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Help choosing hard drive upgrade, seagate 7200.4 500gb or western digital blue 500gb

B

BlueLAser

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 30, 2009
21
0
Trying to decide which would be the best for a laptop upgrade. The two that I am looking at are:

seagate 7200.4 500gb 7200rpm st9500420as
western digital scorpio blue 500gb 5400rpm wd5000bevt

I want to know about each ones:

speed
effect on my battery
how hot it gets
does it make noise
does it vibrate

I am interested in getting the best one overall.
Please give specs and numbers.

Thanks
 
That was not what i was looking for those are all external drives and i was asking about internal.
 
Haven't used the Seagate, but I'm very happy with my Scorpio Blue. (See other threads I've made)
 
I was tempted by the Seagate 7200.4 500GB but in the end went for the Seagate 5400.6 5400rpm 500GB. My belief is that Apple themselves, well here in the UK, don't have the option for the 7200rpm harddrive - so there must be a reason, thermal capacity, decrease in battery life, vibration, noise etc. Furthermore, I choose against the WD Scorpio Blue as people here have had mixed results - no problems to requesting replacements. Performance wise, there isn't much difference and personally I've got 2 seagate laptop harddrives working no problem.
 
okay can anyone tell me a little more specific information on these drives that will help me make a choice. thanks
 
BlueLAser said:
okay can anyone tell me a little more specific information on these drives that will help me make a choice. thanks
Click to expand...

To be honest it's user preference regarding drive speed. Obviously a faster drive means quicker boot up times whether that be when turning the Mac on or loading up a game in addition to any other harddrive intensive task. Although in everyday use, playing music, office taks, surfing the web, you won't see any difference.

For me, this isn't my gaming computer as my other notebook can do that. I'm looking for battery longevity, remaining cool on use and quiet.
 
okay but i want an overall good drive. and i dont not want too lose a lot of my battery but i am willing to lose some. i want it to be good in all areas but i want it to be as fast as i can get. so in what areas does the 7200 excel in over the 5400 and the other way around, the last post gave some but not a lot.
 
My WD 500GB Scorpio Blue just arrived today. I'll be placing it inside my MBP later this evening when I get home from work. :D
 
WD5000BEVT is generally faster, uses less power and costs less than Seagate 7200.4. For details check the review on Techreport.com linked to above.
 
Back2Bedlam said:
Not sure if you know about this, but there is an awesome website to help you, if this forum is unable to.
It would have helped if you'd have given your Computer's model too...

Personally I put (about 5 months ago) a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB Drive into my 15.4 MBP Unibody. Works a treat, don't see any significant battery loss.
You could look into putting one of the new WD 750GB or 1TB drives in, they are 12mm thick, but they do fit into the MBP.
Click to expand...

Really!?!? I thought they don't fit in the MBP. Pics please.
 
This has been a fairly regular topic, so I'll just say that I have the WD500g Scorpio Blue in a SR MBP 2.2 15" and it's been a very good drive. It's quiet, no clicking problems. It's much faster than the stock drive that came with the MBP, and I can't really tell any difference noise-wise. It was around $90 from Newegg.com (including an external enclosure) and from several websites that reviewed the drive it got top marks for performance.

You should feel comfortable choosing this drive, ordinarily. Also, I have the external version of Seagate's 500g 5400 rpm drive (FreeAgent) and while it's quite a bit slower (usb version) it is also quiet and so far has worked very well.

If you've got the time, read this entire article (14 pg review of 5 drives) and this article (a 10 pg review of the Scorpio Blue 500g drive.)

Sometimes we can analyze things to death when the basic information is pretty much confirmed.

In the end, for $90 bucks, you can't really go too wrong, so my recommendation is to just buy the WD Scorpio Blue, and enjoy it.
 
zw-gator said:
Let us know how it turns out. I'm thinking about buying the same one.
Click to expand...

It turns out that it actually can match the speed of my WD 320GB Scorpio Black!
I placed the Blue in my MBP and moved my Black to my Mac Mini, and now I can use the Mac Mini! (stock HDD is too slow to do much).
 
geoffreak said:
It turns out that it actually can match the speed of my WD 320GB Scorpio Black!
I placed the Blue in my MBP and moved my Black to my Mac Mini, and now I can use the Mac Mini! (stock HDD is too slow to do much).
Click to expand...

slightly off-topic :) but has anyone got experience with Intel X-25M 160GB SSD? I don't think Apple is using Intel's on their SSD line-up, my MBA 2.13/SSD I believe is Samsung but bought an MBP 13" 2.53 and the HDD is really slow :/ What would you guys suggest as SSD upgrade? I can get the 160GB Intel X25M for $500 or so..
 
Just installed the western digital 500gb 5400rpm (wd5000bevt) and pleased to say that it is whisper quiet in my MBP 13" with no whooshes, clunks or beeps.
 
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