Yeah, that would be scary. I've heard that sound before and know how it feels. It's even worse when the drive clicks and runs slowly... now THAT is scary if you haven't backed it all up before then!
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Upgraded to a 320GB 7200RPM Hitachi Travelstar! Whoo hoo!
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Yeah, that would be scary. I've heard that sound before and know how it feels. It's even worse when the drive clicks and runs slowly... now THAT is scary if you haven't backed it all up before then!
that barefeats test is from early july. they didn't test it against a SINGLE other 7200rpm notebook drive... everything else there is 5400rpm. of course it will be the fastest.
so i say again:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-hard-drive,2006-17.html
it's from less than two weeks ago, and they tested the hitachi, seagate, western digital, AND samsung 7200rpm 320gb offerings. the hitachi didn't win a single performance test, and only won the power-at-idle test in terms of power consumption. other than that, it was quite slow and hungry compared to seagate and western digital.
"While the Travelstar 7K320 is the slowest of the four high-performance notebook drives when it comes to read and write throughput, it is still clearly faster than 5,400 RPM drives[...] Still, performance isn’t the reason to purchase this drive."
i'm in the same boat as you. i own the hitachi drive. i bought it the day it was available, based on the same barefeats test, coupled with a lot of hype. then, when i got it, all i got was palmrest vibration and no performance increase over my 160gb 7200rpm seagate. only the samsung placed worse according to tom's hardware, who are the ONLY ones who have compared more than one 7200rpm 320gb notebook disk together (in this case, 4 at once).
so i'm buying the seagate now, and when the hitachi comes back from repair/replacement, i will put that into a usb enclosure to use as a hot/vibrating portable disk.
and i just want to mention that while the hitachi didn't win a single performance test, the seagate set new transfer records at tom's hardware, which does A LOT more tests than barefeats. all that while still "providing the best combination of low power consumption and high performance", measured in performance per watt of power drawn.
They have tested the Seagate and Hitachi 7200's head to head in the past and the Hitachi won.
Anyway, the only drive I would not buy is the WD. I've had bad luck with them in terms of reliability. I've never bought a Samsung and I've had pretty good success with Seagate.
Honestly, I can tell the difference between a 5K and 7K but I don't think I'd notice a difference within either class.
the seagate 7200rpm 320gb drive just came out a few weeks ago. the hitachi has been around since about july, and that barefeats test you linked earlier was the first time they tested it. when has barefeats done the head to head?
tom's hardware is the only one i've found that did it, and it was august 28th. the seagate won every test, including power consumption...
As I said, the Hitachi has performed well against Seagate in the past. The 200GB Hitachi is better (according to Barefeats anyway!).
http://barefeats.com/hard96.html
As I said, the Hitachi has performed well against Seagate in the past. The 200GB Hitachi is better (according to Barefeats anyway!).
http://barefeats.com/hard96.html
from that exact link:
"...the Seagate 7K 200G was fastest in the small random transfers -- which implies it would make a better boot drive of the two. "
so when comparing drives one generation behind the ones we both have today, the hitachi was faster than the seagate in 50% of the tests. 2 out of 4. the other 4 tests are over FW800, which are pretty much irrelevant.
and according to those tests, the hitachi won the large sustained read and write tests, while the seagate won the small random read/write tests. which one sounds more like daily usage?
and no mention of power consumption.
and adding to all that, those aren't even the drives we're talking about! the fact is, in the only head to head comparison of the hitachi and seagate 320gb 7200rpm drives, the seagate won EVERY test. handily. and it set new transfer rate records for notebook disks. and it used less power.
and i have owned the hitachi since july, and for me at least, it vibrated my palmrest and corrupted some data, which led to corrupted RAM, which led to kernel panics.
but you can go ahead and keep posting barefeats tests from almost a full year ago, when trying to convince yourself that maybe the hitachi wasn't the best choice.
failing that... i hope it works out for you. it certainly didn't for me.
I need some advice from those of you who have upgraded drives in their MBPs.
I have a 17" MBP with the stock Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 160Gig drive. The interface speed is 1.5 Gigabit/sec.
I know Hitachi makes the Travelstar 7K320 in both 1.5Gb/s 3Gb/s, but I can't find a 1.5Gb anywhere. Is the 3Gb/s drive backward compatible with the 1.5Gb interface?
Thanks for your advice...
Lew
I have a 17" MBP with the stock Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 160Gig drive. The interface speed is 1.5 Gigabit/sec.
I know Hitachi makes the Travelstar 7K320 in both 1.5Gb/s 3Gb/s, but I can't find a 1.5Gb anywhere. Is the 3Gb/s drive backward compatible with the 1.5Gb interface?
Thanks for your advice...
Lew
For anyone wondering...I just updated my MBP SR from the 160GB 5400RPM drive to the 320GB 7200RPM Western Digital Scorpio Black. All went very well and loving it.
