Successful upgrade to 7200 rpm HD?

[Oceanmac]

Wondering who has successfully upgraded your late 2008 alum MB to a 7200 HD. Please share your drive and your experience—e.g., make and model, ease of replacement, any issues after installation, etc.).

Thanks very much.

 

[mcruzader]

I recently did it on my alum macbook, I tried to carbon copy it but it gave me troubles so I just did a fresh install and got my stuff from the time machine backup.

 

[Oceanmac]

Thanks mcruzader. Some follow-up questions:
1. What drive did you use?
2. Any issues with performance? Vibrations, power issues, etc.?

 

[mcruzader]

I used a Hitachi H450-6044. 7200 rpm 16MB Cache, 320 GB. Replacement was a piece of cake no problems whatsoever.

 

[catgo]

Replaced mine about 3 days after buying it with a Seagate 7200.3 320GB drive, installed in 2 min. Did a clean install of OSX, everything runs much smoother now, no vibrations or increased heat. Great upgrade if you ask me.

 

[steve31]

Replaced mine about 3 days after buying it with a Seagate 7200.3 320GB drive, installed in 2 min. Did a clean install of OSX, everything runs much smoother now, no vibrations or increased heat. Great upgrade if you ask me.

I tried the same drive but it gave me some vibrations and slightly less battery life..so I stuck but in my apple drive. I am going to wait till I can find a good deal on a ssd drive.

 

[PedroMendes]

Replaced mine about 3 days after buying it with a Seagate 7200.3 320GB drive, installed in 2 min. Did a clean install of OSX, everything runs much smoother now, no vibrations or increased heat. Great upgrade if you ask me.

Same for me - took me 5 mins to replace - very straightforward - used superduper to copy original drive via drive caddy - this took a while but it copied to the new drive no prob

 

[Oceanmac]

Thanks for the replies and the suggestions. Very encouraging.

 

[clyde2801]

Put in a western digital scorpio black. Easy to install (if you've got some good small screwdrivers and a torx set) in less than five minutes.

Formatted the HD using my install disks.

Could not tell any difference in noise, vibration, heat, etc. COULD tell a difference in bootup and application launch times.

Would suggest buying drive through brick and mortar store instead of online. Yeah, you'll pay more, but if you've got a loud or shaky drive you can get it replaced immedatiely rather than waiting a week.

 

[schulzmc]

Same for me - took me 5 mins to replace - very straightforward - used superduper to copy original drive via drive caddy - this took a while but it copied to the new drive no prob

Same here as well - WD Black, install OS X from CD's that came with MacBook, then restore from Time Machine disk.

At first I thought the drive sounded louder, but just to check I put the old drive back in and the sound is the same. I was more sensitive to the sound because of some reports about noisy drives.

And - I'm seeing BETTER battery life, which makes sense because of the low power consumption of the WD black drive.

 

[spazer]

I installed my WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm 320gb within minutes of purchasing my macbook. The install was very easy, and the performance and added storage space is nice, but I can tell you I definitely got one of the noisy and hot running hard drives. I think I may switch over to the Seagate that people seem to be happy with.