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Seagate Momentus 750GB 7200 RPM or Samsung Spinpoint M8 1TB 5400 RPM?

J

josephmccutchen

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 27, 2010
54
0
South Korea
I'm stuck on which of these two drives to buy for my mid-2010 MBP. The Spinpoint uses two 500GB platters, which is good, but it is only 5400 RPM; that's a sticking point for me. The Seagate has a smaller capacity, but it's faster; speed is crucial for me.

Here's my question: is there a major difference in the speed between the two? I use my MBP mostly for iPhoto (importing images from my DSLR), occasional video rendering (iMovie or Adobe Premiere), and Internet. Could someone give me their thoughts on which of these two drives would be the best? Or, if there are other suggestions, those are also welcome. Thanks!
 
If I was in the Market for a good HDD for a MBP, the Western Digital Scorpio Black 750Gb would be high on my list - is fast (even compared to other 7200 rpm) and has built-in shock protection, so safe to use in the MBP's optical bay, if you later decided to swap out the SuperDrive and put an SSD in the main drive bay for the OS and apps (which seems a good way to get both speed and high storage capacity, though would works best on 2011 MBPs, which support SATA III in the main drive bay).
 
I would get the Samsung because 7200rpm is too loud for my taste and you cannot really feel the speed difference but the noise is there all the time.
And the speed difference is hardly there anyway because of the Samsung being quite fast. The 7200rpm obviously wins in read latency but write latency goes to Samsung probably because of better caching. Random performance and some IO synthetic benches go to Samsung. Sequential peak speed goes to Seagate by a pretty much unnoticeable margin.
Power consumption goes to Samsung.
IMO wait for a 7200rpm 500GB platter drive or get the M8 now.

http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_spinpoint_m8_review
http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_momentus_750gb_review_st9750420as
scorpio black 500GB
http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_scorpio_black_500gb_review_wd5000bekt
 
Last edited:
oxfordguy said:
If I was in the Market for a good HDD for a MBP, the Western Digital Scorpio Black 750Gb would be high on my list - is fast (even compared to other 7200 rpm) and has built-in shock protection, so safe to use in the MBP's optical bay, if you later decided to swap out the SuperDrive and put an SSD in the main drive bay for the OS and apps (which seems a good way to get both speed and high storage capacity, though would works best on 2011 MBPs, which support SATA III in the main drive bay).
Click to expand...

BTW another factor that might be worth bearing in mind is that the WD Scorpio Black also offers a 5-year warranty, instead of the more usual 3 years, which is another point in its favour and possibly says something about the likely reliability of the drive.
 
dusk007 said:
I would get the Samsung because 7200rpm is too loud for my taste and you cannot really feel the speed difference but the noise is there all the time.
And the speed difference is hardly there anyway because of the Samsung being quite fast. The 7200rpm obviously wins in read latency but write latency goes to Samsung probably because of better caching. Random performance and some IO synthetic benches go to Samsung. Sequential peak speed goes to Seagate by a pretty much unnoticeable margin.
Power consumption goes to Samsung.
IMO wait for a 7200rpm 500GB platter drive or get the M8 now.

http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_spinpoint_m8_review
http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_momentus_750gb_review_st9750420as
scorpio black 500GB
http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_scorpio_black_500gb_review_wd5000bekt
Click to expand...

I have the 7200rpm black and not once have I ever noticed the hard drive noise.
 
Well here's what I decided: I've never had a problem with WD in my personal experience; also, the anti-shock and 5-year warranty catch my attention, and I've read a lot of positive reviews about it. I ordered it this morning, hoping that it arrives tomorrow! Thanks everyone!
 
tristangage said:
I have the 7200rpm black and not once have I ever noticed the hard drive noise.
Click to expand...
Which means you either need to have your ears checked out, you always work in a very noisy environment or you are one of those smart people who cannot keep fan from HDD noise.
If you don't know what is HDD and Fan noise. Launch via spotlight spindownHD and set the delay to 1 min and close all apps who might keep it from sleeping.
How much it annoys one is different question naturally.
 
josephmccutchen said:
Well here's what I decided: I've never had a problem with WD in my personal experience; also, the anti-shock and 5-year warranty catch my attention, and I've read a lot of positive reviews about it. I ordered it this morning, hoping that it arrives tomorrow! Thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

No worries - so did you go for a WD Scorpio Black or the Blue? What capacity?
 
The Samsung may run at a lower RPM but it does click and chirp, frequently, and is impossible to sleep next to.
 
josephmccutchen said:
I went for the Scorpio Black, 750GB; can't wait to have it!
Click to expand...

what are the specs of your machine? I was told that mid-late 2010 macbook pros (at least the 13") can only support 500GB max so i recently ordered a 500GB drive. does your machine recognize the full 750GB?
 
There is no limit. Apple uses GPT which more less has no limits that matter (8 ZB) and HFS+ also supports up to 8 EB which is 8,388,306 TB.
Only some of the external USB external hdd controllers as well as many older PC mainboards (which use MBR instead of GPT) have this limitation of 2 TB which is still something that doesn't matter yet as there is no single 2TB drive available in 2.5".
There was never a 500GB limit.
 
dusk007 said:
There is no limit. Apple uses GPT which more less has no limits that matter (8 ZB) and HFS+ also supports up to 8 EB which is 8,388,306 TB.
Only some of the external USB external hdd controllers as well as many older PC mainboards (which use MBR instead of GPT) have this limitation of 2 TB which is still something that doesn't matter yet as there is no single 2TB drive available in 2.5".
There was never a 500GB limit.
Click to expand...

gotcha. thanks for the note. obviously the tool that told me this info about a headroom limit needs to get his facts right *sigh*
 
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I try to use the WD black line at every chance. Fast and reliable. My last 4 builds used WD black drives. I also used dark gray hyper x memory and black vertex3 MAX IOPs, I lovingly call them Black Ops editions.
 
sehnsucht77 said:
gotcha. thanks for the note. obviously the tool that told me this info about a headroom limit needs to get his facts right *sigh*
Click to expand...

Well the other person already answered your question, and I am happy to hear what he said; I would be really disappointed if Apple designed a computer that had a 500GB limit; it recognizes the whole 750GB just fine.

Anyway, you were curious to know the specs on my computer, so here they are:

Mid-2010 15" Intel Core i5 2.4 GHz, 750GB Scorpio Black HDD, 8GB RAM
 
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