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7200rpm HDD and 16GB RAM

CheMillan

CheMillan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 5, 2015
107
60
Los Angeles
Hello,

Internal hard drive and RAM arrived today: HGST Travelstar 1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive from Hitachi/Western Digital and 16GB DDR3/DDR3L 1600mhz SODIMM from Crucial. This upgrade is for my 13" MacBook Pro Mid 2012. I will post back after the upgrade is done. Wish me luck.
 
CheMillan said:
Hello,

Internal hard drive and RAM arrived today: HGST Travelstar 1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive from Hitachi/Western Digital and 16GB DDR3/DDR3L 1600mhz SODIMM from Crucial. This upgrade is for my 13" MacBook Pro Mid 2012. I will post back after the upgrade is done. Wish me luck.
Click to expand...

4GB and a 250GB would be a more balanced upgrade. Since you already bought it, I would buy an external enclosure and buy a SSD. This would bring a substantial improvement.

1TB HDD only makes sense if you have a huge audio/image/video library which you NEED carrying together everyday.
 
I also would have gone the SSD route. I just picked up a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo for $180 last weekend and installed it into my sisters mid 2012 MBP. Anything beyond 500GB can go onto an external drive and be left at home.
 
CheMillan said:
Hello,

Internal hard drive and RAM arrived today: HGST Travelstar 1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive from Hitachi/Western Digital and 16GB DDR3/DDR3L 1600mhz SODIMM from Crucial. This upgrade is for my 13" MacBook Pro Mid 2012. I will post back after the upgrade is done. Wish me luck.
Click to expand...
Why on earth did you buy a HDD? It won't make any performance difference until you get an SSD.
 
For the combined price, you would have been better off getting 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Or, keeping the 16GB of RAM, getting a 256 SSD instead of the HDD.
 
I really hate it when things never go according to plan. The hard drive and RAM upgrade install went pretty smooth. I bought an enclosure from Inateck specifically for this upgrade. I put the internal hard drive I removed from the MacBook Pro into the Inateck enclosure and plugged it into the USB 3 port. When I booted the MacBook Pro holding down the Option key I encounter the first problem. There was no Apple logo. What I saw was white text on a black background followed by a classic kernel panic in four different languages that said "You need to restart your computer". I was able to track down the problem. The Inateck enclosure was not mounting the internal drive from the MacBook Pro at all so I couldn't do a SuperDuper clone. I put Plan B into action. A few months ago I bought another enclosure from Sabrent that supports 3.5 inch, 2.5 inch, and SSD internal drives. I put the internal drive I removed from the MacBook Pro into the Sabrent enclosure and connected it to the USB port, restarted holding down the Option key and the MacBook Pro booted from the Sabrent enclosure with no problem. Apparently this crappy Inateck enclosure I bought is probably defective. SuperDuper was able clone the internal drive from the Sabrent enclosure to the newly installed 1TB internal drive. A somewhat happy ending considering it could have ended in a tragic disaster.
 
CheMillan said:
I really hate it when things never go according to plan. The hard drive and RAM upgrade install went pretty smooth. I bought an enclosure from Inateck specifically for this upgrade. I put the internal hard drive I removed from the MacBook Pro into the Inateck enclosure and plugged it into the USB 3 port. When I booted the MacBook Pro holding down the Option key I encounter the first problem. There was no Apple logo. What I saw was white text on a black background followed by a classic kernel panic in four different languages that said "You need to restart your computer". I was able to track down the problem. The Inateck enclosure was not mounting the internal drive from the MacBook Pro at all so I couldn't do a SuperDuper clone. I put Plan B into action. A few months ago I bought another enclosure from Sabrent that supports 3.5 inch, 2.5 inch, and SSD internal drives. I put the internal drive I removed from the MacBook Pro into the Sabrent enclosure and connected it to the USB port, restarted holding down the Option key and the MacBook Pro booted from the Sabrent enclosure with no problem. Apparently this crappy Inateck enclosure I bought is probably defective. SuperDuper was able clone the internal drive from the Sabrent enclosure to the newly installed 1TB internal drive. A somewhat happy ending considering it could have ended in a tragic disaster.
Click to expand...
I am still not sure what the purpose of the exercise is, but thanks for sharing anyway.
 
Several reasons why I bought a traditional spinning hard drive: 1) Capacity - I have a huge audio and video library. 2) I needed on-board capacity for my audio and video editing projects. 3) Budget - the cost of a 1TB or larger SSD is not exactly affordable yet. 4) a spinning HDD may not be the fastest but it gets the job done. 5) Mavericks 10.9.5 - at some point when I decide to install Yosemite I don't want to deal with the frustration of Yosemite kext issue and TRIM with a non-Apple SSD installed
 
I created a DIY 1TB Fusion drive in mine.

256GB crucial SSD + 750GB WD Black in OptiBay.

Capacity + Performance for a more realistic cost, considering the workload.

