Just installed 320gb WD scorpio black 7200

[lidomkj]

I just got done cloning hard drive to external drive, installed OS X and it is unfortunately too late to reinstall the backup.

I have the aluminum macbook 2.4 with 4gb ram and everything definitely is zippier, but not so sure about the vibration. Hard to describe what everyone is referring to in other posts when I searched, but I feel what I can describe best as a low humming. The drive is quiet (same as the stock drive) and not making any noise. But I am feeling what I can describe best almost the same as the fan running high on any laptop without any associated noise though. I am just feeling this on wrist wrest/trackpad.

Is this the vibration people are referring to? The way I was reading into their descriptions was the drive was noisy and tons of vibration (like the computer was shaking ) or it was completely silent and they did not feel anything at all.

Is what I am noticing normal for this drive? Should it be silent without feeling anything? I bought it best buy for $127 so that I could easily return it if I was not happy with it. It is hard to say if I going to keep it or not after just using it for 15 minutes, but the faster speed and larger capacity from the 250 is nice.

I was on the fence about the 500gb 5400 or this drive, but I got this one since I just purchased the elgato eye tv from the Apple store last night and was hoping the faster drive would work better with video recording. I have 1tb NAS, so space was not a huge deal for me. Please let me know if my thought process is off base and should have used the 500gb 5400 drive. By the way, the eye TV at the Apple store was selling for $149 and I got them to match the price of $119 from the manufacturer website. Not a bad deal!

 

[finnschi]

I would Return it, just because of the price you payed, I was actually just looking into buying this exact drive! And saw it on newegg.com for 89$ I think ....


Also You are totaly right about NOT buying the 5400Rpm Drive! If storage is not a big deal for you, always go for the fastet you can get (If you dont need more than 64Gb Get a SSD!!! ) 5400Rpm Drives are far slower than the 7200Rpm drives

for example, even my IBM T40 with a IDE 7200Rpm Drive gets better benchmarks than my Macbooks 250Gb 5400Rpm !

Ps: just checked, my father got the Scorpio in his Thinkpad, and I dont feel vibrations or anything

 

[lidomkj]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I realize this is shady, but I was planning on buying from Newegg if I was keeping and return that one to Best Buy to save $40. I am bitter over their price matching having to be local competitors and do not feel guilty about. Please do not turn this into if I am right or wrong. Please just base your comments from my inital question. Thanks.

 

[acfusion29]

I would Return it, just because of the price you payed, I was actually just looking into buying this exact drive! And saw it on newegg.com for 89$ I think ....


Also You are totaly right about NOT buying the 5400Rpm Drive! If storage is not a big deal for you, always go for the fastet you can get (If you dont need more than 64Gb Get a SSD!!! ) 5400Rpm Drives are far slower than the 7200Rpm drives

for example, even my IBM T40 with a IDE 7200Rpm Drive gets better benchmarks than my Macbooks 250Gb 5400Rpm !

Ps: just checked, my father got the Scorpio in his Thinkpad, and I dont feel vibrations or anything

What the OP is experiencing is completely normal.

I bought the 320GB HD 7200RPM scorpio black and it was vibrating like crazy.... So I went back to the store and got the 400GB scorpio blue 5400RPM.

 

[madmaxmedia]

I have the 320GB Scorpio Blue 5400 RPM and it is fine (no vibration.)

 

[finnschi]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I realize this is shady, but I was planning on buying from Newegg if I was keeping and return that one to Best Buy to save $40. I am bitter over their price matching having to be local competitors and do not feel guilty about. Please do not turn this into if I am right or wrong. Please just base your comments from my inital question. Thanks.

I am sorry I insulted you in any way, it just sounded like you didn't know that Newegg is lots cheaper! if you like to buy your stuff local its your choice of course its just me as a poor student always thinking about how to get stuff cheaper!

 

[dukebound85]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I realize this is shady, but I was planning on buying from Newegg if I was keeping and return that one to Best Buy to save $40. I am bitter over their price matching having to be local competitors and do not feel guilty about. Please do not turn this into if I am right or wrong. Please just base your comments from my inital question. Thanks.

good luck returning without a receipt. if anything, they will let you swap it for an identical one. happened to me with a monitor that i bought there and took it back since od stuck pixels

 

[acfusion29]

I have the 320GB Scorpio Blue 5400 RPM and it is fine (no vibration.)

That's cause the 7200RPM ones are the ones that vibrate. They are more powerful.

