New HD for my Powerbook?

[TheT]

Hey, I need your help 🙂

I'm finally getting my brandnew 12" Powerbook soon, and I am planning to buy a new, faster HD for it. About a year ago, the Hitachi 7K60 was the way to go... it was the fastest, consumed less energy and didn't producte too much heat.
Now, I can't find any good, new reviews of available 2,5" drives. Is 7200 upm still noticable better than 5400? Also, I'd like to have a quiet drive, and of course it shouldn't produce too much heat or eat my battery 😀
Any help/advise/link to good reviews would be appreciated... thanks!

 

[JFreak]

just get the 7k60, it's well worth it!

 

[FuzzyBallz]

Here are some reviews.

 

[srobert]

I was contemplating doing the same. How hard is it to replace the hard drive from the latest generation 12" powerbooks? Does this voids the warranty?

Thanks

 

[TheT]

just get the 7k60, it's well worth it!

Do you own this drive? If yes, which Mac did you upgrade?
I've read in a magazine that this drive is actually quite loud, can you confirm this? How does it compare to your preveious HD?

 

[gcaprio]

Stay away from 7200RPM Drive

I have a 12' inch powerbook, and I upgraded to the 7200 60-GB drive about a year ago. I recently removed the drive and downgraded back to the original drive. I did this because if produced too much heat, which required the pb's fan to run all the time. It was annoying.

I will say that the drive was much faster than the 4200 stock drive, but that's only in reads/writes, which are already slow. If you have the choice, I reccommend more ram ( I have a 1GB chip in my pb ) rather than the new HD.

 

[TDM21]

From what I have read in these forums, changing the hd in the PB is a major pain. You have to remove about 4 different sets of screws, all of which are different sizes. On top of that, you have to keep track of them all, which are no bigger then the screws that hold the door to the ram on.

My suggestion is would be to buy the 80gb BTO harddrive and a few years down the road, after the warranty has expired, cram a 200gb 10,000 rpm drive into it. (they should be out in a few years, right?)

this link here from bearfeats.com has a comparison of the 4200, 5400, and 7200 harddrives. Scroll down to Question #2 .

And yes, installing a harddrive into your PB yourself will void the warranty.

 

[bobpensik]

Why don't you just buy a fast external HD, i mean for the same price you could get a WAY bigger one, and running from FireWire i am sure you woudln't notice a HUGE performace difference.

If you want size, then just buy the 60GB 7200 RPM Laptop drive and stick it in an external enclosure! then you can have the speed and small size with you at all times!!

 

[JFreak]

Do you own this drive? If yes, which Mac did you upgrade?
I've read in a magazine that this drive is actually quite loud, can you confirm this? How does it compare to your preveious HD?

i have had this specific hard drive in 667mhz (dvi) and 1.25ghz powerbooks and i can confirm it's a lot faster than stock drives, plus it's somewhat quieter and doesn't consume any more power than the stock drive. in fact, with the titanium, this fast hitachi drive ran so cool that the paint problem went totally away, as with the stock drive its paint was constantly dropping off but after drive exchange the exterior stopped to fall apart. i only regret i couldn't do the exchange sooner!

the 7k60 is really amazing drive, i strongly recommend it!

 

[JFreak]

I was contemplating doing the same. How hard is it to replace the hard drive from the latest generation 12" powerbooks? Does this voids the warranty?

Thanks

please let a qualified apple service change the drive - aluminum powerbooks are really tricky. only change it yourself it you have titanium powerbook, that is very easy...

 

[JFreak]

Why don't you just buy a fast external HD, i mean for the same price you could get a WAY bigger one, and running from FireWire i am sure you woudln't notice a HUGE performace difference.

If you want size, then just buy the 60GB 7200 RPM Laptop drive and stick it in an external enclosure! then you can have the speed and small size with you at all times!!

it seems you have never used a laptop with a 7200rpm internal drive 🙂 you just cannot believe how much the hard drive affects to the overall snappiness... its as if you bought a cpu upgrade 😀

 

[mkubal]

I'd reccomend it

I replaced the HD in my TiBook 400 with the 7k60 drive. It was well worth the upgrade for me because I had no hard drive space left. I found the drive to be quieter than my stock drive and didn't produce any out of the ordinary heat. The performance increase was definitely noticeable as well.

The install was pretty easy, but it I'm not sure about the install on a newer model. Can't be too hard though.

Matt

 

[TheT]

I have a 12' inch powerbook, and I upgraded to the 7200 60-GB drive about a year ago. I recently removed the drive and downgraded back to the original drive. I did this because if produced too much heat, which required the pb's fan to run all the time. It was annoying.

I will say that the drive was much faster than the 4200 stock drive, but that's only in reads/writes, which are already slow. If you have the choice, I reccommend more ram ( I have a 1GB chip in my pb ) rather than the new HD.

What revision do you have? Are you sure it's the drive?
Of course I will stick more RAM in it, but I think 768 megs are sufficient for now (those 1GB sticks are so expensive!)
I couldn't get the BTO 5400 drive because it was a special offer, only with the stock model. And I don't want it in an external enclosure because that would defeat the whole purpose of the system being faster with this HD (I don't want to always boot up from an external HD).
BTW, I am not planning to install it myself, as others have noted, it will void your warranty. Just let a certified Apple technician do all the work 🙂