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The best 250 GB Macbook Hard Drive?

Disregard, found instructions for updating Samsung firmware on Mac

Never mind the above post, I was able to find instructions at:

http://xlr8yourmac.com/archives/aug07/080807.html

Worked like a charm, the drive (to which I had previously cloned contents from the 60 Gb internal, using a cheap USB external case) booted right up, which it refused to do previously.

I chose the Samsung based on Tom's Hardware review (quoted elsewhere here). Used SuperDuper to clone it. Really wished that the MacBook had a CardBus slot for an e-SATA card, since doing 55+Gb over USB two took hours.

ramatsu said:
Can you give more info on the update CD for Macs? All I've found is the Samsung page on doing it with a Windows machine:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=131&orderNum=1

Did you use BootCamp to do this under Windows? If there's a straight Mac way to do it, it would be great because I don't have this machine set up to do Windows.

Thanks,

Allen
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PimpDaddy said:
I was just about to ask the same thing :)

I live in the EU so if anybody can recommend good webshops in the UK for example, that would make my day.

PS. To the OP: Hope you don't mind me bugging in :eek:
Click to expand...

Check out www.dabs.com for a Western Digital 250GB hard drive and a USB SATA external case for your old hard drive.
 
JPark said:
I'm getting ready to swap out my hard drive and wanted to clarify one point first. I know you can boot off an external drive if it's firewire, but I had always heard you couldn't do this with a usb drive? Is that true? Does that make a difference when moving the image to the new drive?

Also, is there any reason to not go the cheap route with HD enclosures?
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MacBook boots fine from a USB disk. I use the external drive for Time Machine only, so speed didn't seem too important. And it is a massive difference in price.
 
TBi said:
However why didn't you use the built in image making and restore tools on the OSX install disk to do the backup. That would have copied everything and kept everything working. Plus it's included free.
Click to expand...

When I upgraded my MacBook, I moved internal 60 GB to external USB case, fresh 250 GB into the MacBook, booted from USB, started Disk Utility and copied the whole 60GB to the internal disk in one go. Worked with no problems.
 
Mr.Gadget said:
Have you guys (and gals) seen this one?
FUJITSU MHX2300BT 300GB SATA 4200 RPM 8MB Mobile Hard Drive
(At Zipzoomfly, but out of stock)
Says it is 12.5mm higher than the average 2.5" drive. Would that not fit the MBP?
Click to expand...

12.5mm does definitely _not_ fit. However, there are 320GB 9.5mm drives out now if 250GB is too small.
 
majordude said:
If you swap the drive it voids your warranty. If you get a certified technician to do it, it will run you about $90 and take a week.

You can do it in 30 minutes and put the old drive back in should you need to send your computer in for repair. :D
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It only voids the warranty if you manage to break the MacBook when you do the swap, and obviously if the new hard drive breaks Apple will not be responsible. Anyone who can use a screwdriver can do it.
 
gnasher729 said:
12.5mm does definitely _not_ fit. However, there are 320GB 9.5mm drives out now if 250GB is too small.
Click to expand...

I was leaning toward getting one of these - 320GB @ 5400 RPM. But I recently ordered a 200GB Hitachi @ 7200 RPM. I don't foresee needing the additional 120GB and, from what I've read online, the 7200 RPM should definitely increase performance.

They're both around $200. So the decision is between size and speed.
 
I also have the Samsung HM250JI. However, even though it had firmware HS100-08 from the start, it still has a problem. At random moments (on average about every 2 days), the drive will stop communicating with the computer. It still spins, there are no suspicious sounds, but any application trying to read or write to the HD, hangs. Theres's absolutely nothing in the logs about this, because obviously, writing anything at all is impossible. Of course, after a while the whole system is one big spinning beachball-fest, and the only option is a forced shutdown.

At first I thought this only happens when I leave my Mac alone for a while, but the funny thing is that it happened right at the moment where I was entering my registration for this very forum, so it seems like it can happen at any time. It has also happened once right after Awaken had woken up my Mac, Awaken didn't even have the chance to start iTunes.

I upgraded to Leopard together with installing this drive, so I don't know if the problem is really due to this hard drive, something funky in my Leopard installation, or the combination of Leopard + the HM250JI. Therefore, I created an additional partition and installed Tiger on it. So the only thing I need to do now, is just let my Mac run Tiger for a few days and see if it goes to spinning beachball-land...

