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Going from 500GB to 1TB in my Unibody MacBook!

This is a great thread. I think I am going to go the 1TB route. I didnt even realize how affordable it would be.

Can I take the stock 250gig from my 2010 13in MBP and install it in my 2006 white mackbook?
 
b_scott said:
seems like my macbook pro is going a lot slower now. I upgraded to the 1TB 5200RPM from a 500GB 7200RPM.

But with three platters compared to two, I keep reading it should be close to the same speed...

currently repairing permissions for the 3rd or 4th time though, so that is probably taking the hit on speed.

I have 8GB of RAM and an i7, so I don't think it should matter much. But when I open a web browser I get the spinning rainbow for quite a few seconds almost every time.
Click to expand...

How full is the drive? Mine is just about full and it has slowed down A LOT, but I'm willing to deal with it because I need the space.
 
ok I am going to try this but I dont want to do clone or carbon copy etc so is this how I am supposed to do it:

1. put in DVD into drive
2. turn computer off
3. open up computer put in brand new drive.
4. does it automatically boot from dvd and install the mac os or ?

Any other steps I need to be aware of ?

Thanks
 
I did this about two months ago, and when the drive is fine when I just have the OS on it, but gets really slow when i put more than 100Gb of data on it. I've called apple, ran the disk diagnostics, hardware diagnostics, checked permissions, verified disk etc. I randomly, but constantly get the beach-ball doing normal stuff and my audio skips regularly on itunes.

Anybody else have this problem with the Western Digital 1TB blue?
 
Bradan said:
I did this about two months ago, and when the drive is fine when I just have the OS on it, but gets really slow when i put more than 100Gb of data on it. I've called apple, ran the disk diagnostics, hardware diagnostics, checked permissions, verified disk etc. I randomly, but constantly get the beach-ball doing normal stuff and my audio skips regularly on itunes.

Anybody else have this problem with the Western Digital 1TB blue?
Click to expand...

The fuller the drive, the more fragged it becomes, the slower it gets. It's actually normal. 1TB is great, but it's not a speed demon, especially after long usage.
 
ayeying said:
The fuller the drive, the more fragged it becomes, the slower it gets. It's actually normal. 1TB is great, but it's not a speed demon, especially after long usage.
Click to expand...

this is definitely not an issue of fragmentation. I'm talking 1/10 of capacity here.
 
jdaniel said:
ok I am going to try this but I dont want to do clone or carbon copy etc so is this how I am supposed to do it:

1. put in DVD into drive
2. turn computer off
3. open up computer put in brand new drive.
4. does it automatically boot from dvd and install the mac os or ?

Any other steps I need to be aware of ?

Thanks
Click to expand...

anyone?
 
xlii said:
Bingo, you get it. 3 platters X 5200rpm = 15,600 rpm
.......................... 2 platters X 7200rpm = 14,400 rpm

The above shows you the potential for data read and write to the above drives. *If* all else is equal. The 3 platter slower rpm drive will read/write faster than the 7200 rpm drive assuming that the rpms are not the bottle neck in the drive.
Click to expand...

However the random access time which matters a hell of a lot more on a boot/apps drive will almost certainly suck.

Half the capacity, 15-20% more performance:

500gb7200.jpg


I've said it 1000 times already, random access time is more important than sequential reads on a boot/apps/small files drive. This is the reason why SSDs kick ass.

For people doing HD video, sequential is what you want. For everyone else? It's a combination of the two, leaning one way or the other depending on what your doing.
 
