 hours hurts a bit, but does beat a full reinstall!
Will the Carbon Copy Cloner even copy my Bootcamp partition?
 
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