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hard drive upgrade for macbook

aureiden

aureiden

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2007
72
0
USA
To upgrade my MacBook, which hard drive from a third-party retailer would you recommend? I'm looking to get 120 or 160 GB.


thanks!
n
 
Seagate is also good.

BTW if you need speed, buy a 7200RPM (battery sucker) or a SSD (batter sipper)
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

cherry su, could you clarify what you mean by "battery sucker" and "battery sipper?"
 
He/she means that the sucker will drain your battery a lot faster and SSD, will sip at it and use very little battery power s it will last longer.
 
aureiden said:
To upgrade my MacBook, which hard drive from a third-party retailer would you recommend? I'm looking to get 120 or 160 GB.
Click to expand...

I've had the best luck with Seagate and Samsung 2.5" drives. I've only had two WD drives (both 3.5") and both failed after 3 years and 11 months. I've had one Hitachi 3.5" drive and it still works great (about 8 years old).

Do you want access speed (7200 rpm) or capacity (5400 rpm). Both use battery charge at about the same rate.
 
Cave Man said:
I've had the best luck with Seagate and Samsung 2.5" drives. I've only had two WD drives (both 3.5") and both failed after 3 years and 11 months. I've had one Hitachi 3.5" drive and it still works great (about 8 years old).

Do you want access speed (7200 rpm) or capacity (5400 rpm). Both use battery charge at about the same rate.
Click to expand...

Good to know.

So does access speed have nothing to do with how much RAM you have? And how is the capacity affected by the RPM? If it's 160 GB for instance, that's how much space you'll be getting, isn't it?
 
aureiden said:
So does access speed have nothing to do with how much RAM you have? And how is the capacity affected by the RPM? If it's 160 GB for instance, that's how much space you'll be getting, isn't it?
Click to expand...

There's a trade-off, but it's not so much today as it was a year or two ago. Today's 5400 rpm drives are really fast at data access. If you set a price to your budget, then you can get a 7200 rpm drive with less capacity than a 5400 rpm drive. If you compare a 250gb/5400rpm drive to a 160gb/7200rpm drive, the 5400 drive will pass the 7200 drive's performance at about 130 gb of data. Of course, the 7200 drive can't touch the 5400 beyond 160 gigs. :)

Personally, I'd go for a larger capacity 5400 drive, unless you have a compelling need for the 7200 drive. Your ram should have little impact on drive performance, unless you need a lot of scratch disk.
 
Cave Man said:
There's a trade-off, but it's not so much today as it was a year or two ago. Today's 5400 rpm drives are really fast at data access. If you set a price to your budget, then you can get a 7200 rpm drive with less capacity than a 5400 rpm drive. If you compare a 250gb/5400rpm drive to a 160gb/7200rpm drive, the 5400 drive will pass the 7200 drive's performance at about 130 gb of data. Of course, the 7200 drive can't touch the 5400 beyond 160 gigs. :)

Personally, I'd go for a larger capacity 5400 drive, unless you have a compelling need for the 7200 drive. Your ram should have little impact on drive performance, unless you need a lot of scratch disk.
Click to expand...

All righty. Thanks for your help.
 
Can we stop with the myth that a 7200rpm drive uses more battery power when that simply isn't the case?

Those drives are designed to be energy saving and of course they run faster and find information faster than a 5400rpm drive, thus spin for less time.
 
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