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Seagate 500gb 7200RPM HDD in 2.2Ghz Blackbook?

Obsidian6

Obsidian6

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 29, 2006
683
3
Laguna Niguel, CA
I'm curious if anyone has tried the Seagate 500GB 7200RPM drive (ST9500420AS) In a macbook yet? Mine currently has a 250GB 5400rpm drive which is mostly ok performance, but currently not enough space.

I use my macbook for most of my daily computing, but also a whole lot of Aperture / Lightroom / Photoshop CS4 work as well.

I currently have 4GB of ram and have pondered upgrading to 6GB but I wonder how much benefit that would REALLY give me. I don't feel like my macbook is slow, but I'm pretty sure having a 7200rpm drive would considerably boost the speed.

What are your thoughts?
 
HDD failure

Hi, just to share my experience:

I bought a brand new 2.5 hdd (WD Black Scorpio 320GB, 7200rpm) for my white macbook (the old 80gb was just too small). It worked seamlessly for two days (very fast and silent); then, I inadvertently cicked the table on which my macbook was lying and the hard drive started to make strange noises... result? HDD damaged without recover (even Disk Utility from the recovery Leopard cd does not recognize it).

I think that the moral of the story is that for such large drives running at 7200rpm the failure rate is very high, and the minimum vibration is enough to damage them. I for one am going to stick to my old one and use my external 320Gb freecom drive.

Just my two cents.
 
I've been using the same 320GB 7200RPM Scorpio Black for almost a year without issue. I'm careful with my machine, but obviously there has been more than a bump and I've had no issues. IMHO they work fine, but with the platter density of the new WD 500GB drive the speed is good and it sips power. But a 7200RPM drive should work just fine.
 
I'm really tempted to do the upgrade, but I do worry about failure rates. I'm relatively happy with the performance of the WD 250gb drive that's in here. But with the raw files I process from my 5DmkII, I would like some extra speed.

I guess the only thing I worry about is will the 7200rpm drive just destroy my battery life? It's already starting to drain a lot faster than normal for some reason. It's like a switch was flipped and suddenly the battery just DROPS.
 
I've replaced with White Macbook 80GB HD with a Western Digital 500GB HD.

Had it for about 7 months without any issue at all. I love the extra space and have not had one issue with it.

I use my Macbook everyday, carry it around carelessly in my Incase Backpack and throw it around everywhere; in class hard on the desk, chuck it in the back seat of my car, etc. Never one issue.

I love it.

Everyone that has a PC tells me they think the White Macbook looks fragile comared to the Dells and HP laptops with their dark rugged design but my White Mas survived numerous falls, bangs and tumbles without any issues in several countries. I took my Macbook to the great wall of China, I slipped and fell on my Incase Backpack. You'd think i'd worry but my Macbook worked normally, no issue at all.

I love this thing.

If only if was lighter on my back. But perhaps thats where the iPod Touch comes in...

...or the tablet coming out in January. :D
 
In for responses.

I've got a 4,1 blackbook(2.4ghz) and have been considering upgrading, especially since New Egg's has em in stock again. I'd like the extra space so I don't have to plug in hard drives as often, and just leave 1TB attached to my Airport Extreme. From what I've gathered the battery life difference, particularly on our macbooks is miniscule to non existant. The only complaint I've read about though is noise and or viabrations.
 
Obsidian6 said:
happydude,

do you have the new 7200rpm version though? That's what I'm interested in. That or the WD 320GB 7200rpm
Click to expand...

Ditto on the noise and vibrations for a 7200rpm drive - it can be noticeable.

I have an internal 500gb "no name" drive spinning at 5400rpm and I can't tell the difference when dealing with 15mp RAW files from a 50D.
 
Obsidian6 said:
happydude,

do you have the new 7200rpm version though? That's what I'm interested in. That or the WD 320GB 7200rpm
Click to expand...

no, its the WD 500GB 5400rpm.

At the time for the same price of $89 it was between at WD 500GB 5400rpm or a Seagate 320GB 7200rpm.

