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Experience with WD Scorpio Blue 500gb?

mac mini and this drive

Hi was thinking about putting a new drive in my circa 2006 intel duo mac mini and came across this thread.
My main consideration is if the mac mini would boot from the # Rosewill RX25-AT-SC-BLK 2.5" Black USB2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure - so that I can verify it before I switch the drives. Anyone have experience booting from these enclosures on mac mini late 2006?

heres another that i found but it's not clear if it would boot from it. scroll to bottom of page.
http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/product_info.php?products_id=510

thanks in advance
-kevin
 
I forget when I Put mine in .... but it's loaded up.

I have a 134 Gig available.

I access it a lot and not one sign of any adverse issues.

I'd highly recommend it.

In fact I like it so well I am ordering two more for our other MBP's.
 
I recently installed the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB in my unibody and have a less than glowing report to share.

I noticed the head parking sound on this drive is quite intrusive and happens frequently during normal usage in Mac OS. If you search the net, you'll find there are a number of people having this problem on their Macs, with various Western Digital drives, including this one.

Basically, the drive ends up being quite noisy in operation because it parks its heads every 8 or so seconds, and then unparks them immediately afterwards. The end result is a loud click/click noise. This actually happens most frequently when the computer is NOT using the hard disk - the drive parks its heads when entering 'idle mode' after several seconds, then has to unpark them straight away to service a request from the OS. I've read this is related to Mac OS's agressive head parking, and may not occur under Windows.

The fact that no one has mentioned this so far makes me wonder whether some drives don't display this behaviour (or are quieter than mine during head parking operations) or whether people just haven't noticed. For those who do have this drive, do you notice clicking sounds when using your computer in a quiet room?

I recommend keeping this in mind if you would like your computer to be as quiet as possible. It may be that all drives display this behaviour to some extent on Macs, but is quieter on some drives than others. I didn't notice any head parking sounds at all on my stock 250GB drive, prior to upgrading to the Scorpio Blue.
 
I've installed the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB on 3 MBP's and have never had any issues....works great & tons of space!
 
I've had mine since April - and no clicking parking head sounds at all - seriously. None. It's just quiet, with a very low, very slight whooshing sound when I lower my head toward the palmrest. Nothing at all annoying with this drive on my part... noise certainly shouldn't be a factor in your decision.
 
vocalcity said:
I recently installed the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB in my unibody and have a less than glowing report to share.

I noticed the head parking sound on this drive is quite intrusive and happens frequently during normal usage in Mac OS. If you search the net, you'll find there are a number of people having this problem on their Macs, with various Western Digital drives, including this one.

Basically, the drive ends up being quite noisy in operation because it parks its heads every 8 or so seconds, and then unparks them immediately afterwards. The end result is a loud click/click noise. This actually happens most frequently when the computer is NOT using the hard disk - the drive parks its heads when entering 'idle mode' after several seconds, then has to unpark them straight away to service a request from the OS. I've read this is related to Mac OS's agressive head parking, and may not occur under Windows.

The fact that no one has mentioned this so far makes me wonder whether some drives don't display this behaviour (or are quieter than mine during head parking operations) or whether people just haven't noticed. For those who do have this drive, do you notice clicking sounds when using your computer in a quiet room?

I recommend keeping this in mind if you would like your computer to be as quiet as possible. It may be that all drives display this behaviour to some extent on Macs, but is quieter on some drives than others. I didn't notice any head parking sounds at all on my stock 250GB drive, prior to upgrading to the Scorpio Blue.
Click to expand...
i have a thread on this. its annoying
pdxflint said:
I've had mine since April - and no clicking parking head sounds at all - seriously. None. It's just quiet, with a very low, very slight whooshing sound when I lower my head toward the palmrest. Nothing at all annoying with this drive on my part... noise certainly shouldn't be a factor in your decision.
Click to expand...
its very faint but its there. its part of osx's management. here is my thread on this topic

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/689930/
 
I got one of these for my early 2008 Macbook pro, It's worked flawlessly ever since I put it in. Here's my exact review on the product from newegg:
Pros: Lots of space, great performance, pretty quiet, and very fast for a 5400rpm drive.
I originally got this drive because I was continually offloading files onto one of my storage drives because the stock 200GB drive from Apple was too small. Now I'm very rarely offloading files due to the increased space, Plus now I can give my virtual machines a proper size disk instead of limiting them to 7-10GB disks.

Cons: If you work in silence much of your time, I would suggest going with something else. there is a slight noise from the spinning that waves in and out at random getting louder and softer. you cannot hear it if you even have some ambient noise like music playing but if the computer itself is the only thing making noise then you will definitely hear the drive.

Other Thoughts: given the chance I would buy this drive again for my computer. it works well with the WD MyBook that I use for my Time Machine back-ups as well as my Maxtor 2000GB storage drive.
Click to expand...
 
pdxflint said:
I've had mine since April - and no clicking parking head sounds at all - seriously. None. It's just quiet, with a very low, very slight whooshing sound when I lower my head toward the palmrest. Nothing at all annoying with this drive on my part... noise certainly shouldn't be a factor in your decision.
Click to expand...

Same here. No noise at all at least none that I can pick up-and that's what counts! :)
 
I have one and it works fantastic, all of my stuff and I still have 340GB left!! Quiet, fast and reliable!
 
