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winterquilt, I put mine in a Black MacBook. You'll see my posts from the beginning of this thread. Best upgrade I've made outside of more RAM. You'll be able to fit it in your White MacBook. See pages 5 through 9 for my impressions and results from XBench. Hope that helps.
 
Thanks CLuv, I did read about the xbench tests but they don't mean much to me. What I need is a speed boost and more space! over 50% and i runs slower anyway. I've just installed the max 4GB of RAM, so with this upgrade I hope that it'll tie me over until new MacBooks are released. I know the new ones are great but I am not giving up on White, although the next batch will probably not be white either ~but who knows.

So inside the MB can you confirm that there is vibration, or extra noise. I hope I get one that doesn't have this problem, but it could be in the install process - I'm going to have to research up on this on YouTube.

Thanks.
 
My model is a Late 2006 MacBook that had a stock 120GB 5400 RPM Toshiba drive. The Seagate is quit and no vibration, feels no different in regards to vibration. Runs silent. Battery life is better. The startup used to be ~38 revolutions on the screen that shows the  logo, now it is ~9 revolutions. Shutdown is almost instant if I do a true shutdown. Although, I mostly put the MacBook to sleep by closing the lid. Applications load much faster. If you look at my XBench scores, my performance has seen an increase of two fold.

Hope that helps.
 
I have the 5400 rpm version of this drive. I will say it is definitely a treat to have the space.

I would recommend using this drive if the faster RPM speed isn't that much of a concern. I've been using it for 3 months now and I haven't had any problems.
 
Thanks guys, my minds made up, I think I'll go with the 7200 RPM drive. Maxing out my RAM and with this it will hopefully keep me good until new MacBooks come out.
 
Is motion detection in the drive a problem with MBP

Apple Laptops have a sudden motion sensor built in, so having gforce on the drive would be redundant, I believe.

I just backordered one without motion detection, but can the MPB handle one with motion detection? Seems like it would be nice to be able to swap it into a machine that might need it built into the drive.
 
Late 2008 MacBook Pro - 2.53/4gb, want to upgrade to 500gb/7200RPM

I'm contemplating getting this drive.
I just have a few concerns...

BATTERY LIFE
HEAT
NOISE

How much are those three things affected by upgrading to this drive?
I currently have the stock 320gb/5400RPM drive.
I want more space and speed, but not if it kills my battery life and produces a lot more heat and noise.
This is my first Mac and also my first laptop, so excuse me if the question seems noobish.:apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::apple::eek::apple::apple::apple:
 
Availability of this drive

Just talked to two retailers (CDW and another smaller outfit) and was told that these drives will not be available until mid May. Salesman at CDW said he suspects they will be even later than that.

NOBODY has any of the first run anywhere that I can find!

I need one NOW! :mad:
 
Just talked to two retailers (CDW and another smaller outfit) and was told that these drives will not be available until mid May. Salesman at CDW said he suspects they will be even later than that.

NOBODY has any of the first run anywhere that I can find!

I need one NOW! :mad:

I've got one on order and they moved it to the end of April, but my guess is that your info. is probably more up-to-date.
 
I have one of the G sensor models on backorder with another vendor (for use in a 'pocket drive'). The problem seems to be that they are given ETAs for product shipments and they have been disappointed when these ETAs keep slipping. I spoke with Seagate and they indicate that they are "making them just as fast as they can", but it appears that the OEMs are probably getting the lion's share of the production at this time.

I bought one of Seagate's 'FreeAgent Go for Mac' (Firewire) drives because of the delays with the 7,200 RPM drive and wound up returning it because it is not bootable! Seagate was worse than useless when I spoke with them about it. You have never heard such a bunch of ignorant lame excuses. At least the last one was semi-honest when he said he had no idea.... I have returned it and I think that Seagate has lost a customer. :mad:

I have been hearing better things about Western Digital drives of late anyway.
 
Tis the benefit of paying extra and buying one early. Of course my wallet is slimmer now.

That does not always work. I bought one during the brief window of opportunity at NewEgg, but it was defective and there were no more to replace it with.

I very strongly recommend "zeroing" a drive prior to putting it into service. There are other ways to burn-in or stress test a drive, but zeroing is easy and does not require other software.
 
I bought one of Seagate's 'FreeAgent Go for Mac' (Firewire) drives because of the delays with the 7,200 RPM drive and wound up returning it because it is not bootable! Seagate was worse than useless when I spoke with them about it. You have never heard such a bunch of ignorant lame excuses. At least the last one was semi-honest when he said he had no idea.... I have returned it and I think that Seagate has lost a customer. :mad:

I have been hearing better things about Western Digital drives of late anyway.

It seems strange that your firewire external would have been unbootable. I bought a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 320gig (owned by Seagate) and I cloned my drive to it, and it boots through usb. Its a little slower, but it boots, and runs normally, so I wonder if maybe you had a defective cable.

Speaking of WD, I did get a ScorpioBlue (5400) 500gig drive for my MBP, and it's a stellar drive. So far, WD seems like they're on their game.