Fail

I ran across a deal I couldn't pass up yesterday at Walmart. A Seagate GoFlex Ultraportable 1TB HD for $60 on clearance. I just tried to install it in my 15" Unibody MBP, but the friggin' thing is way too tall. It looks to be taller than those 12mm drives. The drive enclosure took a beating too, but I managed to reassemble it and am now going to use it as my Time Machine drive. So to anyone who was wondering about these drives, don't waste your time. At least I have a 2.5" drive for way cheap.
I'm thinking of going SSD now, after seeing how fast the new Macbook Airs are at booting up and launching applications. I'll just keep all my media on portables until I upgrade to a new Mac later on. Anyone seen any "good" deals on SSD's lately?
 
ringwormcletus said:
I ran across a deal I couldn't pass up yesterday at Walmart. A Seagate GoFlex Ultraportable 1TB HD for $60 on clearance. I just tried to install it in my 15" Unibody MBP, but the friggin' thing is way too tall. It looks to be taller than those 12mm drives. The drive enclosure took a beating too, but I managed to reassemble it and am now going to use it as my Time Machine drive. So to anyone who was wondering about these drives, don't waste your time. At least I have a 2.5" drive for way cheap.
I'm thinking of going SSD now, after seeing how fast the new Macbook Airs are at booting up and launching applications. I'll just keep all my media on portables until I upgrade to a new Mac later on. Anyone seen any "good" deals on SSD's lately?
Click to expand...

Hahaha, what is 'good' for an SSD yet?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227552
 
ringwormcletus said:
I ran across a deal I couldn't pass up yesterday at Walmart. A Seagate GoFlex Ultraportable 1TB HD for $60 on clearance. I just tried to install it in my 15" Unibody MBP, but the friggin' thing is way too tall. It looks to be taller than those 12mm drives. The drive enclosure took a beating too, but I managed to reassemble it and am now going to use it as my Time Machine drive. So to anyone who was wondering about these drives, don't waste your time. At least I have a 2.5" drive for way cheap.
I'm thinking of going SSD now, after seeing how fast the new Macbook Airs are at booting up and launching applications. I'll just keep all my media on portables until I upgrade to a new Mac later on. Anyone seen any "good" deals on SSD's lately?
Click to expand...

If your not running out of space currently I would put that thing back together, return it, and wait for the 1.5TB drives to come out.
 
Labaguette said:
I'm waiting for somebody else to use an optibay for another WD10TPVT and see the RAID-0 Performance of 2TB in (at best) a 13" MBP :p
Click to expand...
WardC said:
The ultimate solution would be to RAID 0 two of these 1TB drives using the OWC Disk Doubler. That would give you a 2TB striped RAID array at double the speed!!
Click to expand...
Did anyone try that yet? I am already using the Optibay and have 2x 500GB in my 15" MBP. Would love to put 2x 1TB into it and even increase speed and safety via RAID.


jordachio said:
2.) WD Advanced Format Technology (AFT)
Those new WD drives use the new AFT system to allow for 1TB in that format. The system is known to cause problems with Windows XP due to WinXP disk partitioning (article here: http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs...Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/?page=1).
Click to expand...
Are there any problems with TM or file exchange/transfer between AFT and non-AFT drives (independent of Win XP) - eg. OSX daily use?



deus ex machina said:
I had a 1TB drive in my mbp 15", but opted for the speed of an SSD. If I could install the 1TB in the optical bay, I would.
Click to expand...
Would love an SSD, but the prices are ridiculous for the little space you get and I really need loads of space. So I'll probably have to wait another decade - even though I hope the prices for large SSD go faster down then my storage needs go up :rolleyes:
 
Chase R said:
If your not running out of space currently I would put that thing back together, return it, and wait for the 1.5TB drives to come out.
Click to expand...

I have a little over 1TB (music, movies, tv shows, comics, iMovie stuff) spread across 3 drives. At any given time, I have 4-6 drives attached to my MBP because of the different backup schemes that I use. I wanted to be able to put everything on the MBP drive (hopefully when they make 1.5TB-2TB drives that fit) and clone that to an external and also have a TimeMachine backup. That way I could consolidate everything, backup to 2 drives, and still be able to port the MBP around, without bringing an external drive everywhere. I thought about getting a Drobo or some other raid solution, but I don't think my storage needs are there yet (at least not until I finish running my DVD collection through Handbrake). I may go iMac (maxed-out storage + SSD) next summer when Lion comes out and just pass the MBP to my wife. Those shorter 1.5TB+ drives need to hurry up already!!
 
ringwormcletus said:
Those shorter 1.5TB+ drives need to hurry up already!!
Click to expand...

