Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
replacing macbook harddrive??
- Thread starter petedes5
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
As long as its a Laptop HDD you will be fine. If you want speed and responsiveness get an 7200rpm drive, else a 5400rpm will do fine.
Brand, that's up to you. Seagate and Western Digital are common choices here. How big, it depends on you.
you need a 2.5" Sata hard drive.
7200RPM
300GB or bigger is best otherwise you may need to get a bigger one later on.
7200RPM
300GB or bigger is best otherwise you may need to get a bigger one later on.
I just replaced mine. I've read quite a few reports that recommend against 7200 speed drives, unless you don't mind extra vibration and heat, with little speed gain as a trade off. Personally I don't want that. I used a 5400 Seagate Momentus 500 GB. Check the detailed specs of the drive you're looking at and compare them. The Seagate is rated to run longer than most drives out there, and has a reputation of being very good drives. The main trick is that the drive that's installed on the notebook has 4 screws that stick out the side of it. These screws are a bit difficult to remove. I used needle nosed pliers to get it off, but it's actually a very small allen key hole. If you look up my handle you'll see some talk of this in my recent thread. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old drive, it's available in a "free" version. You'll need an enclosure to do it this way. If you don't want to use an enclosure you can backup using Time Machine, install OS X from your install disks, and then restore from your backup. You'll have to do system updates if you go this route, but it has the advantage of not needing a sata enclosure.
Go for a Seatgate as theyre good quality but get the 7200, 5400 creates a bottleneck on max speed.
The noise and vibrations a hard drive make are down to their quality, not usually RPM.
The noise and vibrations a hard drive make are down to their quality, not usually RPM.
I have 5400 Seagate* and it's fine. I would suggest against 7200 due to the vibration, but if you wanna live with it then buy it.
My Seagate 7200 has less vibration than my 5400. Much less.
As i said, its quality.
But I thought I read you say somewhere you have a 17" MBP.
It's the new unibody MacBook's (not sure about the Pro's) that seem to vibrate. My Seagate 5400 doesn't vibrate or make any noise at all.
go with a good quality 7200. spend the extra 30 or 40 dollars and you wont even notice any sounds or vibrations.
I had a 7200 RPM WD Scorpio Black and it made my laptop vibrate. WD has a very good rep, and I'm not the only one that experienced this when I installed it.
hmmm. i was actually going to go with that exact hard drive..i may have to reconsider now. anyone have suggestions to which 500gb 7200rpm drive is good? and has minimal noise/vibrations?
Maybe it was a Western Digital thing? I don't know... I ended up going for a Seagate 5400 RPM because I didn't wanna try the 7200 RPM... but the Seagate's might be better?
Sorry to ask what is probably a silly question based on the advice already offered here! But is this Seagate hard drive usuable in an original MacBook - Seagate 250GB 5400RPM 8MB SATA-150. I am running Leopard with 2GB of RAM, if that makes any difference!
Full spec of the drive is as follows:
Dimensions & Weight
Depth
10 cm
Height
9.5 mm
Weight
102 g
Width
7 cm
Environmental Parameters
Max Operating Temperature
60 °C
Min Operating Temperature
0 °C
Shock Tolerance Operating
325 g @ 2ms
Shock Tolerance Storage
900 g @ 1ms
Header
Compatibility
PC
Model
ST9250827AS
Product Line
Seagate Momentus 5400.4
Storage Controller
Type
None
Storage Controller (2nd)
Type
None
Storage Hard Drive
Average Latency
5.6 ms
Average Seek Time
12 ms
Buffer Size
8 MB
Capacity
250 GB
Data Transfer Rate
300 MBps
Features
Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
QuietStep
Ramp Load
Form Factor
2.5" x 1/8H
Hard Drive Type
Internal hard drive
Interface Type
Serial ATA-300
Non-Recoverable Errors
1 per 10^14
Spindle Speed
5400 rpm
Start / Stop Cycles
600,000
Thanks in advance for the help!