Edit: OK, I let my MacBook Pro run Tiger overnight and in the morning it showed exactly the same symptoms, so there's definitely something wrong with this HD. Now I can either try to RMA it, or buy another one and use this one in the external casing.
 
DrLex said:
Edit: OK, I let my MacBook Pro run Tiger overnight and in the morning it showed exactly the same symptoms, so there's definitely something wrong with this HD. Now I can either try to RMA it, or buy another one and use this one in the external casing.
Click to expand...

RMA it. There is something wrong with the drive and you'll probably get errors from it even in the external casing.
 
TBi said:
RMA it. There is something wrong with the drive and you'll probably get errors from it even in the external casing.
Click to expand...
There are the following complications for an RMA on this specific drive:
1. Samsung RMA requires that you bring the drive back to the shop where you bought it, obviously with the original bill of sale. That bill of sale is buried somwehere in the administration of my university.
2. I never directly bought a Samsung drive, I bought a ready-made external enclosure which happened to contain a Samsung drive. So theoretically I would need to send the enclosure back to its manufacturer. But, I had to break the warranty seal on that enclosure to swap the drives.
3. To be eligible for an RMA, I need to run the HUTIL diagnostic program from Samsung on the drive. This utility doesn't work on drives in external enclosures. So the only way to prove that the drive is faulty is to break the seal on the enclosure! :eek:
4. I can't even run the HUTIL program on my MacBook Pro, because it doesn't recognize the internal keyboard nor an external USB keyboard. I can't even get past the disclaimer screen. And I'm pretty sure that the utility wouldn't find any errors anyway. I did check the detailed SMART diagnostics using smartctl in Windows and ran some tests, and they say the drive is in perfect health.

In short, Samsung's medieval RMA policy makes it pretty much impossible to RMA this drive. I had to do an RMA with an IBM (Hitachi) drive a few years ago and that was just a breeze compared to this. I could send the drive directly to Hitachi and they didn't even require a bill of sale, they could derive the age of the disk from the serial#.

The effort required to do an RMA with only a very small chance of success, is a few orders of magnitude higher than just putting the drive back in its enclosure and using it as a time machine drive, and living with the fact that once in a while it might lock up. Moreover, I have the feeling that all HM250JI drives will have some kind of incompatibility with the ICH7-M AHCI controller of my MBP. I never experienced any lock-ups with that drive while it was in its enclosure.
 
DrLex said:
There are the following complications for an RMA on this specific drive:
<snip>

In short, Samsung's medieval RMA policy makes it pretty much impossible to RMA this drive. I had to do an RMA with an IBM (Hitachi) drive a few years ago and that was just a breeze compared to this. I could send the drive directly to Hitachi and they didn't even require a bill of sale, they could derive the age of the disk from the serial#.
Click to expand...

Well upon knowing the full details. I think you'd be better off putting it back in the external box and use it away :)

Also i'd recommend not buying samsung again if they are going to make RMA so awkward. (i know you bought a no name case and didn't know but in case you are buying a new bare drive.)

Then again you can't RMA any hard drive from an apple to its manufacturer if it has the apple logo on it. With the apple logo then it is an OEM Apple drive which happened to be made by said manufacturer and Apple has to handle all returns.

Sorry to hear about all that though. Sounds like a royal pain!
 
TBi said:
Well upon knowing the full details. I think you'd be better off putting it back in the external box and use it away :)

Also i'd recommend not buying samsung again if they are going to make RMA so awkward. (i know you bought a no name case and didn't know but in case you are buying a new bare drive.)
Click to expand...
Well, it wouldn't be that bad if I had indeed bought a bare drive. But the fact that it's part of another product with a now broken warranty seal makes things much more complicated.

Then again you can't RMA any hard drive from an apple to its manufacturer if it has the apple logo on it. With the apple logo then it is an OEM Apple drive which happened to be made by said manufacturer and Apple has to handle all returns.