I know what you mean! I'm caught between waiting for the 1.5TB drives or just getting a 2TB mirrored-RAID external drive and throwing a smaller/faster HDD in my MB (320GB/7200RPM are pretty cheap).

Decisions decisions...
 
Hey

OP I've installed the same drive as yours recently but I noticed that the vibration is very significant compared to the one that came originally with the MacBook Pro. Stock one is a Hitachi. I thought 5400 ones shouldnt be vibrating as much. Do you have the same issue?
 
Gimmic said:
OP I've installed the same drive as yours recently but I noticed that the vibration is very significant compared to the one that came originally with the MacBook Pro. Stock one is a Hitachi. I thought 5400 ones shouldnt be vibrating as much. Do you have the same issue?
Click to expand...

That's odd, I actually noticed significantly less vibration with the 1tb drive. I would see what you can do about getting it replaced.
 
Hey

Alright I'll get a replacement from them. Thanks Chase

PS: Can you feel any vibration when using this drive Chase?
 
Last edited:
Gimmic said:
Alright I'll get a replacement from them. Thanks Chase

PS: Can you feel any vibration when using this drive Chase?
Click to expand...

If I place both palms on the palm rests I feel a very slight vibration, not much at all, though (much less than the stock 250GB drive). Good luck.
 
Hadn't posted in a while, but I went ahead and bit the bullet. I put in a 1 TB WD10TPVT almost 2 months ago. No problems with the drive and I love that I quadrupled the space. Lately though, the superdrive sounds bad when I boot up. I guess if it dies soon, I'll try one of those Optibays and put in an SSD as my boot drive. Barely use the superdrive anyway, unless I'm running DVDs through MTR and Handbrake.:D
 
milage seems to vary

Hi Chase,

Recently did exactly the same upgrade as you did but seem to have a varying mileage, as my late 2008 macbook (5,1) seems to have become quite a bit slower since the upgrade.

my original disk was the Fujitsu MHZ2250BH and although the WDC WD10TPVT seems to work okay (no SMART errors) overall responsiveness seems to be quite a bit slower.

for example:
Fujitsu boot time 50sec
WDC boot time 107sec (more than two times slower)
(I did install a couple of apps after making the timemachine copy but this can't really explain the 57 sec more)

When I run Xbench om my disk it seems to be doing ok for most of the bench marks but sequential read looks terrible.

Sequential
Uncached Write 60.14 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 13.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 16.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 20.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random
Uncached Write 0.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 4.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 0.26 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 15.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Another odd thing in my particular case is that my drive does not show up in the "start up" preference panel (which I understand from other threads is not a good sign and could slow down the boot up). I am interested to find out if yours does show as I may simply be facing a time machine issue i.s.o a drive issue (still would not really know how to recover without doing a reinstall though).

Lastly I do seem to get the occasional spinning beach ball, not very often (some people on newer unibodies report every 30sec) but still much more often than on my old drive

Below some details from the system info.
As you can see the system seems to be running at the Sata-II speed (which I understood could be an issue for some of the newer models so I am interested to hear at which speed your connection is running)

Product: MCP79 AHCI
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

WDC WD10TPVT-00HT5T0:

Capacity: 1 TB (1.000.204.886.016 bytes)
Model: WDC WD10TPVT-00HT5T0
Revision: 01.01A01
Serial Number: WD-**********
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 5200
Medium Type: Rotational
Partition Map Type: MBR (Master Boot Record)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Macintosh OS X:
Capacity: 1 TB (1.000.204.853.760 bytes)
Available: 409,16 GB (409.158.602.752 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s1
Mount Point: /

(there are some instructions on the net explaining how to boot to older EFI 1.6 but as far as I have been able to under stand this should not be needed for the late 2008 macbook)

Any feedback or ideas on how to improve things are more than welcome.
If I can not get things at least a little bit better I am afraid I will need to go back to my original setup.

Regards
Remi
 
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