Macbook (13) Hard Drive Upgrade DIY

[ldneil]

hi everyone, Just wanted to ask if anyone had installed the 200GB Seagate Drive in a 13" Macbook, its this model:

Momentus 7200.2 SATA 3.0Gb/s 200-GB Laptop Hard Drive

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...8a3d010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&reqPage=Model

Im thinking about this as currently I just have a 60gb drive and Im spending a lot of time burning stuff off to disc. This drive is SATA 300, Im no expert but is this the right interface for the Macbook 13"?

I have MB c2d 1.83/2gb(ram_upgraded)/60gb model - (late 2006 version)

hey thanks for your help!

cheers

_neil_

 

[ldneil]

anyine know if the macbook 13 can take a SATA 300 drive? thanks! _neil_

 

[Artagra]

Hi Neil

I tried two different Seagate 7200.2 200gb HDDs yesterady in my macbook, and couldn't get either one working I'm not sure if it's the SATA 3.0gb nature of the drive or the Anti Shock stuff that's causing issues (both drives are the anti shock type - ST9200420ASG - there is a ST9200420AS , without the anti shock). It has a jumper for switching between 1.5gbps and 3gbps, but both ways it doesn't work. Also tried putting the jumper in all 4 possible places (1-2, 2-3, 3-4, off) and none work.

I'm not sure if there's a way to turn off the shock protection, if that's causing the problem? There's no technical reason the drive shouldn't work. Pretty frustrating - I know have two awesome drives for macbooks that don't work!

Artagra

 

[ldneil]

hey Artagra ! ok thanks for the reply! well I guess I am not going to be able to buy one of these drives then

Does the drive work ok in another machine? If so I guess we can say that it is incompatible with the Macbook. Hows about the technical documents for the drive are there any tips in there for getting around this problem that u think might be related to the shock protection?

Ive been looking at this the past few hours and there is very little information about how to get these drives working with Macbooks!

anyway thanks for your help on this one!

_neil_

 

[Artagra]

I tried the drives in our test bench at work on Monday, and I couldn't get either of them to work. Now this really puzzles me - one DOA drive is unusual, two is highly improbable (but still not impossible).

A couple of scenarios:

1. Both drives are faulty
2. These drives are highly incompatible - wouldn't work in the Macbook, wouldn't work on a desktop machine that definitely supports 3gb SATA - which is pretty wierd.... the macbook I can understand, but the desktop motherboard was chosen for it's compatibility (it's a motherboard we use for testing components)
3. The macbook somehow killed both drives - unlikely.
4. I'm missing something blatantly obvious (never suspect dodgy hardware if a stupid user could be the cause!)

The drive has jumper for changing from 3gb to 1.5gb (SATA 1 to SATA 2) but it doesn't have any effect. As far as I can see judging by Seagate's documentation and the drive itself there's no way to disable the anti shock, so I can't try that. As far as I know my Macbook has the latest firmware, but I'm a bit of a Mac noob - anybody got anything to suggest?

 

[Artagra]

Am I correct in thinking the sudden motion sensor for the macbook is completely independent of the hard drive? I think I'm going to get one of these drives swapped out for the 200gb version without the anti shock technology - maybe that's part of what's causing the problem?

 

[Artagra]

Well, amazingly enough both drives where faulty - seems they must have been dropped / mishandled at some point between being allocated to my company (and packaged together) and being handed to my driver. I'm getting a pair of replacements tomorrow - will report back here if I get them working.

 

[Artagra]

I've installed both drives and they both work 100% - very quick, btw! No problems with the sudden motion sensor conflicting with gshock sensor, but considering the mac already has a sensor I would recommend you may aswell go for the cheaper version of the drive without it.

 

[garrett.min]

Macbook & Seagate SATA 3.0 inquiry

Artgra,

I am considering a exact HD replacement as you have made with your Seagate Momentus 7200.2 200gb SATA3. in to a brand new 13" Macbook 2.2ghz with 4GB ram.

In the Macbook system profiler, under SATA, it specs the Macbook Motherboard with only SATA 1.5 OR 150MB/sec. A controller called: Intel ICH8-M AHCI:

I had hoped that the Macbook would be a SATA 3.0GB or 300MB/sec. I wonder if there is a way to upgrade the contoller or os for SATA 3.0GB?

My question for you is have you noticed a difference in the speed of OS/X since you replaced it with a SATA3.0GB with 7200RPM & 16MB Cache?

I just ran a benchmark called XBench on my macbook. My stock Hitachi 5400RPM SATA 1.5 didn't get a very good score. Uncached Read/Write scores were less than 50MB/sec. Not even close to SATA 1.5.

If you ran the XBench on your Macbook with the Momentus 7200 we could exchange our benchmarks and see the difference in performance. Here is XBench: http://www.xbench.com/ give it a try and email your benchmarks to me for comparison? Is it faster? Worth the investment?

I am hoping to get my OS moving as quick as possible and this Seagate Momentus looks like the best drive for the job.

Let me know your review.
Thanks!
Garrett Min
Garrett_Min@Yahoo.com

I've installed both drives and they both work 100% - very quick, btw! No problems with the sudden motion sensor conflicting with gshock sensor, but considering the mac already has a sensor I would recommend you may aswell go for the cheaper version of the drive without it.

 

[Cave Man]

I had hoped that the Macbook would be a SATA 3.0GB or 300MB/sec. I wonder if there is a way to upgrade the contoller or os for SATA 3.0GB?

You cannot change the controller in your MacBook.

My question for you is have you noticed a difference in the speed of OS/X since you replaced it with a SATA3.0GB with 7200RPM & 16MB Cache?

If you want speed, buy a 320 gig 5400 rpm 8 mb Samsung or Western Digital drive. Much more cost effective.

 

[mazzy150]

i replaced my 06 model macbook, core duo proccessor, hardrive with a 320gb sata 300 7200rpm scorpio blackm so much faster now, always go with a higher rpm, alot faster. what u may have to do is connect the driver externally, fromat it using disk utility to a mac os journaled, then use superduper to clone your drive, then replace your internal with the new one that has jsut been made into a bootable clone, and startup, then go to preferences and select the correct startup disc (ur new one)