I have the 200GB 7,200-rpm Hitachi in mine. Since I mostly edit with this laptop, I'm using external FW800 and eSATA (with an ExpressCard adapter, of course) hard drives a lot anyway. I'm just not sure if an extra 120GB will actually be worth the hassle of dissecting my MBP that's still under AppleCare.
So here's a question for you all. I have a friend who works for Apple (there goes all my credibility on this forum) and we were talking about replacing my drive with the Samsung Spinpoint or one of the other new 500 GB hard drives. He explained to me that the 500 gb at least from the Samsung would actually run at something like 4800 rpms because the MBP is not powerful enough to run it at 5200 rpm. Is this true or is he just confused?
that is not true. the number is 5400 anyway, not 5200, and it's not as if the drives constantly runs at 5400 rpm 100% of the time. it spins up/down based on your reading/writing patters... this is impacted by what programs you run, the amount of RAM you have, etc. no way to generalize that.
the difference between 5400 and 7200 is, obviously, the maximum speed the drive can read/write at.
if the MBP cannot power a 5400 rpm drive, how can it power a 7200 rpm drive?
forget what your friend said, but still, don't get a 500gb drive. the only one that will fit in a standard notebook enclosure (9.5mm) is the samsung, and that samsung 500gb 5400rpm 2.5" drive has 20-30% more power usage and 20-30% slower seek times than the new generation of 320gb 7200rpm drives. so go with a seagate, western digital, hitachi 320gb 7200rpm.
if you need the 500gb, wait until some other companies release them, or until samsung releases an updated version. but pay no attention to what your friend said... he doesn't really know what he's talking about.
I needed the space so I went with the Samsung 500GB HD.
Seems to work okay. Sure it's not as fast as a 7200RPM drive. In my case, having the extra HD space was more important for my needs.
Well that was my typo on the 5200 instead of 5400. There are three out now that will fit my 17" MBP. I really don't care about 7200 rpm. I do video editing yes, but not on my MBP. The MBP is just my main computer or what I consider my house computer, so I see no reason to have the 7200 rpm. The only thing that is concerning is the 20-30% more power usage, but I am more concerned what the difference is between the 160 in my MBP now.
Yes I agree this is vary irritating I just upgraded to a 250 GB 5400 RPM drive from my 200 GB 7200 RPM drive and what a pain. I needed more space so I sacrificed the RPM's.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/500gb-notebook-hdd,1960-13.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-hard-drive,2006-17.html
the third 500gb notebook disk is a fujitsu, and that a 4200rpm drive, not to mention also being 12.5mm.
it is available only from a handful of retailers (no OWC/macsales, no newegg?) and offers medicore performance and power usage far too high for a 4200rpm drive.
i don't understand why people don't jump on these 7200rpm disks... they are setting transfer rate records while keeping power consumption as low as a typical 5400rpm disk. the magnetic hard disk is the bottleneck of a modern notebook's typical usage patterns! yet people on here insist that they don't "need" a fast disk. i don't need a 2.4ghz cpu, but i would take it over a 1.8, all other factors being equal... which they are, in this case. the 7200rpm disks are cheaper, faster, less power hungry based on performance/watt, and are selling in much larger numbers than the 500gb disks, so therefore probably safer to invest in, from a consumer's perspective.
if you really need the half terabyte storage in your notebook, wait for a better generation of 500gb drive. nothing offered right now makes any sense, considering the lackluster performance, the lackluster efficiency, and the unattractive prices.
but who am i? you will all obviously do exactly what you want to do.
FYI,
It is $139 with free shipping on newegg.com right now. I just ordered it so I will be replacing the HD for my MBP this weekend.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228
It is $139 with free shipping on newegg.com right now. I just ordered it so I will be replacing the HD for my MBP this weekend.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228
I took the plunge as well
I upgraded my SR 2.2 MBP to the Seagate 320GB 7200. It took only an hour or two, including backing up my data. I highly recommend SuperDuper and WinClone. Hard to believe that software this good can be free! (I've since registered the full version of SuperDuper). I had zero problems backing up and restoring my data. Everything's fine except my 3ds Max license broke (but that's nothing new!)
I definitely notice a speed difference with the new drive, and temperatures are about the same!
I upgraded my SR 2.2 MBP to the Seagate 320GB 7200. It took only an hour or two, including backing up my data. I highly recommend SuperDuper and WinClone. Hard to believe that software this good can be free! (I've since registered the full version of SuperDuper). I had zero problems backing up and restoring my data. Everything's fine except my 3ds Max license broke (but that's nothing new!)
I definitely notice a speed difference with the new drive, and temperatures are about the same!
FYI,
It is $139 with free shipping on newegg.com right now. I just ordered it so I will be replacing the HD for my MBP this weekend.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228
That's great. Thanks for this. I am seriously considering this one, but I do have the 500 gb one for $179, so I am considering that one as well. The deal may very well be gone now, but two days ago it was at that price. Who knows. Waiting on Student Loans to come before I purchase anything.
