I think I've found my problem, possibly?

[Imola Ghost]

Here are the previous threads about this issues was having.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/721345/

And another....

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/706182/



I finally after all of this I decided to put back in my factory hard drive and my laptop has been very good and reliable since then. It's only been several days with light use but overall I can tell that it just runs smoother and without any beach balls.

Now I want to know, why would this hard drive make my laptop act the way it was? The hard drive seems compatible does work but does so with lots of spinning beach balls and hang ups with very frequent restarts by holding the power button down. The odd thing is, is that I originally bought the hard drive and then had problems, took it back and bought another one and it seems to be the same with that same but new hard drive in. Why?

I'm really need and want this bigger hard drive to be located locally and not external but I'm afraid to spend more money on another hard drive. Is there a hard drive that is known to work with this Macbook of the 500gb size? I find it hard to believe I got 2 bad hard drives from the same manufacturer but what do I know.

 

[iLog.Genius]

Western Digital 500GB works perfect as does the Seagate 7200.4 but with more of a vibration.

When you swapped out to a new HDD, how did you install? Did you restore with an image or did a clean install?

 

[Imola Ghost]

I've done installs both clean and from an image. When I noticed I was having consistent problems [beach balls & freezing] at first I was doing a clean install and then using Time Machine to restore it back. After numerous reinstall attempts I then switched over to just doing a clean install and then manually inputting the programs, files and what not.

After several days with the stock configuration, the laptop is running very good and may have worked out for to my advantage. I'm actually returning this laptop back for one of the newer 13.3" Macbooks and I'm within my return time frame but I'd be happy with either laptop.

I've heard that those 7200 rpm hard drives use up the battery more than the 5400 ones, so I'd be reluctant to buy one and compromise the battery life.