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jdhatt

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 3, 2010
127
0
ive read many threads on this but havent received any conclusion to the battery life. and mixed opinions on the noise....anyone have both stock 5400rpm along with this one and done a comparison? is the speed worth it? is it still faster than the average 7200rpm once the 4gb SDD flash has been used up? my biggest concern is noise and battery life....i guess heats pretty important too...
 
ive read many threads on this but havent received any conclusion to the battery life. and mixed opinions on the noise....anyone have both stock 5400rpm along with this one and done a comparison? is the speed worth it? is it still faster than the average 7200rpm once the 4gb SDD flash has been used up? my biggest concern is noise and battery life....i guess heats pretty important too...

benchmarks show the XT being faster than Velociraptors (10,000RPM) but slower than SSD. At $159 for 500GB though? That's a pretty good deal.

I'm wondering the same about heating, battery life etc; as well though
 
I'll give you an honest opinion since I have one. Battery life should be the same. As far as the noise is concerned, you will not really hear this hard drive under normal usage.

HOWEVER, if you are in a very quiet environment or/and your ears are close to the laptop (such as if you are lying down with it in front of you), you will notice the noise.

Theres a particular clicking noise as well. Everytime the drive writes data, it will make the normal gargling noise followed by a some kind of click. I'm not sure if this is normal but I do know that this happens with this particular model.
 
I'll give you an honest opinion since I have one. Battery life should be the same. As far as the noise is concerned, you will not really hear this hard drive under normal usage.
Agree
HOWEVER, if you are in a very quiet environment or/and your ears are close to the laptop (such as if you are lying down with it in front of you), you will notice the noise.
Agree
Theres a particular clicking noise as well. Everytime the drive writes data, it will make the normal gargling noise followed by a some kind of click. I'm not sure if this is normal but I do know that this happens with this particular model.
I have not noticed this clicking sound, just the spinning down/up and whirring sound from the 7200rpm aspect of the drive.
.
 
is that amount of noise normal for any 7200rpm? how does it compare to 5400rpm
 
Hrm, I know there is a bit of a difference between the 5400 and the 7200 rpm drives. The 7200 do make a bit of a louder noise in the macbook pros compared to the 5400's but its not that noticeable. The only noticeable time is the startup to get the drive spinning.
 
hmmmm....interesting....anyone know anything about the heat and battery consumption of this drive?
 
hmmmm....interesting....anyone know anything about the heat and battery consumption of this drive?

I have went through 5 to 6 battery cycles and to be honest I can't tell a bit of a difference. Heat is the same. Only diff I have found is my apps just load a heck of a lot faster. And sounds the same as my old 7200 rpm seagate.
 
I put one of these in my 15'' i7 on Tuesday. Heat is the same as the 7200 drive that came with my laptop. Noise is a little louder than before, but nothing unbearable. I can't really comment on battery life as it seems to be about the same, but the battery in these i7s varies so damn much depending on what apps I'm running I can't say for sure.
 
Good thread. I want to buy one as soon as they land on amazon! I've a $150 gc that would be perfect for it
 
I added the 500g version of this drive to my mid 2010 15" mbp a few days ago..
I can't notice any more noise from it.
Heat doesn't seem to have changes either. (side note: these i7 mbp's can get pretty toasty so if heat is a concern I would maybe wait to see what they do with a software update or hardware revision)
Like other posters, depending on what I'm doing the battery life seems to vary wildly. I can't see an impact from this drive however.

What I do notice is the speed difference! WOW! Apps open up so much faster, reboots make it seem like a SSD.
Highly recommended imho. Until SSD come down in price/up in storage I think this is the best current solution.
 
I added the 500g version of this drive to my mid 2010 15" mbp a few days ago..
I can't notice any more noise from it.
Heat doesn't seem to have changes either. (side note: these i7 mbp's can get pretty toasty so if heat is a concern I would maybe wait to see what they do with a software update or hardware revision)
Like other posters, depending on what I'm doing the battery life seems to vary wildly. I can't see an impact from this drive however.

What I do notice is the speed difference! WOW! Apps open up so much faster, reboots make it seem like a SSD.
Highly recommended imho. Until SSD come down in price/up in storage I think this is the best current solution.

hmmm that sounds pretty good! do you find the 4gb of SSD is enough? i mean have u ever had it run out and then some programs open really slow? or do all programs open quite faast?
 
hmmm that sounds pretty good! do you find the 4gb of SSD is enough? i mean have u ever had it run out and then some programs open really slow? or do all programs open quite faast?

You don't manage the SSD yourself that's all done by the drive. For all intents and purposes it functions like a very fast standard drive. You don't have to manage anything extra.
 
how long does it take for the SSD to adapt to your changes? have u ever had anything run slowly or do they all manage to make use of the 4gb?
 
From what i've been researching, it seems to adapt to your usage after a couple of days. I'm wondering though if you use a wide variety of applications such as bootcamp and playing games, will it still be worth it to get?
 
From what i've been researching, it seems to adapt to your usage after a couple of days. I'm wondering though if you use a wide variety of applications such as bootcamp and playing games, will it still be worth it to get?

exactly what im wondering, anyone try this out yet?
 
Any body know when this is coming to the UK?
Getting my mbp next week and I want to put this in straight away. Dont even want to use the standard 320gb drive :mad:

I've got a friend in the UK said he checked with the retailers there, probably by next month....
 
:( i gotta know how this drive runs on bootcamp

What more do you want to know? If you access your Windows partition frequently, then some of your Windows boot files, etc., will start occupying some of the SSD, and Windows will boot faster. You can hope, then, that it won't crowd out OS X's boot files, etc.

The concept is pretty simple: the most accessed data is the data that is written to the SSD and therefore becomes the quickest to access.
 
What more do you want to know? If you access your Windows partition frequently, then some of your Windows boot files, etc., will start occupying some of the SSD, and Windows will boot faster. You can hope, then, that it won't crowd out OS X's boot files, etc.

The concept is pretty simple: the most accessed data is the data that is written to the SSD and therefore becomes the quickest to access.

Interesting. I did not know that the momentus does that..but to be honest I haven't dont much reading on the product. I don't know whether to get this or a straight up SSD.. I have 20gbs left on my 80gb...that is not even enough for me to be comfortable dedicating to a virtual machine. Time to read some more.
 
Interesting. I did not know that the momentus does that..but to be honest I haven't dont much reading on the product. I don't know whether to get this or a straight up SSD.. I have 20gbs left on my 80gb...that is not even enough for me to be comfortable dedicating to a virtual machine. Time to read some more.

yea i think im gonna end up going with the momentus....hopefully it doesnt make too much noise, heat or drain the battery
 
:( i gotta know how this drive runs on bootcamp

I notice the same benefit when booting Windows 7 and OS X. Both are lightning fast boots and both of the OS's core files are kept in the XT's memory. This drive is amazing for dual-booting.
 
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