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HDD suggestions *other than* SSD or Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid

S

SteveNYC

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 27, 2010
29
0
Guess...
Just curious as to whether or not there is a consensus on a recommended hard drive other than an SSD or the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid?

I received my new 2010 13" MBP yesterday and installed a new 500GB Seagate Momentus XT into the unit. Off of a clean install of OS X, the system worked fine. I did the obligatory software update to 10.6.5 as well as four other updates and it never got past the grey boot up screen. Couldn't get past that no matter what I tried.

So unfortunately, this has soured by tastebuds on the Seagate. There have been numerous posts about issues with this HDD on Newegg.com and I knew that going in, so I'm not looking to particularly rehash it. I tried, it didn't work, time to move on. It will go back.

I'm not interested in paying the steep price for performance that an SSD involves. I would prefer to have the additional capacity (320GB+). That said, are there any particular recommendations for a reliable, fast 500GB HDD for my new MBP? Or is it more of a situation where they're all with 1-2% of each other? The unit with most/best reviews seems to be the Seagate Momentus 7200.4. I'm still a little bit bitter about Seagate at the moment, but I'm willing to keep an open mind.

Thanks to all in advance.
 
Check out the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB. I have the 320GB model, and it's a great drive. Not too much noise, heat, vibration, etc. Good performance, and no issues with it.
 
I have had good results from both a Seagate Momentous :cool: (not the XT) and a Hitachi :cool: - both 7,200 rpm 500GB. Now running the Hitachi, both have virtually no vibration or noise in my 15" 2009 MBP and are fast enough for the non-intensive work I do. I did have a very bad experience with a WD Scorpio Blue 500MB drive :( , constant beachballs, sloooooow keyboard input due to stalls, etc. Same drive works great in a USB case. Others have had good luck with the same drive, so the cause is not clear, firmware and poor insulation for the HD to computer SATA cable have been suggested.
Try the Seagate or Hitachi and if it doesn't work well put it in a USB case and try the other one! :eek:
 
I just installed the Samsung Spinpoint 640GB 7200RPM about a week ago, and am satisfied so far.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152237

I don't run the computer off it though. I use it for an internal media drive. It is where my home folder is located. I have it installed via an OptiBay casing with a 60GB Vertex 2 SSD as my boot drive.

So I cannot comment on the boot speed, but the reviews on Newegg have been good. It is the biggest 7200 RPM laptop drive you can get.

I do run Windows 7 off it, one of these days I will go see what it rates the drive.
 
TheBaconKing said:
I just installed the Samsung Spinpoint 640GB 7200RPM about a week ago, and am satisfied so far.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152237

I don't run the computer off it though. I use it for an internal media drive. It is where my home folder is located. I have it installed via an OptiBay casing with a 60GB Vertex 2 SSD as my boot drive.

So I cannot comment on the boot speed, but the reviews on Newegg have been good. It is the biggest 7200 RPM laptop drive you can get.

I do run Windows 7 off it, one of these days I will go see what it rates the drive.
Click to expand...

I actually installed it about a week ago. It's great. MUCH faster than the replaced stock drive. I would recommend it.
 
alust2013 said:
Check out the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB. I have the 320GB model, and it's a great drive. Not too much noise, heat, vibration, etc. Good performance, and no issues with it.
Click to expand...

I have this one, great drive! Can get hot at times but I'm sure that's as much the fault of the Macbook as it is of the drive.
 
hmm

which one to get, Hitachi Travelstar or Scorpio Blue/black? 5400 rpm or 7200rpm? I want an HD that is faster than my current 2010 HDD in my MBP 13" but feels like I haven't replaced the HDD at all....

i want silence! no vibration! and SPEEEEED!
 
You can get clunkers with both Seagate and WD. I had to exchange my Scorpio Black 320GB three times to get the infamous head load cycle noise down to an acceptable level; also, I had one with spindle vibration. After that, I ran the WD for over a year with no problems in my MBP Early 2009 17" UB.

Yesterday, I installed the Seagate XT Hybrid 500GB. It's virtually silent. The spindle "rushing air" sound is actually less than the WD was, and no head load cycling annoyance. Seek noise is pretty much nil, unless I put my ear to the palm rest.

The few speed tests I've run show it to be slightly faster than the WD [in file copy]. I haven't done enough with the system on the whole, yet, to expect the SSD to kick in.
 
gr8tfly said:
You can get clunkers with both Seagate and WD. I had to exchange my Scorpio Black 320GB three times to get the infamous head load cycle noise down to an acceptable level; also, I had one with spindle vibration. After that, I ran the WD for over a year with no problems in my MBP Early 2009 17" UB.

Yesterday, I installed the Seagate XT Hybrid 500GB. It's virtually silent. The spindle "rushing air" sound is actually less than the WD was, and no head load cycling annoyance. Seek noise is pretty much nil, unless I put my ear to the palm rest.

The few speed tests I've run show it to be slightly faster than the WD [in file copy]. I haven't done enough with the system on the whole, yet, to expect the SSD to kick in.
Click to expand...

there's a lot of complaints about the seagate momentus xt on the seagate forum. Most were pleased with the drive for 3 weeks and then once they updated to 10.6.4-10.6.5 they started to get problems.

