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Optibay HD Recommendations - Storage HD (non-SSD)

A

A4orce84

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 17, 2012
434
46
Hey Guys,

I currently have a "mid-2009" MBP with an SSD as my primary HD. It runs Lion and all my apps fire up super fast which is great.

However, recently I've been researching optibay's "Secondary HD" Solution here:
http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

I want to add a non-SSD Hard-drive to my MBP for storage (music, movies, pictures, etc.) and have started looking for a good HD to use with the OptiBay kit.

Does anyone have any good recommendations?

I've been looking at HD's that meets the following criteria:
500gig - 1TB
5400 RPM (Less heat and more battery life)
Works with Optibay

I've been looking on newegg and found the following options if anyone wants to weigh in on what works best:
1. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136546
2. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236221
3. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148371

If anyone could offer any assistance or recommendations, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for all of your time and help!

--Asif
 
Is there a particular drive that anyone recommends with a great warranty out there that meets my criteria ?
 
I had this issue a couple weeks ago, and spent quite a few hours researching it. My research showed that the Samsung Spinpoint M8 and the Western Digital Scorpio Blue were the best 1TB drives. I settled on the Scorpio Blue which has slightly better speed than the Spinpoint (the Spinpoint has slightly better battery life).
 
I would stay with 5400rpm mostly for noise though. 7200rpm in optibay doesn't sound like a good idea.

I got a Samsung M8 it offers better value than the WD blue. Offers better boot drive performance too. A little worse on IO workload like server, workstation stuff. It is cheaper than the WD afaik and no worse even better in some situations.
 
dusk007 said:
I would stay with 5400rpm mostly for noise though. 7200rpm in optibay doesn't sound like a good idea.
Click to expand...

Running a 750GB Scorpio Black right now in an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro and it's dead quiet... As I said, I probably do 2 or 3 of these installs a week, and have for the last 5-6 months (all the same 500GB or 750GB Scorpio Black), and haven't had a single customer complaint.
 
WD Scorpio Blue and Scorpio Black sound like the winners so far. Does anyone have any links on new-egg or the best "cost effective" place to purchase these drives?

In addition, do all WD drives come with 5 year warranties?

Thanks again!
 
I have to agree with dusk007 get the Scorpio Blue, or Spinpoint M8 (whichevers cheaper). The performance of these 1TB drives is near that of the scorpio black according to many online sources. Also power consumption and noise are lower for the 1TB drives (this can be seen on the hard drive datasheets).

Heres a similar thread which convinced me to get my blue instead of a momentus xt: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1369647/
 
A4orce84 said:
In addition, do all WD drives come with 5 year warranties?
Click to expand...

No. Only Scorpio Black. Scorpio Blue (5400RPM) only has a 2 year warranty.

----------
riptideMBP said:
I have to agree with dusk007 get the Scorpio Blue, or Spinpoint M8 (whichevers cheaper). The performance of these 1TB drives is near that of the scorpio black according to many online sources. Also power consumption and noise are lower for the 1TB drives (this can be seen on the hard drive datasheets).
Click to expand...

Don't listen to people giving you advice on speculation and "online sources".

I've put at least 65 (likely more like 75) 7200RPM Scorpio Black drives in the MCE Optibay in various MacBook Pros (and iMacs). I can tell you 1) performance of a 5400RPM drive is not "near that" of a 7200RPM, 2) power consumption is negligible (unless you want to squeeze every possible last second of battery usage length out of your machine), 3) noise difference is slim to none, 4) 65-75 installs and NOT ONE COMPLAINT (many compliments).
 
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A note of caution. Ever since the January 2005 PowerBooks, Mac laptops have included a sudden motion sensor that automatically parks the drive head in the event of a fall. The idea is to prevent the data loss that can result from the drive head crashing into the platters. Drives in the optical drive bay do not get this protection. Not a problem for SSDs, but magnetic drives have moving parts.

Be even more careful not to drop the laptop, and keep automatic backups of those "music, movies, pictures, etc." There may be hard drives available with a similar protection feature built into the drive itself.
 
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Slinkwyde said:
A note of caution. Ever since the January 2005 PowerBooks, Mac laptops have included a sudden motion sensor that automatically parks the drive head in the event of a fall. The idea is to prevent the data loss that can result from the drive crashing into the platters. Drives in the optical drive bay do not get this protection. Not a problem for SSDs, but magnetic drives have moving parts.

Be even more careful not to drop the laptop, and keep automatic backups of those "music, movies, pictures, etc." There may be hard drives available with a similar protection feature built into the drive itself.
Click to expand...

