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640GB in MBP 15"

Relznuk

Relznuk

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 27, 2009
391
0
UT, USA
Hi. I have been shopping for a 640GB hard drive to put in my mid-09 unibody MBP. The cheapest thing I can think of doing I'd buying this WD My Passport Essentials external drive and harvesting it's HDD. However, my research indicates that while some of these have removable hard dives, others have the USB card for the enclosure integrated into the HDD.

Does anyone know if this one has a removable hard drive? Has anyone succesfully used this drive to upgrade their Macbook Pro?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...-NESN&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218118267562
 
None of the WD drives have the USB/Firewire/eSata integrated. All of them are regular hard drives with a SATA to whatever controller that simply plugs into the bottom.
 
harmonica01 said:
no, but if WD6400BEVT is what you are looking for, macsales, newegg and amazon selling them
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have also heard that some of these drives that WD puts into the portable enclosures have only 2mb of cache? Can anyone confirm/deny that for this model?
 
I've just put one of these drives into my 15" MPB this weekend. (WD 640gb, WD6400BEVT). The operation seem to go without a hitch. My first impression was that it was noticably slower and less snappy than the original Samsung 5.4k 250gb drive i took out, which is disappointing. Noisier too. I have also since noticed that quite a lot of the data, ( media files in particular), seem to be corrupted. (Boots & runs fine otherwise).

I cloned it using disk utility (whilst booting from the install DVD) over Firewire 800. After i noticed the corruption problem, i erased and performed the whole clone again, including verification, but there still seems to be substantial file corruption.

So right now I'm on the verge of putting the old drive back in. I don't know whether it's a problem with the drive, but if it's not that I can't really see what it could be. Odd that it verified ok in disk utility too.

Anyway, the upshot is, if i can't figure out what's causing this, I'll be sending this drive back and probably getting a different make. (Samsung most likely.)

Any pointers most appreciated.
 
cosmonaut23 said:
Any pointers most appreciated.
Click to expand...

I can't give any tech advice but from personal experience I have NEVER had a HD with any problems that got BETTER. If you can exchange it I would for sure. Seems once something goes wrong with them it is an ugly down slope to death. I know I am a sample of one but that's my experience with several HDs.
 
cosmonaut23 said:
I've just put one of these drives into my 15" MPB this weekend. (WD 640gb, WD6400BEVT). The operation seem to go without a hitch. My first impression was that it was noticably slower and less snappy than the original Samsung 5.4k 250gb drive i took out, which is disappointing. Noisier too. I have also since noticed that quite a lot of the data, ( media files in particular), seem to be corrupted. (Boots & runs fine otherwise).

I cloned it using disk utility (whilst booting from the install DVD) over Firewire 800. After i noticed the corruption problem, i erased and performed the whole clone again, including verification, but there still seems to be substantial file corruption.

So right now I'm on the verge of putting the old drive back in. I don't know whether it's a problem with the drive, but if it's not that I can't really see what it could be. Odd that it verified ok in disk utility too.

Anyway, the upshot is, if i can't figure out what's causing this, I'll be sending this drive back and probably getting a different make. (Samsung most likely.)

Any pointers most appreciated.
Click to expand...

I ended up returning the one I bought, for much the same reasons. I'd say it's the drive. My main partition kept becoming corrupted, and the performance of this drive is VERY poor.

Return the drive, get a nice 500GB Seagate 7200
 
Thanks guys. Actually i had my eyes on the rather tidy looking new Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 500gb one. If you believe the hype they're both fast and good on power consumption. Plus in my experience they tend to be a reliable make...
 
cosmonaut23 said:
Thanks guys. Actually i had my eyes on the rather tidy looking new Hitachi Travelstar 7k500 500gb one. If you believe the hype they're both fast and good on power consumption. Plus in my experience they tend to be a reliable make...
Click to expand...

Yup. That'd be a great choice for a drive. Good luck with it.
 
cosmonaut23 said:
Only problem being no one seems to be selling them yet. (In the UK anyway). And that's 2 months after launch. Quite strange.
Click to expand...

That's odd. Well, Seagate's model is very comparable in performance and durability. You might consider giving that a try.
 
CrackedButter said:
It's a hassle to check on my iPhone but if you check overclockers.co.uk and dabs.com I'm sure I have seen them there.
Click to expand...

Cheers for that CrackedButter. Checked those out but no joy:( Not for the 500gb version of the Travelstar 7k500 anyway. Deskstars yes, but i have a feeling they might be a bit of a tight squeeze!
 
CrackedButter said:
What about the Seagate drive, they have them I just bought one?
Click to expand...

Having had to return over half our recently purchased Seagate server drives for work in the last few months, i'm starting to doubt their commitment to reliability. Shame, as they used to be superb. I've heard it's because they've moved production recently.

Personally i would always go with reliability over modest performance considerations. Hitachi seem to have the edge on both at the moment.
 
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