Have you updated at all? You should check out this thread and see if you have any of the problems listed that you haven't quite noticed yet.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Moment...ms-with-Momentus-XT-please-come-in/td-p/59455
 
phas3 said:
there's a lot of complaints about the seagate momentus xt on the seagate forum. Most were pleased with the drive for 3 weeks and then once they updated to 10.6.4-10.6.5 they started to get problems.

Have you updated at all? You should check out this thread and see if you have any of the problems listed that you haven't quite noticed yet.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Moment...ms-with-Momentus-XT-please-come-in/td-p/59455
Click to expand...

I'm running 10.6.5. I just used Disk Utility's Restore function to clone the WD onto it.

Before deciding on the drive, I did read that thread, and many reviews at Amazon, Newegg, and Seagate. The overall impression was that problems were scattered, and the overall rate of complaints wasn't all that different than I'd seen in reviews and threads on the WD drive.

I was somewhat concerened with the firmware version fixing or not fixing some issues (SD22 vs. SD23). However, SD23 has been out for quite a while, and if there were some common problem, it should show up as a increase in reports. I hadn't seen that happen, so I figured I'd go ahead and give it a shot. (BTW, mine came factory loaded with SD23.)

I'm going to play around with different app scenarios, check repeated boot times, and see if there's any chance in battery life (I've seen over 6:30 on the machine with the WD - it'll be interesting to see what change there is, if any), etc.

One thing I noticed (and forgot to mention in my previous post) was the drive seems to run a bit cooler. I haven't actually taken any measurements, though. I'm just going off how the palm rest feels (not too scientific, I know).
 
gr8tfly said:
I'm running 10.6.5. I just used Disk Utility's Restore function to clone the WD onto it.

Before deciding on the drive, I did read that thread, and many reviews at Amazon, Newegg, and Seagate. The overall impression was that problems were scattered, and the overall rate of complaints wasn't all that different than I'd seen in reviews and threads on the WD drive.

I was somewhat concerened with the firmware version fixing or not fixing some issues (SD22 vs. SD23). However, SD23 has been out for quite a while, and if there were some common problem, it should show up as a increase in reports. I hadn't seen that happen, so I figured I'd go ahead and give it a shot. (BTW, mine came factory loaded with SD23.)

I'm going to play around with different app scenarios, check repeated boot times, and see if there's any chance in battery life (I've seen over 6:30 on the machine with the WD - it'll be interesting to see what change there is, if any), etc.

One thing I noticed (and forgot to mention in my previous post) was the drive seems to run a bit cooler. I haven't actually taken any measurements, though. I'm just going off how the palm rest feels (not too scientific, I know).
Click to expand...

sweet, I had my eye on the XT first until I read the seagate forum...I'm iffy now. It costs a little bit more than the regular 7200rpm drives, but with that hybrid-ssd feature it seems worth it. Where did you buy your XT from?

I want to pull the trigger on the XT but it seems like its a coin toss with the complaints on it. Maybe I will just do a coin toss.:eek:
 
I have 3 seagate 500GB XT hybrids and have no issues. The only problem I had in my MBP 13 was disk space. 500GB XT was too small. Upgraded to the new seagate 750GB 7200 drive and so far it's only slightly slower than the XT at boot time.

I also own hitachi 500gb 7200s and 3 WD 320GB 7200 (black label) drives. All three XT drives are now in Windows laptops.

You can get lemons no matter the brand. The only brand I've been burned by is samsung. For now the new 750 is a good balance of capacity and performance.

Cheers,
 
phas3 said:
sweet, I had my eye on the XT first until I read the seagate forum...I'm iffy now. It costs a little bit more than the regular 7200rpm drives, but with that hybrid-ssd feature it seems worth it. Where did you buy your XT from?

I want to pull the trigger on the XT but it seems like its a coin toss with the complaints on it. Maybe I will just do a coin toss.:eek:
Click to expand...

Got it from Amazon. And, if course, the next day it went on sale at Newegg... Both companies are good choices, though.

"Coin toss" is a good way to put it. Unfortunately, it seems to apply, to some extent, to both Seagate and WD. Anyway, Amazon has a very good exchange policy - if the coin goes the other way... ;)
 
Fingers crossed

Well, first off, thank you all for the recommendations.

I went back to the Samsung Momentus XT Hybrid and tried one more time.

I erased the drive and reinstalled OS X and it worked fine (like last time). I then installed each of the five updates one at a time and rebooted each time for the Safari and the 10.6.5 updates. At this point the first time around, I could not boot into OS X. This time it went through fine.

I went immediately into System Preferences to adjust the Trackpad options. System Preferences beachballed on the second option and never let go. ARGGGHHH... So I rebooted the machine. The problem went away and has not come back.

It's been over 24 hours and no further problems have occurred (please don't let that comment jinx me). To be honest, I don't trust this drive at the moment, but I'm going to stick with it because of the performance benefit. But I can't honestly say that I would recommend this drive at this time.

It really is a coin toss with this drive. There are far too many comments on this one particular Seagate model in the Seagate forums to consider this par for the course with other models. I know lemons happen, but there's no drive that Seagate currently sells that elicit the number of comments from owners like the Momentus XT Hybrid.

Finger's crossed. Thanks again everyone.
 
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