anyone actually bought and used a pro with the rpm upgrade? looking for some actual hands-on feedback re heat, noise, battery life, speed etc...
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7200rpm drive
- Thread starter britabroad
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The 7200rpm drive is whisper-quiet, very fast, and I still get 4-5 hours battery life. It also generates less heat than the 5400rpm drive.
I have the February 2008 release MBP with the 7200 rpm. Have no complaints and my battery time is excellent... of course I came from a 3 year old G4 PowerBook so this thing is like comparing a jet to a biplane.
If you're going for the 2.53GHz MBP then choose the 250gb 7200rpm drive. Then use your savings to buy a Seagate Momentus 7200rpm 320gb drive. Its very highly rated for both its speed and its battery performance (see Tom's Hardware). Then get yourself a cheap 2.5" sata case from somewhere. I got one for £5 in the UK from eBay. For the cost of upgrading to a 320gb 7200rpm drive on the 2.53GHz MBP, you can end up with a 320gb 7200rpm highly rated drive in your MBP and a 250gb fast external drive. In fact, I saved a couple of quid this way too.
what drive
I've currently got a MBP with the 5400 RPM 250GB drive.
Looking at buying a new 7200 RPM drive but wanted to know what I need to buy.
I know its a 7200, 320GB SATA 2.5" drive and found quite a few online.
But what about access speeds and cache levels? What does Apple use for there OEM drives?
Will a replacement drive back more noise ?
I've currently got a MBP with the 5400 RPM 250GB drive.
Looking at buying a new 7200 RPM drive but wanted to know what I need to buy.
I know its a 7200, 320GB SATA 2.5" drive and found quite a few online.
But what about access speeds and cache levels? What does Apple use for there OEM drives?
Will a replacement drive back more noise ?
I bought a stock MPB 2.4 and did the upgrade myself to save money and also because I wanted a Seagate. The drive is wisper quite, fast, and my fan never goes on so it must run pretty cool too.
Get the Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS I mentioned above. I swear by Seagate drives and this one has been favorably reviewed as I've linked above. Newegg lists it at $109.99 delivered although you can probably find it cheaper if you know the US stores better than I do. I'd say that the cheapest 2.5" sata enclosures can be had on eBay. Mine cost me the equivalent to about $10 delivered. Its not particularly robust or anything but it'll do the job.
Edit: In the review linked above, this drive was compared against Western Digital's Scorpio Black, Hitachi's Travelstar 7K320 and Samsung's Spinpoint MP2. I don't know what manufacture Apple's using for their 7200rpm drives right now but in this article, the Seagate came top:
Tom's Hardware said:
Apple uses Hitachi for some of their 7200rpm drives. I have the 200GB 7200 in my MBP and bought an identical drive from OWC for my music library, using Firewire 800. Screamin' fast! Specs are here. 16MB cache. They have other capacities, as well.
While the latest generation 7200rpm drives are excellent, that's a blanket statement that just isn't necessarily true. The Hitachi 320GB 5400rpm drive in my new MBP is slightly quieter and less vibration than the Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm drive in my previous 17" MBP.
I wasn't making a blanket statement. I was referring to MY drive. If I were referring to all drives, I would have said "The 7200 drives are ...." The OP asked for hands-on feedback. No one has hands-on feedback on all drives!
i put a 320gb 7200 drive in my MBP to replace the 160gb 5400 drive that came with it. besides the size increase which is a breath of fresh air, i have noticed that applications definitely start faster and large documents load faster. so if there is an option for 7200rpm on the new MBPs, i'd definitely recommend it. especially since opening up and changing your hard drive on those models voids your warranty (i think).
No, unlike the previous MacBook Pros, it does not void your warranty to put in a different hard drive. Its a user serviceable part, just like the RAM slots. Its all easily accessible when you take the battery out. I'd never suggest to anyone buying one of the previous MacBook Pro to get the cheapest hard drive and self upgrade, in those its a fairly mammoth task and completely voids your warranty.
so still no-one with any hands-on experience with the actual 7200rpm drive that comes as an option with the new mbp?
From what I can gather, no one's received any CTO MacBook Pros yet, only ones bought in store, none of which have a 7200rpm drive as standard. Give it a few days and there should be some reports floating around.
I got the MBP stock with the 320 - 5400
I plan to upgrade to a 500GB as soon as a 7,200 comes out
I plan to upgrade to a 500GB as soon as a 7,200 comes out
For those wanting to know, I finally rang Apple on this and spoke to a tech guy who'd taken the 5200 out of his own new MBP (it died!) and replaced it with the Apple-issued 7400. He said it's noticeably faster on boot-up, application loading, and saving, that it's no louder but a small amount hotter (he said he noticed the fans just kick in a little quicker.) Decided to go for it and ordered on-line, but found out later that however small the customization, it'll take delivery time from 3-5 days to 7-10 days. Just fyi...
I decided to call Apple about this, and got put through to a tech that had replaced the 5200 drive in his new MBP (it died!) with a 7400. He said with boot-up, saving and application loading it was notably faster. On noise he noticed no difference, he hadn't tested battery consumption and with heat he said it ran a little hotter, which forced his fans to cut in a little quicker. Overall, he thoroughly recommended the upgrade, so I went for it and ordered it on line. One caveat: despite what it says on the site (and what customer service told me) it takes 7-10 for a custom order to be shipped over the 3-5 for the stock item.
I notice mine most from the vibrations when I'm typing. Also, it's hot. I'm not sure I like it. Anyone else?
Could it just be that mine is faulty perhaps?