T
Full spec of the drive is as follows:
Dimensions & Weight
Depth
10 cm
Height
9.5 mm
Weight
102 g
Width
7 cm
Environmental Parameters
Max Operating Temperature
60 °C
Min Operating Temperature
0 °C
Shock Tolerance Operating
325 g @ 2ms
Shock Tolerance Storage
900 g @ 1ms
Header
Compatibility
PC
Model
ST9250827AS
Product Line
Seagate Momentus 5400.4
Storage Controller
Type
None
Storage Controller (2nd)
Type
None
Storage Hard Drive
Average Latency
5.6 ms
Average Seek Time
12 ms
Buffer Size
8 MB
Capacity
250 GB
Data Transfer Rate
300 MBps
Features
Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
QuietStep
Ramp Load
Form Factor
2.5" x 1/8H
Hard Drive Type
Internal hard drive
Interface Type
Serial ATA-300
Non-Recoverable Errors
1 per 10^14
Spindle Speed
5400 rpm
Start / Stop Cycles
600,000
Thanks in advance for the help!
T
Compatable?
I am also interested in a WD. The one that I am considering is the WD Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s. Would this work in my MacBook? Specs:
Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed 5,400 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Seek Times
Read Seek Time 12.0 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 500,107 MB
Capacity 500 GB
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive 976,773,168
Physical Dimensions
English
Height 0.374 Inches ±0.008 inch
Length 3.94 Inches ±0.010 inch
Width 2.75 ±0.010 inch
Weight 0.26 Pounds
Metric
Height 9.5 mm ±0.20 mm
Length 100.2 ±0.25 mm
Width 69.85 ±0.25 mm
Weight 0.117 kg
Environmental Specifications
Acoustics
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 26 dBA (average)
Temperature (English)
Operating 32° F to 140° F
Non-operating -40° F to 149° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating -0° C to 60° C
Non-operating -40° C to 65° C
Humidity
Operating 8-90% RH non-condensing
Non-operating 5-95% RH non-condensing
Altitude (English)
Operating -1,000 feet to 10,000 feet
Non-operating -1,000 feet to 40,000 feet
Altitude (Metric)
Operating -305M to 3,050M
Non-operating -305M to 12,200M
Vibration
Operating 0.00459 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Non-operating 0.05102 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 50 mA
Sleep 20 mA
Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.10 Watts
What are the other alternatives? I am interested in a 500 GB HD and just want the best quality. Any recommendations? Thank you everyone.
I am also interested in a WD. The one that I am considering is the WD Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s. Would this work in my MacBook? Specs:
Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed 5,400 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Seek Times
Read Seek Time 12.0 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 500,107 MB
Capacity 500 GB
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive 976,773,168
Physical Dimensions
English
Height 0.374 Inches ±0.008 inch
Length 3.94 Inches ±0.010 inch
Width 2.75 ±0.010 inch
Weight 0.26 Pounds
Metric
Height 9.5 mm ±0.20 mm
Length 100.2 ±0.25 mm
Width 69.85 ±0.25 mm
Weight 0.117 kg
Environmental Specifications
Acoustics
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 26 dBA (average)
Temperature (English)
Operating 32° F to 140° F
Non-operating -40° F to 149° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating -0° C to 60° C
Non-operating -40° C to 65° C
Humidity
Operating 8-90% RH non-condensing
Non-operating 5-95% RH non-condensing
Altitude (English)
Operating -1,000 feet to 10,000 feet
Non-operating -1,000 feet to 40,000 feet
Altitude (Metric)
Operating -305M to 3,050M
Non-operating -305M to 12,200M
Vibration
Operating 0.00459 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Non-operating 0.05102 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 50 mA
Sleep 20 mA
Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.10 Watts
What are the other alternatives? I am interested in a 500 GB HD and just want the best quality. Any recommendations? Thank you everyone.
Just looking through this thread and had to ask a question...
Just yesterday tried to install the aforementioned WD Scorpio Blue 500gb in my Macbook Pro (15"). Installation went fine, it seemed. When I tried to boot with the OSX startup disk, things looked good at startup but then the LCD backlight went out(?!) at the language selection.
Needless to say, I re-installed old (now current) hard drive and all is again well. I just now have a 500gb drive with no home
Has anyone seen this before? I was at first thinking there was a compatibility problem with the drive, but it seems to work for others.
Thanks.
Just yesterday tried to install the aforementioned WD Scorpio Blue 500gb in my Macbook Pro (15"). Installation went fine, it seemed. When I tried to boot with the OSX startup disk, things looked good at startup but then the LCD backlight went out(?!) at the language selection.
Needless to say, I re-installed old (now current) hard drive and all is again well. I just now have a 500gb drive with no home
Has anyone seen this before? I was at first thinking there was a compatibility problem with the drive, but it seems to work for others.
Thanks.