upgrade from 5400 -> 7200rpm. noticeable?

[btownguy]

Thinking of doing an inexpensive upgrade on my mid-2009 MBP. It's got the 5400rpm 500gb drive in it. I was thinking of upgrading to a 7200rpm drive. Strictly speaking math, the rpm's are 33% higher. Will this upgrade result in a noticeable decrease in time to boot or decrease in time to load programs (bounces)?

Also, what brand/model hard drives do Apple put in MBP's?

 

[warrena]

I noticed a difference. One of the first things I typically do is upgrade the drive from 5400 to 7200rpm. I recently upgraded my 15" to a Seagate 7200.4 500GB drive and it is quicker. I use it for work and run VMware and lots of other apps concurrently. More memory also helps, after the initial program load it will stay in memory if you have more memory app opening is quicker. SSD is faster, but too costly in large sizes. I would go with dual drives but need my CD/DVD.

 

[rmbrown09]

For $130 you can grab a 500GB 7200 + SSD Hybrid and get SSD like performance, at a fraction of the cost.

I feel like I have an SSD, and I cannot feel a single vibration.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...es+-+Notebooks+/+Laptops-_-Seagate-_-22148591

I made a thread about it a while back
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/957633/

 

[dudulang]

5400->7200: not really noticeable
HD ->SSD : YES

 

[1=1?]

For $130 you can grab a 500GB 7200 + SSD Hybrid and get SSD like performance, at a fraction of the cost.

I feel like I have an SSD, and I cannot feel a single vibration.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...es+-+Notebooks+/+Laptops-_-Seagate-_-22148591

I made a thread about it a while back
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/957633/

How do these work? Do they work with optibay?

 

[rmbrown09]

How do these work? Do they work with optibay?

It is a regular 7200 RPM disk, with 1 exception.

it has 496GB of HDD space, and then contains 4 GB of SSD flash memory space. The drive "learns" what you use most, and stores them in the 4GB of flash / SSD memory.

So for me, all my most used apps and booting times are SSD like. Photoshop, Steam, Safari, Onyx, Mail, etc.

4 GB is a lot of cache to store something.

then if you open something you don't use often that isn't in the flash, it's like a normal 7200 RPM drive.

 

[macagain]

Thinking of doing an inexpensive upgrade on my mid-2009 MBP. It's got the 5400rpm 500gb drive in it. I was thinking of upgrading to a 7200rpm drive. Strictly speaking math, the rpm's are 33% higher. Will this upgrade result in a noticeable decrease in time to boot or decrease in time to load programs (bounces)?

Also, what brand/model hard drives do Apple put in MBP's?

On a powerbook running Tiger a few years ago, I upgraded from 4200 to 7200, and was surprised at how un-noticeable the difference was in everyday use (on windozexp, it was a *huge* difference). Apparently, OS X does a really good job with caching and i/o. So, I doubt you'd feel much if any diff. That being said, I always buy my machines with 7200 drives. I wouldn't however spend on an upgrade...

And that being said, I just upgraded from a regular 7200 to a momentus xt. I can definitely feel the difference there, and would definitely recommend it. Boot up time improved, launch of everyday apps almost instant (1 bounce).

I've gotten Hitachi, Toshiba, and Fujitsu on mac before.