I just installed one last evening. Thus far I have had no problems whatsoever. In fact it runs much faster than the original 160gb Hitachi that came with the MBP. Very little Beach Balls and my MBP is up to date with all software/firmware updates.
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Experience with WD Scorpio Blue 500gb?
- Thread starter esvee
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I just installed one last evening. Thus far I have had no problems whatsoever. In fact it runs much faster than the original 160gb Hitachi that came with the MBP. Very little Beach Balls and my MBP is up to date with all software/firmware updates.
I bought a 13" MBP with SD card slot on Monday. The first thing I did was update the software, and without doing further research, I did the 1.7 firmware update.
Needless to say, after the update completed, the system ran sluggish. Beach balls every few minutes, it was very annoying.
After I restarted it, it seemed fine, but the system felt slightly sluggish overall.
Yesterday, I bought the 500GB Scorpio Blue drive from Best Buy. After installing it, and OS X, I quickly noticed that my MBP was running great again (like it did before I did the 1.7 firmware update).
Overall, the 500GB drive has been great, and my computer is running fine with the 1.7 firmware now.
Needless to say, after the update completed, the system ran sluggish. Beach balls every few minutes, it was very annoying.
After I restarted it, it seemed fine, but the system felt slightly sluggish overall.
Yesterday, I bought the 500GB Scorpio Blue drive from Best Buy. After installing it, and OS X, I quickly noticed that my MBP was running great again (like it did before I did the 1.7 firmware update).
Overall, the 500GB drive has been great, and my computer is running fine with the 1.7 firmware now.
Clicking
I just installed one of these drives and noticed a quiet, single click sound every every 30 seconds or so when the computer is writing data to the hard drive. Does anyone else notice this sound? Like I said, it's not that loud but it is noticeable in a quite room. I never noticed this sound on the stock 160GB hard drive.
Update: The clicking happens while reading data also. I noticed that vocalcity reported this intrusive clicking noise in an earlier post. Just minor things like surfing the net creates the clicking. This is a disappointment as the stock drive was dead silent at all times!!! It's even more of a disappointment for me as the original Scorpio 500GB drive I received was dead on arrival. I wonder if a firmware update for the drive might help?
I just installed one of these drives and noticed a quiet, single click sound every every 30 seconds or so when the computer is writing data to the hard drive. Does anyone else notice this sound? Like I said, it's not that loud but it is noticeable in a quite room. I never noticed this sound on the stock 160GB hard drive.
Update: The clicking happens while reading data also. I noticed that vocalcity reported this intrusive clicking noise in an earlier post. Just minor things like surfing the net creates the clicking. This is a disappointment as the stock drive was dead silent at all times!!! It's even more of a disappointment for me as the original Scorpio 500GB drive I received was dead on arrival. I wonder if a firmware update for the drive might help?
2.5 "Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD4000BEVT 400 GB
I can't seem to get a 500 gig one on ebay.ie and certainly not anywhere else over here in ireland. But I found a 400 gig model.
Is this the same drive but smaller capacity?
I saw this shockguard feature in the specs and wanted to make sure it wasn't going to cause a problem???
WD's ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks during shipping and handling and in daily operation.
thanks in advance
-kevin
nevermind found out that this is the exact same drive but the last 100 gigs are blocked off. Saved a wee bit of money, didn't really need the 500 anyway. thanks
I can't seem to get a 500 gig one on ebay.ie and certainly not anywhere else over here in ireland. But I found a 400 gig model.
Is this the same drive but smaller capacity?
I saw this shockguard feature in the specs and wanted to make sure it wasn't going to cause a problem???
WD's ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks during shipping and handling and in daily operation.
thanks in advance
-kevin
nevermind found out that this is the exact same drive but the last 100 gigs are blocked off. Saved a wee bit of money, didn't really need the 500 anyway. thanks
hmm
http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=14059
Edited to say that I installed the 400 gig model in my 2007 mac mini and it's working like a charm.
http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=14059
Edited to say that I installed the 400 gig model in my 2007 mac mini and it's working like a charm.
13" MBP bought last week - fitted a 500Gb WD Scorpio Blue and updated everything. So far its fast, silent and cool. Best thing I've bought in ages (other than the MBP).