It's running just fine for about 6 or 7 months so far (knock on wood.)
 
nikhsub1 said:
1TB SSD drives are not that expensive, they can be had for under $400. I will never use a spinning drive ever again. SSD's are so worth it.
Click to expand...

Don't assume everyone has access to USD pricing, in NZ a Crucial 1TB SSD is almost exactly US$600, the HGST 1TB 7.2k drive the OP is talking about is US$150. a huge difference to many peeps...and with the 16GB RAM his apps will (re)load almost instantly in any case. Most difference vs an SSD is he will have a longer startup...hardly the biggest problem.
 
CheMillan said:
Several reasons why I bought a traditional spinning hard drive: 1) Capacity - I have a huge audio and video library. 2) I needed on-board capacity for my audio and video editing projects. 3) Budget - the cost of a 1TB or larger SSD is not exactly affordable yet. 4) a spinning HDD may not be the fastest but it gets the job done. 5) Mavericks 10.9.5 - at some point when I decide to install Yosemite I don't want to deal with the frustration of Yosemite kext issue and TRIM with a non-Apple SSD installed
Click to expand...
Whatever works for you :)
I might recommend an optibay and a small ssd to run your OS from.
 
nikhsub1 said:
1TB SSD drives are not that expensive, they can be had for under $400. I will never use a spinning drive ever again. SSD's are so worth it.
Click to expand...

If you actually need the storage, the HDD can still be a better option. $400 is still almost half the price of a new Mac, and nearly the price of the average price for a laptop.
 
I installed a HGST Travelstar 2.5 1TB 7200rpm internal hard drive that I bought from Amazon on my MacBook Pro Mid 2012. I ran the Apple Hardware Test and it detected an error "4HDD//11/40000000: SATA (0,0)" I ran the AHT several times and the results were the same. I'm going to put back the hard drive that came with the MacBook Pro and run the AHT to rule out any SATA cable issues. If no error is detected then I will know for sure the HGST hard drive is defective and will return it to Amazon for a refund. I will post back with the results.
 
Wow, thanks for letting know about that false error but I already removed the HGST 1TB hard drive and put back the internal drive that came with the MacBook Pro. I turned on the MacBook Pro and ran the Apple Hardware Test again. When the test was finished it said: No Errors Found. So it was a false positive error like you said. It's too late. I already shipped the HGST hard drive back to Amazon for a refund. I wish I had known.
 
CheMillan said:
The Apple Hardware Test I did was not looped. It was a single pass test.
Click to expand...

Hmmm but you mentioned running it several times, without knowing more details of what triggers the false positive its impossible to say.

Certainly though I'd recommend just installing a drive and running it, only run tests if you suspect a problem is occurring, especially with non-standard hardware. Apple don't design or test their AHT with non-standard disks so you can get problems like this where the drive might well have been fine. Certainly HGSTs have one of the better reputations for quality and reliability.
 
Maybe the HGST hard drive error was a sign. I'm going to pull the trigger and spend money I don't have on a 1TB Samsung 850 Evo SSD that others have told me to get instead. I would hate to order another spinning HDD and deal with another hard drive error or failure. This SSD is going to set me back $400 but I suppose in the long run its the right decision. I sure hope so.
 
CheMillan said:
Maybe the HGST hard drive error was a sign. I'm going to pull the trigger and spend money I don't have on a 1TB Samsung 850 Evo SSD that others have told me to get instead. I would hate to order another spinning HDD and deal with another hard drive error or failure. This SSD is going to set me back $400 but I suppose in the long run its the right decision. I sure hope so.
Click to expand...

You could just go with something cheaper (but equally as good) like the Crucial MX100 (but the max capacity offered is only 512GB though).
 
CheMillan said:
Maybe the HGST hard drive error was a sign. I'm going to pull the trigger and spend money I don't have on a 1TB Samsung 850 Evo SSD that others have told me to get instead. I would hate to order another spinning HDD and deal with another hard drive error or failure. This SSD is going to set me back $400 but I suppose in the long run its the right decision. I sure hope so.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be spending money you don't have on a SSD. A 500GB 850 Evo will set you back $180, maybe less if you find a good deal.

Do you actually need 1TB? That is a lot of storage space...
 
I do audio and video editing and I work with very large files. Having a 1TB capacity SSD on-board I don't have to constantly worry about having enough space for my editing projects while on the road. I also have Xcode, VMWare Fusion virtual machines, audio and video files stored on-board for current projects for easy access. As you can see a 500GB SSD is not enough space for my needs.
 
CheMillan said:
I do audio and video editing and I work with very large files. Having a 1TB capacity SSD on-board I don't have to constantly worry about having enough space for my editing projects while on the road. I also have Xcode, VMWare Fusion virtual machines, audio and video files stored on-board for current projects for easy access. As you can see a 500GB SSD is not enough space for my needs.
Click to expand...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...gclid=CPmz0rCot8UCFU6Ufgod_yAAyg&gclsrc=aw.ds

$300 m500 960GB SSD. You're welcome.

It's the older m500, but works just the same.
 
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