Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Just got my 7K500 installed. I like it, but now it's running 15º hotter than normal??


Strange. Mine is definitely not hotter. Are you talking about the system temp or the HD temp?

Could it be something else? Like the mds/mdworker spotlight indexing that's using the CPU more?
 
Strange. Mine is definitely not hotter. Are you talking about the system temp or the HD temp?

Could it be something else? Like the mds/mdworker spotlight indexing that's using the CPU more?

I doubt it, I mean when I installed the WD 320/7200 a few weeks ago my temps went down 5-10º. It's been restarted a few times, I've repaired permissions, and activity monitor currently shows 2.5GB free RAM. I only have 3 small apps running. Physically it's cool to the touch, and the fans are only running at 2000 RPM's. It's weird. And I can hear the head parking. …I may just switch back to my WD and live with the ocean sounds (which pretty much sound the same as the Hitachi, BTW).
 
I just buy Wester Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB. It will delay 1 - 3 seconds when i open/save file. Why? How to solve it?

Is there a known resolution to this issue? I swapped out my drive over the weekend and experience the same thing. When the drive spins down it can take 2 seconds to get going again. My power usage and heat are down, but the cost of this aggravation is not worth the power savings.
 
I'm also looking at replacing my current stock HDD with a 500GB 7200rpm drive. So I only have the choice between the Hitachi 7K500 and the Seagate 7200.4... I would like to have an objective opinion which in overall is better. So far, the most people in this forum tend to buy the Hitachi and some reviews out there tend to favor the Seagate...
Right now I'm favoring the Seagate, but is there really a reason not to buy the Seagate and go for the Hitachi?

Here a quote from storagereview.com:
Our review of the Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 shows the hard drive to be an impressive choice in the 2.5” notebook drive class. Contrary to popular opinion though, the 7K500 is actually not the fastest notebook drive on the market – the Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB still remains top dog two years after release. It's not even the fastest 500GB notebook hard drive, the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 retains that title in most cases.

For those shopping for a 500GB drive without any compromises on storage capacity the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 is still the winner. However, if you can take a small capacity hit, the 320GB Western Digital Scorpio Black will still provide the best performance in a notebook hard drive.

Here the link to the complete review:
http://www.storagereview.com/hitachi_travelstar_7k500_review
 
Thanks. I googled HDAPM and it seems that there's a lot of issues related to 7200rpm HDDs and this clicking/beeping noise.

Does anyone know if there any disadvantages to using this program? One disadvantage I found: forcing the drive heads to park less may reduce noise but it seems it can also raise the temperature of the HD, which can't be good for HD reliability: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8915199/ And since the drive heads park less, it consumes more battery life ( https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/7326977/ ).

Also, the readme for that program states, there are instances where you may wish the drive heads to park more, but I don't know enough about this stuff to understand what instances those would be, which makes me wonder if I should mess around with the drive's behavior with this program.

Now I'm not so sure if I want to get a 7200rpm HDD for my future MBP purchase. If you you google "HDAPM" or search this forum, this issue appears common to many 7200rpm drives in Apple laptops. It goes back to at least 2008 ( https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/5094464/ ) and judging by the post above, it hasn't been addressed yet.

Anybody remember seeing Google's study that showed no correlation between heat and drive failures?
 
I'm also looking at replacing my current stock HDD with a 500GB 7200rpm drive. So I only have the choice between the Hitachi 7K500 and the Seagate 7200.4... I would like to have an objective opinion which in overall is better. So far, the most people in this forum tend to buy the Hitachi and some reviews out there tend to favor the Seagate...
Right now I'm favoring the Seagate, but is there really a reason not to buy the Seagate and go for the Hitachi?
"Compared to a Seagate 7200.4, the 7K500 has significantly less vibration and a noticeably lower ambient noise level."

Don't know if that's important to you. Can't say anything about the Seagate but I have a WD Scorpio Black 320gb in my (non-unibody) MBP and the vibrations are quite noticable. When I put my MBP directly on my desk, the whole thing starts to make a very noticable humming sound.
 
@braintumor: it is the first time I see that the 7k500 can be slower.

In all benchmark the 7k500 is on of the fastest disks. Tomshardware (Germany) reviewed it and it looks like it is faster then the Seagate: http://www.tomshardware.de/hitachi-travelstar-toshiba-seagate-momentus,testberichte-240489-5.html

My impressions from the Hitachi:
Personally I just changed my hard drive in the Macbook Pro from a WD 320 GB 5400 rpm to the Hitachi 7K500 7200rpm. There are no annoying vibrations from the Hitachi. It also stays cool. But it is louder then the WD drive. Luckily the Hitachi does not get much louder when you access the disk.

