Replacement Hard Drive Compatibility

I need to replace the HD on a MBP 4,1 (Early 2008/Penryn) as SMART recently started throwing errors.

I just ordered a 640GB Samsung Spinpoint M7E after having read about all of the issues on the WD Scorpio Blue 640GBs with MBPs.

Then someone in the Apple Support Forums mentioned in this thread that the same issue exists for the Samsung as well (and supposedly the Seagate).

Has anyone tried the Samsung 640 on their MBP? If so, did you have the power management, load cycling and other issues?

Fry's is running a sale on the Hitachi 500GB for about $55 bucks right now. I'm thinking maybe that I should just cancel the Newegg order and grab the Hitachi.

Meh. Never mind. I guess I'll find out the hard way if it works or not.

Still going to pick up that Hitachi, though. $55 bucks for a half gig 2.5" is a pretty good deal.

Never though I'd say this but I've missed Fry's while I was away from the South.

Samsung Spinpoint M7E 640GB not for MBPs

I'm glad I bought that Hitachi while it was on crazy ass sale.

While I didn't get the hellacious lag some others were reporting, I did get 150-200 load cycles per hour through SMART reporting, which would have exceeded the rated lifespan in half a year.

Swapped out to the Hitachi, works great.

Glad I caught this before a premature HD death. The extra 140GB would have been nice tho.

Anyway, for 640GB and many 500GB drives WD, Seagate, and Samsung have excessive load cycling due to APM issues under OS X. Probably a lot of people chugging along, completely unaware of the issue.