Mbp Hd 200 Gb

[signatus]

I'm about to buy an MBP and I have the option to have the 200 GB HD at 5.400 rpm or for some extra money at 7.200 rpm. Does it really make a difference?
It's not as important as extra RAM, but is it worthwile? And I'm not speaking just of money but rather of reliability of the new (at least in Apple) 7.200 rpm SATA models

 

[Cave Man]

I think you ought to buy the smallest hard drive option, then buy a 320 gig WD external drive and transplant it into your MBP. Requires cracking open your MBP, but you'll get just as good of overall performance, but a lot more capacity and cost less.

 

[Twohothardware]

Personally right now I would just stick with the 200gb 5400rpm drive and wait and pick up a 500GB 5400rpm when they're affordable. The Western Digital 320gb Scorpio is a nice drive but almost not worth it to have to open up the MBP for a 120gb large drive. If you need more storage buy a 750gb or 1tb external drive and connect it via FireWire 800.

 

[billmister]

i would agree with getting the standard 200gig HD and buying the WD 320 WD HD and inplanting it into the MBP. The reason is you do get more space at the same speed. I upgraded the HD to 250gig on my MBP but then after a week purchased the 320 from WD and installed it. Gave mine to my fiance. I should of kept the 200 and safed a couple of bucks but oh, well.

As for waiting for 500gig internal to become affordable, you are going to have to wait. I mean as far as I know, the ONLY company with hints of comming out with one is Samsung. And for being the FIRST 500 internal gig for laptop it will most likely be expensive, like the first external 500 and first 1T.

Anyway walking around with 500gig of internal HD on a laptop i think is a tiny bit of over kill right now. I mean if the MBP is replacing your Desktop or something like that, i would see how it DOES come in handy or if you are going to be running major Apps. In any case, good luck with your decision.

 

[signatus]

Thanks for feedback. I really appreciate it.
So no one has a go for 7.200 rpm HD drives? Guess they are faster, but by your feedback I also guess they aren't so reliable??

 

[chrmjenkins]

I think I may be able to explain the different people's positions.

Some will tell you to buy small and get an external for your space needs. This is to keep cost down and not tie to you to a specific size (you can always increase external easily).

Others will tell you to get the largest, fastest drive you can. These days, the 7200 drives are comparable in power, heat, and noise to the 5400, but have the added speed advantage. Additionally, the more space you get in your HD, the faster it will be because the data is more densely packed in a given area. That means the head (the disk reader) has to travel less to get to the data you want. The only thing that affects this is the platters (the number of actual disks inside your HD). You want the densest possible platters to ensure those high read speeds.

So, it matters what is important to you, space, speed, or both.

 

[Twohothardware]

I bought a 200gb 7200rpm drive for my Macbook Pro and I've yet to install it yet cause I'm not sure if I really want to or not. If it was an easy swap I probably would of already done it but since it's more of a process changing the hard drive in a MacBook Pro I thought I might wait and do it when I could get a larger drive that was more of an upgrade. The 7200rpm drive will be faster but will I actually notice it that much in everyday tasks that I do personally? Maybe a little and maybe not at all. The biggest caveat is that I'm not gaining any in storage size going from 200gb to 200gb. I've seen a number of MBP users state that the palm rest did get hotter after installing the 7200rpm drive as well.

 

[jraneses]

Thanks for feedback. I really appreciate it.
So no one has a go for 7.200 rpm HD drives? Guess they are faster, but by your feedback I also guess they aren't so reliable??

In most situations, you probably won't notice much of a difference. If you're reading and writing very large files (video editing, loading virtual machines), the 7200rpm will perform better. Boot and application load times will also be slightly faster. You'll hear many people say the same thing when comparing 5400 vs. 7200 rpm drives, but I can say I definitely notice a difference.

You may want to consider buying a stock machine and upgrading the drive yourself. Going the BTO route affords you less options when it comes to returns and exchanges, as you have to send the machine directly back to Apple. I've had to exchange a few BTO MacBook Pro notebooks in the past two weeks, and it's a pain to ship a machine back and wait for a replacement to be built and delivered. If I had to do it again, I'd buy local or through Amazon.

 

[Twohothardware]

Yeah I would never buy a BTO from Apple personally. It takes longer for them to built it and ship it to you and BTO's are harder to exchange and get a refund for if something is wrong with it. For Amazon.com has been the cheapest route to get a MacBook Pro and I have 30 days to return it for a refund if there is something wrong with it AND i can get a pricematch at any point during that period if they drop the price which in fact just happened when I ordered my 2.4Ghz Penryn from Amazon. It went down $25 and I just called and got it credited back.

 

[MinorBidoh]

does replacing a hard drive not void the warranty / applecare? yes you could replace it when u send it back but the stock hd will be blank for them to see.

.h.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Thanks for feedback. I really appreciate it.
So no one has a go for 7.200 rpm HD drives? Guess they are faster, but by your feedback I also guess they aren't so reliable??

Honestly, if you don't do any video editing.... and i mean Final Cut Pro SD/HD/2D graphics etc, or plan on using it as your main computer for heavy photo libraries, get the stock drive. The 7200 is a great way to increase the speed of your machine, but it drains your battery and it's pretty noisy.

And by speed increase I mean with large files and apps that use the hard drive almost constantly. iMovie actually runs pretty good on slower drives, so even if you are planing to use that heavily it won't be a problem with the slower drives.

And if you still want a faster drive, there are 320GB 7200 rpm drives that have been announced, so you can always spring for one of those, or if you don't mind the price, get the 500GB ones that will be coming soon.

p.s. don't crack your case open until your warranty is out. Don't believe the hype that some will tell you, you will void your warranty if you crack open your case yourself and put anything inside. (this isn't toward you Cave Man, it's toward another poster that didn't want to listen or didn't quite understand the meaning of "void".)