Performance: The applications launch a bit faster, Spotlight and file copy is faster. But it is not that significat. The WD does 67 MB/s read/write max, the Hitachi arround 105 MB/s read/write max.

I also have the WD 320 GB Black (7200rpm) inside my laptop at work. The WD is definitly louder then the Hitachi and the laptop also vibrates. So I would not use the drive inside my MBP.

Conclusion: Performance is good, but I would go back to 5400 rpm because it is more silent. The performance benefit from a 7200rpm dirve is not as big as I first thought.
 
Thanks for the feedback ... Maybe some of you have experience with the Seagate 7200.4? I'm still don't know which one to buy :)
 
Sorry for the n00b question.

I'm about to buy the hitachi 500gb 7200 rpm drive and install it. How do I reinstall the OS? Is it simply inserting the snow leopard disk and boot up and it does it automatically?
 
Sorry for the n00b question.

I'm about to buy the hitachi 500gb 7200 rpm drive and install it. How do I reinstall the OS? Is it simply inserting the snow leopard disk and boot up and it does it automatically?

you can do it several different ways, like you described, you can use carbon copy cloner to make a copy of your current drive and copy it over, you can make a time machine backup and restore off of that, you can reinstall the os and just transfer over the files and stuff that you want... tons of options just depends what you want.
 
you can do it several different ways, like you described, you can use carbon copy cloner to make a copy of your current drive and copy it over, you can make a time machine backup and restore off of that, you can reinstall the os and just transfer over the files and stuff that you want... tons of options just depends what you want.

I just bought it and don't have a lot installed, so clean install would be fine. :)

So I can just insert the cd swap out the harddrives and boot up? do I need to press anykeys on boot up or does it do it automatically?
 
I just bought it and don't have a lot installed, so clean install would be fine. :)

So I can just insert the cd swap out the harddrives and boot up? do I need to press anykeys on boot up or does it do it automatically?

i wouldn't put the cd in before just because you are going to be flipping it all over the place getting the hard drive out and i wouldn't want the cd getting stuck... not saying that that will happen, just not a risk i would want to take. Just swap the drives, insert the cd, reboot holding the option key and you will be able to boot from the cd, reinstall os and you're good to go! :D
 
i wouldn't put the cd in before just because you are going to be flipping it all over the place getting the hard drive out and i wouldn't want the cd getting stuck... not saying that that will happen, just not a risk i would want to take. Just swap the drives, insert the cd, reboot holding the option key and you will be able to boot from the cd, reinstall os and you're good to go! :D

Thanks :)
 
Is the stock drive and the $50 upgrade to the 500GB 7200rpm in the Apple Store also the 7k500 Travelstar or another Hitachi line?

Does anyone have the answer to Libertine Lush's question above?

I too would love to know what 500GB 7200rpm Apple uses in their CTO orders.
 
Does anyone have the answer to Libertine Lush's question above?

I too would love to know what 500GB 7200rpm Apple uses in their CTO orders.

My mates i5 came with a Seagate 7200.4 with the shock sensor (ASG). I'd reason that Apple have removed the shock sensor from the Mac and gone for drives with it fitted instead.
 
The best (in terms of size, and WD is a great company in terms of quality/reliability/price) ...

For 13"/15" Apple notebooks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136546

For 17" Apple notebooks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545

I'm not a great fan of WD laptop drives. I've personally had nothing but trouble with them. We also have some Lenovo ThinkPads at work with them in and the identical laptop with a Hitachi drive was noticeably quicker to boot. Also the WD batch have suffered a number of failures (say 5-10%) where the Hitachi's are so far 100% reliable.

I'm not a WD "hater" (as the popular term seems to be nowadays) - I'd have no hesitation is sticking one in my desktop.
 
Late '08 with the Hitachi running perfectly fine. Seems like the mid '09s are cursed with drive issues.

I'm looking at getting a mid-2010 13" MBPs and adding a 500gb drive to it - are the '10s having the same problems with drives that the mid-09's did?


Conclusion: Performance is good, but I would go back to 5400 rpm because it is more silent. The performance benefit from a 7200rpm dirve is not as big as I first thought.

I had all but decided to get the Hitachi Travelstar, and then I saw this. I'm really concerned about the noise - so which 500gb 5400rpm drive would you get? I keep hearing that the Scorpio Blue IS noisy...
 
I installed the Hitachi 7200 500GB 3-4 months ago. So far fast, quiet, no vibration, reliable. Very good drive.
 