I've had one in my 1st gen MBP for a while now.
It has worked great. No noise (that I notice -- I guess I'd probably hear something if I put my ear up to it) or other issues.

It's a solid drive. In my opinion, buy with confidence (through a reputable seller, just in case).
 
vocalcity said:
I recently installed the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB in my unibody and have a less than glowing report to share.

I noticed the head parking sound on this drive is quite intrusive and happens frequently during normal usage in Mac OS. If you search the net, you'll find there are a number of people having this problem on their Macs, with various Western Digital drives, including this one.

Basically, the drive ends up being quite noisy in operation because it parks its heads every 8 or so seconds, and then unparks them immediately afterwards. The end result is a loud click/click noise. This actually happens most frequently when the computer is NOT using the hard disk - the drive parks its heads when entering 'idle mode' after several seconds, then has to unpark them straight away to service a request from the OS. I've read this is related to Mac OS's agressive head parking, and may not occur under Windows.

The fact that no one has mentioned this so far makes me wonder whether some drives don't display this behaviour (or are quieter than mine during head parking operations) or whether people just haven't noticed. For those who do have this drive, do you notice clicking sounds when using your computer in a quiet room?

I recommend keeping this in mind if you would like your computer to be as quiet as possible. It may be that all drives display this behaviour to some extent on Macs, but is quieter on some drives than others. I didn't notice any head parking sounds at all on my stock 250GB drive, prior to upgrading to the Scorpio Blue.
Click to expand...


I have one in a 2.4ghz penryn mbp and there is no noise like what you describe. I think it may be an isolated case where you have the noise. Like I mentioned previously, there is less noise than the original.
 
Like the others listed... mine is completely quiet, cool and fast

I have no reservations recommending the Scorpio Blue

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
I have 2 in a raid 0 config in my MBP. As others have stated, they are great. I only wish they had more than 8mb of cache.
 
pdxflint said:
I've had mine since April - and no clicking parking head sounds at all - seriously. None. It's just quiet, with a very low, very slight whooshing sound when I lower my head toward the palmrest. Nothing at all annoying with this drive on my part... noise certainly shouldn't be a factor in your decision.
Click to expand...

dukebound85 said:
i have a thread on this. its annoying

its very faint but its there. its part of osx's management. here is my thread on this topic

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/689930/
Click to expand...
I didn't read your thread, sorry, but I stand by what I said concerning my own experiences. Everyone has their own experience. I don't doubt the heads are parking...that's the 'Shockguard' feature - I'm just saying it doesn't make the annoying clicking sounds some people are talking about. The drive is no more obtrusive than the original that came with my MBP - so for me that's pretty darn quiet. It is a mechanical device, and of course it makes some mechanical noises, but is it unusually loud? I say it isn't. On the other hand, I'm sure some people will think it's too noisy... but you can't please everyone all the time. If noise is an issue for someone with this drive (as long as it's a decent sample) then I'd suggest an SSD. But for 500g of space, I recommend this WD Scorpio Blue as a good choice, especially for the price. :)
 
chp5592 said:
Installed last week. Quiet (except for occasional parking sound). Temperature noticeably lower than with previous WD 320GB/5400rpm drive. Supposed to have 20-30% better power consumption than the previous drive. Recommended.

Results 49.04
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.6 (9G55)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro4,1
Drive Type WDC WD5000BEVT-11ZAT0
Disk Test 49.04
Sequential 70.78
Uncached Write 74.26 45.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 109.60 62.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 38.10 11.15 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 130.29 65.48 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 37.52
Uncached Write 15.21 1.61 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 69.18 22.15 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 59.94 0.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 102.76 19.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Click to expand...

I have the same drive and it's quiet-ish. It's does a lof parking and you can hear that. You won't hear it in the city, on the train, or anywhere with people. But you will be able to hear it at home with no ambient sound. It's not that irritating, but lets just say I'm looking forward to low cost, high capacity SSDs.
 
Patriks7 said:
I just installed one over the weekend into my MacBook Pro. One thing I noticed last night as I was typing up an essay, was that there was a weird sound coming out of my MacBook. I first thought that I have the fan on, but it was at 2000RPM. I then put my ear to where the HDD is, and I could hear it spinning, as if the fans were on at 3500RPM or so.
Click to expand...

I have the exact same problem as you, the drive is quite loud IMO, I might have to switch back to the 160GB drive that came with my 13in MBP to see if it was quieter as I never really noticed it.
 
Just bought one yesterday. When I am at work, I could barely hear any sound from the drive. But at home, especially at night, the clicking sound is audible. But it's not so serious.
 
I am using WD Scorpio Blue for 2 months and i have no issues. but hey when i was looking drive overview on system profiler, it shows me the drive model as WDC WD5000BEVT-00ZAT0. what is the difference between WDC WD5000BEVT-11ZAT0 and WDC WD5000BEVT-00ZAT0. are they same drive or different ?
 
I am going to guess without researching and say one has the motion sensor and one doesn't

You can research that to see if it is correct or not

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
Anyone using this HD with a MBP 13 and 1.7 firmware? I keep hearing issues about pausing/freezing with this drive.
 
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