I made my decision with WD since I've heard numerous bad things about Seagate simply losing your data and stuff like that. I always wondered why Seagate HD's were always on sale at Besy Buy, iono...i've heard too many bad things to trust that brand. But obviously not everyone that owns one of their products goes through a horror story, but nevertheless.
 
I have the original MacBook (white). Several months ago I upgraded the HD to 320 gig 7200 rpm WD HD and just last week I upgraded it again to Seagate 500 gig 7200 rpm. 7200 rpm makes a noticeable difference. I strongly recommend it.

On the other hand, battery life gets shorter of course. WD vibrates more than Seagate but both are acceptable for me. I don't need to worry about keeping my iTunes and/or iPhoto library on external HD anymore.
 
I too am personally leery about Seagate. I went through 5 hard drives in a 2 week span from them a couple years back when I was trying to upgrade my powerbook.

I'm debating on wether or not to just get the WD 500gb 5400 or if I would really see a performance benefit from the seagate 7200.
 
I didn't know there were that many people with problems with Seagate HDD's. Back a few years, I thought they were the best and I always chose them for my HDD needs. Seems like their quality has been going down.

But back to the OP. 7200.4 is going to vibrate but it's your tolerance that will determine if it's noticeable or not. I know with mine before I swapped it out with a WD 500GB, the whole MacBook Pro would vibrate and you could feel it. Some say they don't feel anything. If I were you, I'd go WD since it seems it could be hit/miss with the vibration. Also WD 500GB HDD does perform about the same if not better than the Seagate HDD for a lower price.
 
I've just fitted a 500GB Western Digital Blue in my 13" MBP. It's only 5400rpm, but after reading around alot, it seems that the 7200rpm black version can cause vibrations and be noiser. I also read somewhere than the blue uses less power.
 
will0407 said:
I've just fitted a 500GB Western Digital Blue in my 13" MBP. It's only 5400rpm, but after reading around alot, it seems that the 7200rpm black version can cause vibrations and be noiser. I also read somewhere than the blue uses less power.
Click to expand...

If it does use less power, it makes very little or no difference. I haven't noticed any improvements in battery life, still get the same +/- 4 hours and a bit doing the same tasks with the WD and stock Hitachi.
 
Ok so additional battery drain is negligible. additional vibration is likely to be caused by the 7200rpm drives, and the WD 500GB 5400rpm blue seems to be the favorite?

Have i got my facts straight?

As I mentioned, I was only thinking of the 7200 for additional performance, but I SURELY wouldn't mind the additional storage space. My aperture library alone on my Mac pro is pushing 300GB. I may just go the western digital route instead then.

Thanks for all the input guys!
 
Just to add my 2cents. I just picked up the Seagate 500gb, I'm so far very happy with the performance jumping from a Hitachi 200gb 7200rpm.
 
nayr said:
Just to add my 2cents. I just picked up the Seagate 500gb, I'm so far very happy with the performance jumping from a Hitachi 200gb 7200rpm.
Click to expand...

So you have the same macbook i do, as well as the same spec. How does it perform with that 7200rpm drive? Is it noticeably faster? is there any excessive vibration?
 
iLog.Genius said:
If it does use less power, it makes very little or no difference. I haven't noticed any improvements in battery life, still get the same +/- 4 hours and a bit doing the same tasks with the WD and stock Hitachi.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, it's just what I read while I was looking at what drive to buy

Obsidian6 said:
Ok so additional battery drain is negligible. additional vibration is likely to be caused by the 7200rpm drives, and the WD 500GB 5400rpm blue seems to be the favorite?

Have i got my facts straight?

As I mentioned, I was only thinking of the 7200 for additional performance, but I SURELY wouldn't mind the additional storage space. My aperture library alone on my Mac pro is pushing 300GB. I may just go the western digital route instead then.

Thanks for all the input guys!
Click to expand...

I got the WD blue after reading a lot of reviews. None of them were bad. I managed to get mine for £70 inc postage off ebay, brand new, still sealed.
 
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