 

[Jinsou]

I just got done cloning hard drive to external drive, installed OS X and it is unfortunately too late to reinstall the backup.

I have the aluminum macbook 2.4 with 4gb ram and everything definitely is zippier, but not so sure about the vibration. Hard to describe what everyone is referring to in other posts when I searched, but I feel what I can describe best as a low humming. The drive is quiet (same as the stock drive) and not making any noise. But I am feeling what I can describe best almost the same as the fan running high on any laptop without any associated noise though. I am just feeling this on wrist wrest/trackpad.

Is this the vibration people are referring to? The way I was reading into their descriptions was the drive was noisy and tons of vibration (like the computer was shaking ) or it was completely silent and they did not feel anything at all.

Is what I am noticing normal for this drive? Should it be silent without feeling anything? I bought it best buy for $127 so that I could easily return it if I was not happy with it. It is hard to say if I going to keep it or not after just using it for 15 minutes, but the faster speed and larger capacity from the 250 is nice.

I was on the fence about the 500gb 5400 or this drive, but I got this one since I just purchased the elgato eye tv from the Apple store last night and was hoping the faster drive would work better with video recording. I have 1tb NAS, so space was not a huge deal for me. Please let me know if my thought process is off base and should have used the 500gb 5400 drive. By the way, the eye TV at the Apple store was selling for $149 and I got them to match the price of $119 from the manufacturer website. Not a bad deal!

Any comments on performance?

 

[finnschi]

Any comments on performance?

Jup, 7200Rpm drives are serioulsy 25% FASTER, AND you will FEEL taht performance!! for example on my macbook my Harddrive is bottlenecking my system big time! just a look at my Windows7 score( I know bad bad bad benchmark shows that my standart 320gb HDD shows a score of 3.0 the rest of my system got scores over 5 (apart from grapics they where like 4.4...)
On my Thinkpad rocking a 7200rpm Drive (IDE) and I get a score of 5.2 for the disk...

I also got the same margin when running Geekbench!

I need new hardrive

 

[acfusion29]

Jup, 7200Rpm drives are serioulsy 25% FASTER, AND you will FEEL taht performance!! for example on my macbook my Harddrive is bottlenecking my system big time! just a look at my Windows7 score( I know bad bad bad benchmark shows that my standart 320gb HDD shows a score of 3.0 the rest of my system got scores over 5 (apart from grapics they where like 4.4...)
On my Thinkpad rocking a 7200rpm Drive (IDE) and I get a score of 5.2 for the disk...

I also got the same margin when running Geekbench!

I need new hardrive

I personally did not see much of a difference... so what that my computer takes an extra 5seconds to load with 5400RPM, I NEVER TURN IT OFF! And so what that my apps take an extra 2 seconds to load...

c'mon, the difference isn't too much and isn't worth getting if your mac is gonna be a vibrator.

 

[Flanno]

I agree with the above poster. The difference might be large with synthetic benchmarks but that doesn't always translate into real world performance, especially when you compare 7200rpm drives against the newer high capacity 5400rpm ones which due to sheer platter size (the WD 500gig Scorpio Blue has only 2 250gig platters) and data density narrow the gap even further. Of course if a second or two makes a difference in opening apps or you can percieve a performance increase in using your OS, then it might be worth it to some people. But others may not like the vibrations 7200rpm's bring and stick with slightly slower 5400rpm drives.

I'm only a new mac user myself and have the 2.4/250gig unibody macbook, so will probably hold off for the Seagate 500gig 7200rpm which is due out very soon, depending on user reviews of course.

 

[ref26]

I recently installed a Seagate 320gb 7200rpm drive in my Blackbook and I haven't noticed any increase in noise/vibration/heat. I'm quite pleased with it.

 

[technojinn]

i think that all of the 7200 rpm drives vibrate just a bit. i think it is because of their speed. i have a seagate 7200.3, 320 rpm, and there seems to be a low hum. but these drive are in fact faster than the 5400 rpm drive. you can notice the difference when copying files for example.

 

[finnschi]

I personally did not see much of a difference... so what that my computer takes an extra 5seconds to load with 5400RPM, I NEVER TURN IT OFF! And so what that my apps take an extra 2 seconds to load...

c'mon, the difference isn't too much and isn't worth getting if your mac is gonna be a vibrator.