I very strongly recommend "zeroing" a drive prior to putting it into service. There are other ways to burn-in or stress test a drive, but zeroing is easy and does not require other software.

I thought of doing that, but it would take forever on a 500gig drive. What's the benefit of zeroing on a new drive? Wouldn't cloning a couple hundred gigs to the new drive give it a good workout - uncover potential problems also?
 
It seems strange that your firewire external would have been unbootable. I bought a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 320gig (owned by Seagate) and I cloned my drive to it, and it boots through usb. Its a little slower, but it boots, and runs normally, so I wonder if maybe you had a defective cable.

Speaking of WD, I did get a ScorpioBlue (5400) 500gig drive for my MBP, and it's a stellar drive. So far, WD seems like they're on their game.



I thought of doing that, but it would take forever on a 500gig drive. What's the benefit of zeroing on a new drive? Wouldn't cloning a couple hundred gigs to the new drive give it a good workout - uncover potential problems also?

The most incredible part of the "won't boot" story is Seagate's response that booting is "not supported". It is a part of the Firewire/IEEE 1394 specification!

Zeroing the drive hits every bit on the platter. Copying over some files does not. I have had several drives that failed during this process (not to mention some DOAs). I would much rather find out there is a problem with a drive prior to placing it in service.

Apple is selling "server quality" drives for the X Serves which are burned in for 24 hours and they have to meet certain criteria to be qualified. That suggests something to me.

It has also been pointed out to me that there is an application called SpinRite which is marketed as a data recover application (Windows) which will not only test the drive, but report the number of bad sectors on it. It is one of the few, if not the only app which reports these. It also is reported to be an incredible data recovery app because it does not quit when it finds a difficult area. It may run a day or a week trying to recover data.

The easy way to zero the drive is to set things up when you are going to be gone for some period of time or overnight and it should be ready when you are. If you have an external enclosure to plug it into that is great, but OWC sells a universal adapter for a reasonable price that can connect just about any current drive (Via USB).

Cheers!
 
That does not always work. I bought one during the brief window of opportunity at NewEgg, but it was defective and there were no more to replace it with.
.

i'm in the same boat. mine hasn't died yet, but multiple bad sectors. keeping time machine up to date just in case it doesn't hold out. seagate told me on Wed that they are expected mid-late april. fingers crossed.
 
Mine died again and Seagate told me that they don't know when they will get the new ones.

Oh well, I'm done with this drive. I'm going to sell it right after I receive the replacement.
 
what's going on with seagate these days? :confused: They used to be solid and reliable.

I currently have a 320gb, 7200rpm seagate hdds in both my mac pro and UMBP that were part of the original configs from Apple. So far no problems.

Disappointed with the 500GB problems though since I was planning to pick one up :(
 
even more surprising is that its still not available anywhere, almost 2 months since release.
 
That does not always work. I bought one during the brief window of opportunity at NewEgg, but it was defective and there were no more to replace it with.

Sorry to hear that. I'm sometimes we are unlucky—had a few DOA drives myself.

even more surprising is that its still not available anywhere, almost 2 months since release.

People buy them as fast as they are being made, plus OEMs get priority.
 
Didn't Seagate have a massive problem recently - was it a firmware thing? I'm sure I remember something about them bricking drives...

I think I'll stick with one of their competitors for now and make do with "2nd best" :p
 
even more surprising is that its still not available anywhere, almost 2 months since release.

Even more surprising is the complete lack of competing products. You would think Hitachi, Samsung, WD et al would jump at the chance to sell 500GB 7200rpm drives while Seagate cannot deliver.

Cheers,
 
I was going to buy this drive. They were in stock at mwave.com yesterday for $138 with $10 off coupon (not in stock now).

But after reading some reviews, decided against it.
Currently, it looks like there are a few issues with the drive:
- high failure rate;
- Seagate still using slow I/O controller/driver;
- high vibration/noise;


Here are some comparisons. On synthetic benchmarks like CrystalMark, the drive is very fast. But on real world tests, the performance is about the same as 2 platter 5400 drives. Read the last paragraph:

http://www.i4u.com/full-review-529.html

"Comparing that performance to the Hitachi 5400 rpm hard drive shows a virtual dead heat with the Seagate taking 3 seconds longer to write the data to the disk. The performance on other file types and large data sets could be much more in favor of the Seagate. "



Even more surprising is the complete lack of competing products. You would think Hitachi, Samsung, WD et al would jump at the chance to sell 500GB 7200rpm drives while Seagate cannot deliver.

Cheers,
 
Hi

I have READ this on your signature


15.4" Unibody Pro, 2.8GHZ, 4GB RAM, 256GB Samsung SSD
13" Unibody Macbook 2.4GHZ, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD


I have a question , someone have tried the new ST9500420AS seagate 500 gb 7200 RPM on the last Macbook unibody 13 ?

THANX
 
Just checking back in after owning this drive for a few months.

NO vibration issues.
NO noise issues.
Just as fast as my prior 7200 drive (if not faster - booting certainly is).
NO issues whatsoever.

Just thought the doom and gloom about this drive was getting a bit out of whack! ;)
 
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