I now own three of these drives, but ... one flamed out in my early 2008 17" MBP. I started to hear some buzzing sounds that seemed like the drive was seeking rapidly, then it failed to verify. I booted from the install disk and it failed to repair. I was able to get all but about 12 files off, but unfortunately, one missing file was the "disk" for my WinXP VM. I removed the drive and hooked it to an SATA enabled WinXP box to run the WD diagnostics on it. When I run the WD Extended Test, it keeps finding bad blocks to "forward". I have not been able to get it to pass cleanly. The S.M.A.R.T. status is still verified and it has not failed any of the internal trip thresholds that would merit an in warranty replacement.
I am going to keep trying to get a clean run off of the diagnostics before I try using that one again. The other two are running fine in external enclosures.
I am going to keep trying to get a clean run off of the diagnostics before I try using that one again. The other two are running fine in external enclosures.
I just bought one of these drives to upgrade my Macbook. For me, however, it has been a very negative and depressing experience.
Even after a fresh install of Leopard, the drive is so slow to respond to any command, even scrolling through text, web pages or just opening a finder window makes it beachball for up to 20 seconds! My original Fujitsu 120GB drive was as smooth and quick as anything, even though it was 95% full.
I was so looking forward to a superfast drive with all that extra space but this one is awful. I am hoping I just have a faulty one and have arranged to return it for a replacement. The other possibility is that my late 2008 white Macbook just isn't compatible with this advanced drive. I did notice that my chipset only supports SATA1 while this Scorpio Blue appears to be SATA2. Not sure if that would lead to problems of the sort I described as I read somewhere that the WD is backwards compatible. Any views on this, guys?
Even after a fresh install of Leopard, the drive is so slow to respond to any command, even scrolling through text, web pages or just opening a finder window makes it beachball for up to 20 seconds! My original Fujitsu 120GB drive was as smooth and quick as anything, even though it was 95% full.
I was so looking forward to a superfast drive with all that extra space but this one is awful. I am hoping I just have a faulty one and have arranged to return it for a replacement. The other possibility is that my late 2008 white Macbook just isn't compatible with this advanced drive. I did notice that my chipset only supports SATA1 while this Scorpio Blue appears to be SATA2. Not sure if that would lead to problems of the sort I described as I read somewhere that the WD is backwards compatible. Any views on this, guys?
I wouldn't have thought a HDD problem would stop you scrolling through text or opening a new web page - or is it only when you open up a new application or file?
Have you run any diagnostics on the disk?
I highly recommend running Western Digital's LifeGuard diagnostics on ANY new WD drive prior to using it. I just had a 1 month old 2T WD Green drive croak on me. (I broke my own rule and did not test the drive before installing it!) I have also had one of the 500 GB 2.5" Blue drives fail. The slowness you are seeing could be caused by the drive failing to read blocks the first, second, third ... time. As such, the OS gets bogged down with the drive access and can slow everything else down too.
For the Scorpio Blue, I pulled the drive from my MBP and mounted it in a spare WinXP box and ran the WD diag on it over and over again. It would always find bad blocks ... I repeated this ~20 times and eventually it stated that there were too many bad blocks and it could not repair them. For the 2T drive, I mounted it in the same WinXP system, and it immediately failed the "quick" test, and it found too many bad blocks to repair on the first surface scan.
I did the "rapid" RMA with the Scorpio drive and had the replacement within a week. I am trying the same thing with the 2T drive, but WD has not shipped the replacement and it has been almost a week since I submitted the RMA request.
I own 4 of the scorpio blue drives, one in the MBP, one in a 2007 Mini and 2 mounted in external drive housings. The external drives are used as backups via Carbon Copy Cloner. If an internal drive fails, I will simply swap the backup drive in and keep going.
I've put mine in my desktop and have used it as a storage drive since my Macbook Pro tanked back in October of '09. Clicking noises? None on my end. This drive is spinning 24/7, too, if you must know. It's been very reliable and I'm pleased with the purchase.
Fine for me too - don't use the MBP a lot but it travels with me a fair bit and I've had no problems in any area. Still recommended IMO.
mine's MBP 2,26 ghz..i use scorpio blue 320 GB,overall it's good but sometimes (at night usually) i hear swooshing sound (like the exhaust fan running at 4000rpm noise) from the hard drive..maybe the screw's not tight enough, i dunno, anybody knows the problem here?
Like reading my own thoughts.
I'm gonna have to switch back to the stock drive, this is too loud. I can also feel a slight vibration that I didnt feel before, seems like its spinning all the time.