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Upgrading macbook pro 13.3 Hard drive 250GB@5400 -> 500GB@7200 - my experience

GeekAtBirth said:
I would go for 5400 RPM drives in a notebook, 7200 will cause too much vibration in the wrist area and decrease the battery life. Go for a nice Western Digital 320gb 5400 drive.
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I put in a Hitachi 7K500 drive (500GB, 7200RPM) and it's nearly silent and causes zero vibrations. Best HD purchase I've ever made. This thing is insanely fast. I wouldn't put in a WD Scorpio, unless you're really worried about battery life and want to have zero noise (the 7200RPM drive is always spinning and makes a small amount of noise).

If anyone is thinking of putting a Seagate...don't. Put a Hitachi in and disable power management when you get it (See my thread).
 
jamesraward said:
I might take this drive out and replace it with a 5400 WD Scorpio Blue to get my battery performance back, but get the increased storage. Does anyone have any experience with the WD compared to the Hitachi 500GB drives?
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Both the Hitachi and WD Blue are nice drives. The Blue is quite a bit faster though. The Hitachi 500GB 7200 rpm drive is very fast, quiet, and easy on the battery, unlike the Seagate.

Here are some benchmarks of the Blue, the Hitachi, and a bunch of other drives.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/scorpio-notebook-hdd,2109-6.html
 
I'm going to be doing this upgrade pretty soon.. let me know if you have anymore issues..
 
firesong said:
There was a shootout of various laptop drives done on TechReport.com that's worth a look.

IMHO, after reading that review, the Seagate 7200.4 drives are not really worth the money - performance seems very much below par for a 7200RPM drive. Best bets right now would be the WD Scorpio Blue 640GB (which apparently performs better than the 500GB in the above-linked shootout and consumes even lesser power).
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I bought that 640GB WD Blue and it was definitely slower than the Seagate 500gb 7200 it replaced. For me in my everyday use of Word, Excel, PP, Safari/Firefox, Lotus Notes for Mac and VMware Fusion, the 640GB was NOT comparable to the 500GB 7200 it replaced.

Cheers,
 
I just came from a 500GB WD Blue to the Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm and saw a big performance jump with daily usage. I'd also note that the Hitachi drive is quieter then the blue.
 
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