Best Hard Drive For Non-Retina MacBook Pro

[KeegM480]

Hello,
I know I have posted a couple hard drive threads and that there are tons out there. Here is what I want to know though.

My specs:
15" Late 2011 MacBook Pro
2.2GHz Quad Core Intel i7
16GB of Ram, Standard 500GB Toshiba HD

I do heavy editing with Final Cut Pro (sometimes adobe premire) but not all the time usually only a couple times a week. I also use Photshop and Lightroom often. Then I do Web browsing, email, itunes, and schoolwork. I have a bootcamp (Win 8) and Mac OSX (10.9) partition

Battery life is very important to me, storage size is also important to me. BUT I usually do not turn the computer on or off I usually just put it to sleep so startup times are not very important to me, I would like an improvemnet but would be upset if I didnt have one.

With these requirements, (specifically battery life) I am nervous about a home made fusion drive, I have head battery life is aweful.

I would like to get about 4 hours with Safari with whatever upgrade is done. My MacBook Pro will be picked up today or tomorrow from a repair but remeber I am on a budget so I want to get this done soon but can I afford soon? Like $100 is the top of my budget, keep in mind I can keep o sell my 500GB

Thanks!
sorry about such a long post

 

[protoxx]

$100 neighborhood limits you.

Hard to beat the Seagate hybrid drive. Has a built in 64meg cache. (~$110)
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Solid...3229189&sr=1-1&keywords=hybrid+hard+drive+2.5

You might consider removing the cdrom so you can have two hard drives. I just broke down and did that. One boots snow leopard (still need some programs that only run on it) and the other boots Mavericks.

 

[KeegM480]

$100 neighborhood limits you.

Hard to beat the Seagate hybrid drive. Has a built in 64meg cache. (~$110)
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Solid...3229189&sr=1-1&keywords=hybrid+hard+drive+2.5

You might consider removing the cdrom so you can have two hard drives. I just broke down and did that. One boots snow leopard (still need some programs that only run on it) and the other boots Mavericks.

I will take it out just had it back in for the repair so that I didn't get crap from apple about "Modifying" my Machine since I have AppleCare and I don't really know what voids it haha. I might do the 1TB Hybrid Drive and then put my 500GB into my iMac G4 just because.