upgrading MacBook hard drive: what make?

[ashjamben]

I've been thinking of upgrading both the RAM and Hard Drive on my MacBook probably sometime in the future. from the general consensus of, well, just about everyone crucial is the best RAM to get in terms of performance and price. but any thought on what hard drive manufacturer to go for?

also, the macbooks come with 5400rpm hard drives, should i stick with this when buying another or go with a 7400rpm? i don't really understand the difference to be honest, but i'm guessing 7400rpm is faster? but probably hotter, which isn't good for a laptop (hot thighs )

it's a SR macbook if it makes any difference. o yeah, anyone else kinda wishing they waited til macworld to buy an SR macbook, considering the new portable laptop coming. i'm kinda half and half, but i'll leave that discussion for another thread.

thanks in advance

 

[Cave Man]

also, the macbooks come with 5400rpm hard drives, should i stick with this when buying another or go with a 7400rpm? i don't really understand the difference to be honest, but i'm guessing 7400rpm is faster?

The 5400 drives today aren't too bad. 7200 is faster, though. The trade-off in speed is compensated, dollar for dollar, by larger drive sizes for the 5400. And keep in mind, a 160 gig 7200 drive will become slower than a 250 gig 5400 drive at around 130 gigs (initialized).

Personally, I'd go with Seagate. I've had bad luck with WD, although many others have had no troubles with them. I like the idea of a 5 year warranty.

 

[ashjamben]

thanks for the quick reply.

i'd been looking quickly at some makes on ebuyer and WD and Seagate seem to be the main two. also, i found that macbooks have seagate drives in them standard.

 

[CrackedButter]

I would go with Hitachi, in fact I am going to, I'm going to upgrade my HD very soon to a 7200rpm model, the 200GB version (also 7200rpm) uses very little power, look at this barefeats article for more information:

http://barefeats.com/hard96.html

The Seagate drive wins with small reads while the Hitachi drives win on the long reads but its personal preference to go with either.

 

[Yesterday]

i bought a seagate 160gb 5400.3 for my macbook @ $90 and purchased 2gb of crucial memory for $50 from newegg a while ago. the memory is $40 or less for 2gb now but the seagate drive went up in price a little. i haven't had anything go wrong and it's decently fast. i've tried wd before and didn't care much for it. i personally love the seagate hdd and would buy another in the future when i get a new laptop if needed.

 

[RaceTripper]

I upgraded my MBP drive to a Hitachi 7K200 (7200RPM 200 GB) and it worked great. I've since changed it to a Western Digital Scorpio 320 GB. It also works great. Both drives run as cool and quiet as the OEM drive did (160 GB 5400 RPM).

 

[reubs]

Last time I was newegg I couldn't find the Macbook SATA HDDs, and I am in desperate need of a new one ASAP. Anyone else find them around?

 

[Ronaldinho]

I have a question that has been on my mind on this subject. My 2.33 Ghz MBP has its S-ATA has its connection speed at 1.5, however I was wondering if this drive would work, although it is listed as 3.0 Gb's. Is this like any other hardware and goes only as fast as the slowest connection?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197

 

[panzer06]

I stick with Hitachi all the way. I have 2 SATA 500GB Hitachi 3.5 inch drives in an OWC dual drive FW800 external housing, 1 SATA 200GB 7200 RPM laptop drive in my SR MBP and 1 SATA 250GB 5400 RPM laptop drive in a small external housing.

All your great.

Cheers,

 

[spencers]

seagate..
same brand that the macbook ships with..

 

[georgeoommen]

I have a question that has been on my mind on this subject. My 2.33 Ghz MBP has its S-ATA has its connection speed at 1.5, however I was wondering if this drive would work, although it is listed as 3.0 Gb's. Is this like any other hardware and goes only as fast as the slowest connection?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197

i'm quite interested to know this as well.. did u have any luck finding out? please let us know..

thanks,

 

[Neil321]

i'm quite interested to know this as well.. did u have any luck finding out? please let us know..

thanks,

Mine is listed as 1.5 (although diff pro) and i installed the 320
it works fine