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Macbook Pro 13" Hard Drive suggestions...

W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,718
9
Hello,

Am going to need to upgrade the hard drive of my new macbook pro 13" to a 500 gig hhd.... Can someone suggest one that is a good balance of speed/battery life/quiet? Pretty much equal parts with a slight leaning towards speed....


Thanks,

r.
 
+1 on the 7200rpm being a speed boost.

Its funny because I know there will be naysayers in this thread but they are wrong.

Having a 7200 rpm drive will make you feel like you have a desktop. I always upgrade my machines and I upgrade machines all the time at work. Huge difference.
 
chrono1081 said:
+1 on the 7200rpm being a speed boost.

Its funny because I know there will be naysayers in this thread but they are wrong.

Having a 7200 rpm drive will make you feel like you have a desktop. I always upgrade my machines and I upgrade machines all the time at work. Huge difference.
Click to expand...

Also agree 7200 is great, i dont think that your battery life is altered much by the upgrade either.
 
Thanks very much,

Is that drive recommended over a Western Digital? Does WD even have a 7200rpm 500gb laptop hd?


thanks,

r.
 
whyrichard said:
How is the Scorpio Black 320GB compare, besides the gb?

r.
Click to expand...

Honestly I can't tell you from personal experience, but several members here could. My Scorpio Blue is the 5400 rpm version and it is faster than the stock drive and runs silent and cool. I know some have complained about vibrations, heat and battery life with the Black and others swear they have no problems at all. One of the other problems with the WD drives and the unibodies is that the WD sudden motion sensor often conflicts with Apple's similar feature. I actually turned off the Apple sudden motion sensor in OS X on my Scorpio Blue to hopefully avoid any of those issues.
 
whyrichard said:
How is the Scorpio Black 320GB compare, besides the gb?

r.
Click to expand...

Its a really nice drive. I upgraded from the scorpio blue (both 320gb) and noticed quite a speed increase. Everything seemed peppier..hard to exactly quantify it. but definitely faster.

At first I really noticed the vibrations and noise, not that it is bad, it is just more than the blue..now it just seems normal. doesn't bother me a bit.

Would definitely buy it again.

There are also I believe 2 versions, one with the drop sensor and one without. The cheaper one is the one you want.
 
emiljan said:
You will definitely see a speed boost going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm.
Click to expand...

chrono1081 said:
+1 on the 7200rpm being a speed boost.

Its funny because I know there will be naysayers in this thread but they are wrong.
Click to expand...

I was ready to naysay, until I found this article: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

It's a good read, and OP should find it interesting; I'll still stick with an SSD though :p

CJS7070 said:
I have a Seagate Momentus 2.5", 500GB, 7200RPM in my 13" MBP and it works awesome.
Click to expand...

Check out the article; doesn't look like you should bet the farm on your horse.
 
striatedglutes said:
I was ready to naysay, until I found this article: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

It's a good read, and OP should find it interesting; I'll still stick with an SSD though :p



Check out the article; doesn't look like you should bet the farm on your horse.
Click to expand...

You were ready to naysay and then thought you'd let the article do it for you, you mean? ;)
The spindle speed is simply not the determining factor in real world hard drive benchmarks.
Check out http://www.storagereview.com/ for comprehensive hard drive reviews.
 
chrono1081 said:
+1 on the 7200rpm being a speed boost.

Its funny because I know there will be naysayers in this thread but they are wrong.
Click to expand...


I have two machines, one has Seagate Momentus 2.5", 500GB, 5400RPM, and the other has Seagate Momentus 2.5", 500GB, 7200RPM. Recently I had to switch the hard drives so basically I went from the 5400 to the 7200 in the same machine.

It is FASTER, that's for sure, it really does help, and I would highly recommend people only get the 7200 going forward; it is only a few dollars more and it is well worth the money.
 
I had a 320GB Scorpio Black in my aluminum Macbook before I sold it. It was a nice speed boost over the stock 250GB 5400rpm hard disk.
 
striatedglutes said:
I was ready to naysay, until I found this article: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/1

It's a good read, and OP should find it interesting; I'll still stick with an SSD though :p



Check out the article; doesn't look like you should bet the farm on your horse.
Click to expand...

seems the hitachi in that article is an older 5200 rpm one...

for performance... hitachi is currently the fastest?
 
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