Sorry to hear about all that though. Sounds like a royal pain!
Click to expand...
Well, the good thing is that I didn't pay for this drive from my own wallet. It was bought from leftover funds from a PhD scolarship that ended on December 31st :)
Now that I have experienced the taste of more storage space, it would be hard to go back to the original 160GB HD. So I just ordered a 320GB Western Digital drive instead :cool:
 
OK, now it's getting really annoying. I installed a 320GB Western Digital HD, restored my system from a Time Machine backup, and 10 minutes after booting in it, exactly the same problem. All applications crashing, spinning beachballs everywhere, and nothing in the logs. So it seems that the HM250JI is not to blame. I'm starting to wonder whether the SATA controller in my MBP either has some kind of incompatibility with large drives, or has been damaged in the upgrade process...
 
for 2.5" drive I went with.. 200GB 2.5" Seagate Momentus 7200.2 7200RPM with 16MB Cache & G-Shock Protection. I wanted a portable HD to take with my new upcoming MBP and since I learned you could exlude the iTunes <dir> and the VMWare Fusion <dir> I will be able to use that as my portable solution. Its one of the fastest (and highest priced) drives. But I bought the external drive cage from OWC that has USB 2.0 and Firewire 800. It should be here on monday or tuesday at the latest.
 
The best 250 GB Macbook Hard Drive?

Last week there was an announcement that Hitachi would be making a 2.5" laptop drive. Two models 400GB, and 500GB.

The drives will have a speed of 5K.

The press release from Hitachi can be found at Hitachi's website.
 
joegomolski said:
Last week there was an announcement that Hitachi would be making a 2.5" laptop drive. Two models 400GB, and 500GB.

The drives will have a speed of 5K.

The press release from Hitachi can be found at Hitachi's website.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the 500GB drive is 12.5mm not 9.5mm (they added an extra platter to get the extra space) so it will not fit in a MB or MBP.
 
DrLex said:
OK, now it's getting really annoying. I installed a 320GB Western Digital HD, restored my system from a Time Machine backup, and 10 minutes after booting in it, exactly the same problem. All applications crashing, spinning beachballs everywhere, and nothing in the logs. So it seems that the HM250JI is not to blame. I'm starting to wonder whether the SATA controller in my MBP either has some kind of incompatibility with large drives, or has been damaged in the upgrade process...
Click to expand...
In case anyone else has the same problem: I installed a third drive, a Hitachi TravelStar 5K320 (HTS543232L9A300) and this one works impeccably. It seems like both the Samsung and the WD have a controller that the MacBook Pro doesn't like. The Hitachi runs silent and cool and hasn't produced any problem in the few months that I have been using it. I had hoped that with the original drive being a Hitachi, any other Hitachi drive would also be compatible, and it seems I was right...
The WD now serves as a Time Machine drive in an external enclosure, and the Samsung will soon be put on eBay...
 
DrLex said:
In case anyone else has the same problem: I installed a third drive, a Hitachi TravelStar 5K320 (HTS543232L9A300) and this one works impeccably. It seems like both the Samsung and the WD have a controller that the MacBook Pro doesn't like. The Hitachi runs silent and cool and hasn't produced any problem in the few months that I have been using it. I had hoped that with the original drive being a Hitachi, any other Hitachi drive would also be compatible, and it seems I was right...
The WD now serves as a Time Machine drive in an external enclosure, and the Samsung will soon be put on eBay...
Click to expand...

Interesting info... I'm using the 250GB WDC WD2500BEVS-22UST without problem, but still good to know about the Hitachi.
 
I have 3 x 15" MacBook Pro's and a MacBook (and 2 x PowerBook G4's) I upgraded all 4 of the hard disks on my Intel's to the 250GB WDC WD2500BEVS-22UST around 6 months ago.. all drive are still whisper quiet, fast and never failed so far! Western Digital are my first choice in 2.5" format
 
grpaul349 said:
I'm looking into a new Hard Drive for my macbook. I see that Western Digital, Samsung and Hitachi all offer 250 GB options. Does anyone have a favorite? They are all around the same price.

I have several Western Digital External HD's and have been happy with them. I am leaning toward the WD - but I wanted some other opinions first.

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

Just yesterday i got a Macbook Pro and immediately installed a 250G
WD Model: WDC WD2500BEVS-00UST0
I usually go for wd to be honest in my machines and had 2 samsungs for externals.
 
Hey guys - I really hope you can help me. I've just bought the 250 GB WD Scorpio and installed it in my macbook properly. I then went through disk utility to partition the hard drive and I still get the "Mac OS cannot be installed on this computer" message every time I start up. I am using the original Mac OS 10.5.2 disc one that came with the macbook when I bought it.

What else could I be doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

I should add, the original reason I bought the new HD was because I recently got the question mark folder icon and when I tried to remedy that situation, it didn't take. I assumed that the hard drive in the machine was dead.
 
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