I haven't noticed any increase in heat for the HDD (watching the temp via istat pro) and battery life hasn't really changed much for me to notice. I will let you know if I have any negative effects from using the program. I haven't found any yet.

Hi there,

I am also planning to go for the Hitachi 7k500 drive as I have read in the forums that this is the drive causing less problems when it comes to lcc count and stalling during movie playback...

So for me your findings are really important, not only when it comes to temperature but also to lcc count.

I would prefer to have a 640GB hdd but i have heard that both WD and Samsung are have a high lcc which cannot be solved by hdapm and I have heard that the WD shows problems like halting/stalling while playing a movie this is simply not acceptable for me! If Hitachi had a 640GB even 5400 rpm I would go for it without a blink.

In this sense I think the best option in Hitachi 500GB 7k500. The 500GB 5k500 is also an option but i think that the increase in performance is about 30% for a small increase in the temperature so I think it pays off going for the 7k.

When it comes to lcc, I have also installed hdapm but I followed the instructions in:
http://mymacfixes.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-do-i-stop-clicking-noise-from-hard.html

In the meantime since I knew I was going to upgrade both the HDD from Hitachi 200GB to Hitachi 500GB 7k500/5k500 and also from 10.5 to 10.6 I decided to implement hdapm and lingon still with the Hitachi 200GB HDD and on 10.5 and result was really good!

hdapm actually worked. The lcc count almost stopped completely. I only get a 2 lcc increase every time I put the MBP to sleep. When it boots I actually get a bit more but I don't get the 100 lcc/hour that I used to get. I have now an increase in temperature but its about 2 deg C so its negletable.

Considering this I am going for the Hitachi 7k500 and i am expecting to solve the lcc problem again using the hdapm/lingon in Snow Leopard.

I think that Hitachi 7k500 is really the best option right now interms of both lcc and performance. I am only skeptical if Hitac hi 7k500 supports hdapm and if hdapm will work under SL.

My other worry is to know if the increase in temperature is really so high.

Lurchdubious is reporting an increase of 15º hotter than normal?? ins't this too much?
 
Unlike the other poster, I strongly recommend the Hitachi. Have it running in 2 machines and has performed flawlessly. Had a bad streak of WD + Seagates lately.

My Hitachi 500gb 7200 is cool, quiet, and fast.

Hi,

when you say is fast and quiet I believe you, but is it really cool?

Lurchdubious is reporting an increase of 15º hotter than normal?? ins't this too much?

How much are you getting in temperature with this drive (7k500)?

I am also planning to go for the Hitachi 7k500 drive as I have read in the forums that this is the drive causing less problems when it comes to lcc count and stalling during movie playback...

So for me your findings are really important, not only when it comes to temperature but also to lcc count.

In this sense I think the best option in Hitachi 500GB 7k500. The 500GB 5k500 is also an option but i think that the increase in performance is about 30% for a small increase in the temperature so I think it pays off going for the 7k.

When it comes to lcc, I have installed hdapm but I followed the instructions in:
http://mymacfixes.blogspot.com/2009/...from-hard.html

In the meantime since I knew I was going to upgrade both the HDD from Hitachi 200GB to Hitachi 500GB 7k500/5k500 and also from 10.5 to 10.6 I decided to implement hdapm and lingon still with the Hitachi 200GB HDD and on 10.5 and result was really good!

hdapm actually worked. The lcc count almost stopped completely. I only get a 2 lcc increase every time I put the MBP to sleep. When it boots I actually get a bit more but I don't get the 100 lcc/hour that I used to get. I have now an increase in temperature but its about 2 deg C so its negletable.

Considering this I am going for the Hitachi 7k500 and i am expecting to solve the lcc problem again using the hdapm/lingon in Snow Leopard.

I think that Hitachi 7k500 is really the best option right now interms of both lcc and performance. I am only skeptical if Hitac hi 7k500 supports hdapm and if hdapm will work under SL.

My other worry is to know if the increase in temperature is really so high.

Thanks
 
What is the actual temperature that you're getting in the Hitachi 7k320 hdd?

The maximum I got on my 200GB 5400 is around 40...and u?

Yeah it was warmer for me. I can't really report anything else, as I only had it in my machine for about a day or so before returning it. I currently have the 320gb/7200 WD. It's a little noisy, but otherwise fine.
 
I've made my Hitachi Travelstars permanent at apm 254 with the Hitachi Feature Tool.
I'm using the 7k500 and 5k500.b's but prefer the 5k500.b in the MBP's, lower temperatures and totally quiet.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.