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Upgrading 2011 Macbook Pro HDD

K

KyleGP

macrumors member
Original poster
May 3, 2011
59
0
Hi all,
When I purchase my Macbook Pro soon, I would like to upgrade the HDD to a 1TB 7,200rpm drive.

I know this is entirely possible, but can you run into some compatibility problems?

Is there a certain brand or particular hard drive that will work quite well?

Upon a quick search I found this Toshiba, would this be ideal?
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/TOSHIBA-...ccessories&hash=item56449859cc#ht_3258wt_1139

If not, what are some other good choices for large capacity 7,200rpm 2.5" hard drives?

Cheers.
 
KyleGP said:
Hi all,
When I purchase my Macbook Pro soon, I would like to upgrade the HDD to a 1TB 7,200rpm drive.

I know this is entirely possible, but can you run into some compatibility problems?

Is there a certain brand or particular hard drive that will work quite well?

Upon a quick search I found this Toshiba, would this be ideal?
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/TOSHIBA-...ccessories&hash=item56449859cc#ht_3258wt_1139

If not, what are some other good choices for large capacity 7,200rpm 2.5" hard drives?

Cheers.
Click to expand...
Western digital, hitachi, seagate, they're all reputable brands, go with whichever suits your needs.
 
KyleGP said:
Hi all,
When I purchase my Macbook Pro soon, I would like to upgrade the HDD to a 1TB 7,200rpm drive.

I know this is entirely possible, but can you run into some compatibility problems?

Is there a certain brand or particular hard drive that will work quite well?

Upon a quick search I found this Toshiba, would this be ideal?
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/TOSHIBA-...ccessories&hash=item56449859cc#ht_3258wt_1139

If not, what are some other good choices for large capacity 7,200rpm 2.5" hard drives?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

7,200RPM 1TB laptop-class hard drives do NOT exist. What you see there is a 5,400RPM drive.

The only hard drive with your specifications is a Seagate Constellation.2, which costs around $400, and plus it doesn't fit in the laptop. It's a 15mm-thick drive, which is thicker than the laptop itself. Which is normal, considering this drive is reserved for corporate servers. But in the next 4 years, I'd bet you'll see 1.5TB 7,200RPM drives and Blu-ray SuperDrives inside a MacBook Pro ;)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...35&cm_re=scorpio_black-_-22-136-835-_-Product
A WD Scorpio Black is the closest you can get. Very reliable with good reviews.

Another thread which says the same thing: https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1142157.html
 
Haha so it is. I should of read the description properly, I just searched for 7,200 rpm drives :p

Oh well, I really can't afford SSD atm, and I'd rather not use 5,400 so I'll stick with my 500gb 7,200 for now.
 
The Samsung 1TB 5400 RPM drive will be released very soon and has performance specs similar to 7200RPM drives, since it uses two 500GB platters (very dense data = faster speeds).
 
The Samsung 2platter 1TB drive (I owned one) has very fast sequential speeds but lower random speeds. For an OS a 7200rpm drive is still faster.

The fastest 2.5" hard drives are:
WD Scorpio Black 750GB
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB
Hitachi 7K750 750GB (availbale soon)

Personally I picked the XT, it's the fastest in day to day usage due to the 4GB cache and it's very quiet. The WD is fast too but sometimes has vibration issues. The Hitachi is new, it's fast and should be quiet.
 
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