Another HD upgrade dilemma

[bigaudiofanatic]

So with me owning my new MB pro for over 7 days now and very happy with it. I went out and bought a 1.5 tb external HD for 100 bucks at BB today for a bigger external for files and all.

My dilemma is this. I work on and repair computers and am going to school for this as well. The most laptop HD failures I have come across are Fujitsu hard drives. Weather they just crap out or the computer gets dropped seems they fail very easily. Upon buying my new computer I found out that the HD inside is you guessed it a Fujitsu!

My question is this. Should I wait until my 1 year warranty runs out to replace the HD to a much better and bigger one. Or simply leave it alone until the warranty runs out in a year?

 

[davidlv]

Can you afford to spend about 100 dollars for a HD? The stock drives are always smaller than you need as data piles up, and 100 bucks or so will buy a 500GB drive easily. It is very easy to install a HD in the unibody models, just follow the instructions in the manual that came with the machine, carefully, the screw are SMALL, and the cable isn't strong enough to play tug-o-war with it. You will also need a T6 torx screw driver to remove the knobs on the side of the drive and put them on the new drive. I installed a 7,200rpm Seagate in mine, works great (had trouble with a WD Scorpio Blue, but other have had success with it) and I have heard the Toshiba 500GB 5,400 is good too.
This is not really a dilemma, just keep the old drive around in case you have to send the machine back to Apple for repairs. They have been known to replace 3rd party equipment!

 

[Alvi]

On mac laptops the best is to keep the one it came with, for many reasons, to avoid issues

 

[Jaro65]

Can you afford to spend about 100 dollars for a HD? The stock drives are always smaller than you need as data piles up, and 100 bucks or so will buy a 500GB drive easily. It is very easy to install a HD in the unibody models, just follow the instructions in the manual that came with the machine, carefully, the screw are SMALL, and the cable isn't strong enough to play tug-o-war with it. You will also need a T6 torx screw driver to remove the knobs on the side of the drive and put them on the new drive. I installed a 7,200rpm Seagate in mine, works great (had trouble with a WD Scorpio Blue, but other have had success with it) and I have heard the Toshiba 500GB 5,400 is good too.
This is not really a dilemma, just keep the old drive around in case you have to send the machine back to Apple for repairs. They have been known to replace 3rd party equipment!

I did exactly the same thing. Ordered mine with the base HD, and I had a Seagate 500GB replacement waiting for it at home when the laptop arrived. I may have not done that, but also at the time Apple didn't offer 500GB at 7200RPM. You can easily get a drive like that for a little over $100.

 

[bigaudiofanatic]

es if I upgrade the HD I will probably grab the 500 gb WD from best buy or off new egg. I did a HD upgrade in my old mac without any problems. If I can find them I might even go with a 720 gb hd.

Did you see any increase in performance with the 7200 rpm from your old one? Or any faster depletion in battery life?

 

[NightFox]

I know that there's been problems with the MBP's built-in head-crash protection (i.e. the computer automatically parks the HD heads if it senses it is being dropped) conflicting with some HD's built-in protection - I think the advice was to make sure any HD you fitted doesn't have its own crash protection, but you should probably do a bit of research yourself to be sure.

 

[bigaudiofanatic]

I know that there's been problems with the MBP's built-in head-crash protection (i.e. the computer automatically parks the HD heads if it senses it is being dropped) conflicting with some HD's built-in protection - I think the advice was to make sure any HD you fitted doesn't have its own crash protection, but you should probably do a bit of research yourself to be sure.

I will check into that. I know in my old one hat the crash detection and so did the hard drive but never had a problem. Thanks for that

 

[davidlv]

es if I upgrade the HD I will probably grab the 500 gb WD from best buy or off new egg. I did a HD upgrade in my old mac without any problems. If I can find them I might even go with a 720 gb hd.

Did you see any increase in performance with the 7200 rpm from your old one? Or any faster depletion in battery life?

The Seagate 500GB 7200 rpm drive (model without onboard sudden motion sensor) is about 15% faster than the stock 250Gb Toshiba it came wth at most tasks, and runs down the battery about 10-15% faster (still more than 6 hours on battery). The whole machine feels just a little faster than with the old drive. But the extra space is really nice to have, I have every movie I own and all of my CDs encoded as mp3s and I still have over 300GB left!
If you buy a WD Scorpio Blue, make sure you can return it if it doesn't work in your machine, it didn't in mine, with constant stalls, and I had to put it in a cheap USB case to make use of it.

 

[bigaudiofanatic]

The Seagate 500GB 7200 rpm drive (model without onboard sudden motion sensor) is about 15% faster than the stock 250Gb Toshiba it came wth at most tasks, and runs down the battery about 10-15% faster (still more than 6 hours on battery). The whole machine feels just a little faster than with the old drive. But the extra space is really nice to have, I have every movie I own and all of my CDs encoded as mp3s and I still have over 300GB left!
If you buy a WD Scorpio Blue, make sure you can return it if it doesn't work in your machine, it didn't in mine, with constant stalls, and I had to put it in a cheap USB case to make use of it.

Hmm I will keep that in mind newegg is pretty good about taking stuff back so is bb is I decide to get one in the next few days. I am like you but all my music is in lossless format and with it taking over 140 gb's on the hd now and adding at least a cd a week to it I know I will fill it by the end of the year.