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MacBook Pro HDD Upgrade Options

zachcheatham

zachcheatham

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 7, 2009
123
0
St. Louis, Missouri
I decided to go ahead and update to a new 500 GB Hard Drive for my 13" MBP (mid-2009). I bought a WD Scorpio Blue with 5400rpm. It turns out that it does do the frequent parking when the computer is idle and is extremely annoying. I don't want to do HDAPM in fear of battery life loss.

I'm going to return this drive and buy a new one. But which drive is going to not have this problem, be as fast, cool, quiet, and have low power consumption. I'm still going to get the same specs as that WD one I have now that also doesn't have any drop protection.

Any Suggestions?

And by the way, the stock drive that came with my mbp was a Hitachi 160GB 5400rpm.
 
zachcheatham said:
I decided to go ahead and update to a new 500 GB Hard Drive for my 13" MBP (mid-2009). I bought a WD Scorpio Blue with 5400rpm. It turns out that it does do the frequent parking when the computer is idle and is extremely annoying. I don't want to do HDAPM in fear of battery life loss.

I'm going to return this drive and buy a new one. But which drive is going to not have this problem, be as fast, cool, quiet, and have low power consumption. I'm still going to get the same specs as that WD one I have now that also doesn't have any drop protection.

Any Suggestions?

And by the way, the stock drive that came with my mbp was a Hitachi 160GB 5400rpm.
Click to expand...

I just put this drive in my mid-09 13" MBP - runs great, no extra noise or vibration. Very little change in my battery life as well.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9500420AS/
 
I have the Hitachi 7,200 rpm 500 GB HD and it does not have the "beachball" issue. The Seagate Momentus 7,200 rpm 500 GB HD is also good, I used one for a while in my MBP and swapped it out only because I wanted to try the Hitachi, IMO either drive is good, both are quiet, fast, and have no perceptible vibration. There is also the Momentus XT hybrid drive with 4 GB of SSD memory to consider. I too had the beachball issue with the Sccorpio Blue, which works fine in a USB enclosure.
 
I also upgraded to the Hitachi 7,200 RPM 500gb drive. No complaints so far. Had it for less than a week though, so obviously haven't used it for very long...
 
I have a scorpio black that I have had for a few months, and I have never had that parking issue, nor have I had decreased battery life.
 
I have a 2010 Macbook Pro 13".

I had a Seagate Momentus XT in mine and it's fast-very fast. It also drains your battery just as fast-I never got more than 3-3:30 of runtime on a charge. This drive also has issues with constant spindown/spinup that even a firmware update did not fix.

I replaced it with a WD AV drive with 32MB cache and so far so good-8 hours on a charge, and only slightly slower than the Momentus XT.

And BTW the WD AV drives do not seem to have the head parking issue found with other WD drives-the one I have (WD5000BUDT) is silent.
 
pscraig said:
I have a 2010 Macbook Pro 13".

I had a Seagate Momentus XT in mine and it's fast-very fast. It also drains your battery just as fast-I never got more than 3-3:30 of runtime on a charge. This drive also has issues with constant spindown/spinup that even a firmware update did not fix.

I replaced it with a WD AV drive with 32MB cache and so far so good-8 hours on a charge, and only slightly slower than the Momentus XT.

And BTW the WD AV drives do not seem to have the head parking issue found with other WD drives-the one I have (WD5000BUDT) is silent.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, how is your battery life?

I am looking to replace my original 250GB hard drive with one with at least 500GB of storage.
 
i have a Hitachi HTS725050A9A364

its quiet an get decent life out of the battery 5 hours after almost a year on my mbp 13
 
Wd Av-25

pscraig said:
I have a 2010 Macbook Pro 13".

I had a Seagate Momentus XT in mine and it's fast-very fast. It also drains your battery just as fast-I never got more than 3-3:30 of runtime on a charge. This drive also has issues with constant spindown/spinup that even a firmware update did not fix.

I replaced it with a WD AV drive with 32MB cache and so far so good-8 hours on a charge, and only slightly slower than the Momentus XT.

And BTW the WD AV drives do not seem to have the head parking issue found with other WD drives-the one I have (WD5000BUDT) is silent.
Click to expand...

Does anyone else have experience with the AV-25?
 
blue

So, what is the issue with the Western Digital Scorpio Blue? Isn't there some terminal command one can do to enable/disable the head parking?
 
I got a Hitachi 500gb 7200 drive when Newegg was running a special a couple weeks ago. List $74, instant rebate $15, mail in rebate $10, and coupon code of $6, so final cost was $44, with free shipping. Great drive, fast and completely silent. Best $44 I ever spent.
 
I use a 640GB 7200RPM Samsung HDD and it's great so far! I've had it since around Christmas and I can say nothing but good things about it. It does not effect battery life at all. It's just as quiet as the stock HDD. Last but not least, its faster than the stock HDD. Here is a link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ckTab=true&Keywords=(keywords)#scrollFullInfo

The price on this thing is really good IMO. It was around 89 bucks and now it's down to 69 I believe. It also doesn't do any of that parking stuff you were complaining about. All would work fine!
 
alust2013 said:
I have a scorpio black that I have had for a few months, and I have never had that parking issue, nor have I had decreased battery life.
Click to expand...
What MBP do you have with the SD Black in it? Thinking of trying one of the 750GB drives in my 2009 MBP, can anyone confirm it works in that model, with the 1.7 firmware? The 500GB Scorpio Blue just wasn't right, with constant beachballs and stuttering/stalling. So I am a little leery of WD drives after that experiance.
 
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