Well From my personal expirience, I don't agree with you because I tested lots of laptops, espacially IBM Thinkpads, and its often the Harddrives which are causing the laptops to slow Down, if I compare my t40 7200Rpm VS. T40 5400Rpm, everything is allot snappier, and you can tell the difference! Since my sister got the exact same notebook as me, exept for the HDD i hav a direct comparison, and its a huge leap!

Of course it always depends on what you are doing, for example if you are a photographer, you probably want more speed than space, to skip thru your pictures more quickly (Aperture benchmarks anyone?) Different for video editing guys, they need LOTS of space so they rather have lots of space than a faster HDD...

I don't think it matters allot for the average home user! since surfing the web and Im'ing doesent use the harddrive that much (also considering that the newest macbooks all have 2Gb Ram....)

well in my eyes its a total reasonable price for that kind of speed inprovements

 

[finnschi]

i think that all of the 7200 rpm drives vibrate just a bit. i think it is because of their speed. i have a seagate 7200.3, 320 rpm, and there seems to be a low hum. but these drive are in fact faster than the 5400 rpm drive. you can notice the difference when copying files for example.

Weird haven't noticed that at all on my Thinkpad! I'll check

 

[technojinn]

if you are really picky, you might notice it on the thinkpad as well. Or at least you can notice that they are noisier than 5400 rpm drive, regardless of the computer brand. However, the aluminum probably does amplify the noise a bit. maybe it does not have the noise deadening property of plastic.

 

[lidomkj]

I am sorry I insulted you in any way, it just sounded like you didn't know that Newegg is lots cheaper! if you like to buy your stuff local its your choice of course its just me as a poor student always thinking about how to get stuff cheaper!

You did not insult me at all! I knew about their prices and thanks for pointing it out for someone who might not know. I was just telling you my plan was to buy from best buy since i can try and return same day if necessary. For something like this, much easier and quicker to handle in a store. I was pissed that Best Buy would not match prices from brick and mortar stores that are not in the local area. So someone in new york can get prices matched with J&R, but not someone in another state. I think this price match is unfair considering that Apple matched the eGalto website and Best Buy would not match for me. So I am going to work around it.

I am going to keep the one in my laptop, package the newegg and return with receipt to bestbuy. I am all about saving money....

 

[acfusion29]

Weird haven't noticed that at all on my Thinkpad! I'll check

Is your Thinkpad a MacBook? Is this an IBM forum? No.

All Aluminum MacBook's vibrate with the 7200RPM drive. If you don't notice it, then congrats because it bugged the hell out of me.

 

[eman]

I have a 320gb WD scorpio black 7200 in my blackbook (2.4 w/4Gb of ram). The macbook seems a little faster, albeit, the geekbench scores weren't any better and no vibration here.

 

[finnschi]

Is your Thinkpad a MacBook? Is this an IBM forum? No.

All Aluminum MacBook's vibrate with the 7200RPM drive. If you don't notice it, then congrats because it bugged the hell out of me.

Well you are right, I just tried to contibute to this topic with all my knowledge, and I didn't think about the macbook amplifiing the hard drives vibrations! I just have 3 laptops, all equiped with 7200Rpm Drives and non of them is vibrating, at least not that I can notice it during normal use, I think the worst this is still the Superdrive, man thats a loud little .... ...

 

[lidomkj]

I am now restoring the backup. One thing I noticed is that the speed is much faster. Super duper said during the initial backup it was 10-12mbs and the restore is running at 20-２５　ｍｂｓ．　

 

[cogsinister]

I personally did not see much of a difference... so what that my computer takes an extra 5seconds to load with 5400RPM, I NEVER TURN IT OFF! And so what that my apps take an extra 2 seconds to load...

c'mon, the difference isn't too much and isn't worth getting if your mac is gonna be a vibrator.

My Thinkpad T41 has a 7200 speed drive in it, and to be honest ive never been aware of the drive being any faster than a 5200......

But maybe with the far faster ally MB a 7200 drive could make quite a difference......

 

[acfusion29]

My Thinkpad T41 has a 7200 speed drive in it, and to be honest ive never been aware of the drive being any faster than a 5200......

But maybe with the far faster ally MB a 7200 drive could make quite a difference......

MacBook's and Thinkpad's aren't built the same way.

Anyways.. my freggin 400GB Scorpio is clicking!!!! I have to go for another exchange. I tried repairing the permissions and that didn't help. I have horrible luck.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I put the 320 scorpio black in my MBP, too. It is faster but does vibrate. Since it sits primarily on my desk it doesn't bother me. It actually feels kind of good in my lap if I position it just right.