The WD Scorpio Black has a built in sudden motion sensor, which is why we choose to use it in the Optibay.

Only some early-2011 and the late-2011 MacBook Pros have a 6Gbps SATA interface, so, you have to use the original HDD bay to get optimal speeds from your SSD. Additionally, the late-2011 15" and 17" MBPs have a bug with the SATA connector, whereby, while the interface supports 6Gbps, the connector does not see the SSD in the Optibay.
 
G-Mo said:
Running a 750GB Scorpio Black right now in an early 2011 13" MacBook Pro and it's dead quiet...
Click to expand...
It depends what you are used to. If you say it is dead quiet you are obviously not very sensible. I think even a 5400rpm is fairly noisy. Dead quiet is when the 5400rpm spins down and only the SSD is on with the fans at 2000rpm.
A 7200rpm is noisier and even worse if it sits in the optibay. It is just not worth it for a data drive. The speed difference is unnoticeable. It may be worth if it is the system drive, as a data drive it is just plain stupid to go with the 7200rpm black drive.
Less space, more expensive, more noise and no difference in speed that is worth mentioning. After filling it with 500GB of data the bigger drive is probably the faster one anyway.
The op has an SSD as a sys drive and seeks a data drive. A WD black is just a stupid decision with no benefit only downsides except for a 5 year warranty but that really isn't worth it in a consumer drive that you need to backup anyway. Failure rate won't be all that much different mostly because of the higher price they can justify a longer warranty.

Random access means nothing for a data drive. It is pure placebo. Sequential speeds slow the closer you get to the inner tracks. At 500GB they are equal after that the WD blue is actually faster than the black and after 750GB you still have 250GB free space left.
 
It's worth it if just for the sudden motion sensor not present in any of the 5400RPM drives mentioned above.

(Dead quiet, in that you can't hear it anymore than a 5400RPM drive in a room with average ambient noise, i.e. office or most homes... your experience, if you happen to live and work in a library, may vary.)

At present, the Scorpio Black is $9 more than it's 5400RPM cousin and $20 cheaper than the 1TB Blue.
 
G-Mo said:
Don't listen to people giving you advice on speculation and "online sources".

I've put at least 65 (likely more like 75) 7200RPM Scorpio Black drives in the MCE Optibay in various MacBook Pros (and iMacs). I can tell you 1) performance of a 5400RPM drive is not "near that" of a 7200RPM, 2) power consumption is negligible (unless you want to squeeze every possible last second of battery usage length out of your machine), 3) noise difference is slim to none, 4) 65-75 installs and NOT ONE COMPLAINT (many compliments).
Click to expand...

Definitely not speculating on anything. I have somewhat sensitive hearing, and the sound of a hard drive in a quiet room annoys me. This is the reason I didn't get a second scorpio black when the one i purchased with my laptop had performance issues. The data from the manufacturers websites is below. Notice the 6 decibel difference between the idle noise for the blue vs the black... the decibel is a logarithmic scale, so this seemingly small difference is very noticeable.

Scorpio Blue: 22 idle 25 seek
Scorpio Black: 28 idle 28 seek
Spinpoint M8 24 idle 26 seek

As to the multiple online sources, I concede that the testing methods are not accurate of real world use and the performance benchmark wins that the Blue has over the Black may insignificant, but recall that we're talking about a data drive here...

With the spinpoint or blue you get:
lower power consumption
lower noise
more storage

with the black you get more speed
 
G-Mo said:
It's worth it if just for the sudden motion sensor not present in any of the 5400RPM drives mentioned above.
Click to expand...

Apparently WD used to sell drives (including Scorpio Blacks) ending in BJKT. Those drives had free-fall motion sensors, but WD doesn't sell those anymore. The drives they sell don't have those sensors, but instead have "ShockGuard" and "SecurePark."

Here's how WD's marketing describe those features, which both Blue and Black have.
WD's product overviews said:
Reliable and rugged WD’s ShockGuard™ technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks during shipping, handling, and daily operation. WD’s SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear and improved shock tolerance.
Click to expand...

Blue | Black
 
miles01110 said:
Buy the one that has the best warranty for your size requirements and budget. No platter-based hard drive is better than any other.
Click to expand...

That is not even relatively close to true.... That's like saying any car that can reach 60mph has the same performance. Just so false.
 
I wouldn't go with the MCE Optibay, there are plenty of cheap alternatives that work great. Save the money on the caddy and spend it on memory and hard drive.
 
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